HelloYellow17
Gym Leader
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Partners
-
Oh dear, I only just now saw this thread. Is it too late to ask for a card? I’m good with anything Orre, whump, and/or romance hehe
Fifth Anniversary Drabble Bingo
- Thread starter Negrek
- Start date
FauxFox
Wandering Fool
Sure sleep is cool and all, but have you ever made prompts? Anyway, here's two more cards of prompts.
No PMD, just like the doctor ordered. I tried to keep these ones somewhat generic so that you'd have flexibility with them also keeping them grounded enough to be easy to think up ideas for.
Here's prompts that meet your three requests, it is only too late to ask for a card if the timer hits zero. I think. Point is, you have a card now.
I hope you guys enjoy these prompts, and if not, feel free to reroll. Happy writing!
| Moving Out | Gym Puzzles | Drinking Buddies |
| I Challenge You! | Day Off | Evening Walk |
| Pokemon Center Trip | You Might Be Wondering How I Got Here | Dead Cellphone |
| Left Behind | What Happens Between Colosseum and XD Gale of Darkness | Oblivious |
| Agate Village Stories | In Denial | Bruises |
| Accidental Guilt Trip | Creating a Shadow Pokemon | The Under |
I hope you guys enjoy these prompts, and if not, feel free to reroll. Happy writing!
ShiniGojira
Multiversal Extraordinaire
Got the right side all crossed out!
Here they are!
These prompts were really fun, got more than a few ideas for most of them so I might work on a couple of them later on.
FauxFox
Wandering Fool
| Friend Bow | The money here is different. | |
| Sharing fears | "Something is stirring..." | |
| Shop in a dungeon | An afternoon at the Cafe. |
I might try to get the rest of these at some point just for the hell of it, this was a fun board! I hope what I've submitted works.
Please put all partner requests in the main anniversary thread, and I'll go through them after the anniversary ends! (For Koraidon specifically, please also specify bike form or battle form.)
IFBench
Rescue Team Member
- Location
- Pokemon Paradise
- Partners
-
Here's a drabble for the middle column of my card! Exactly 100 words.
| Emolga | Kyurem | |
| The Bittercold | Umbreon | |
| Quagsire | Keldeo |
I have a bingo!
I'm definitely gonna fill out the whole thing at a later date.
I have written some Morphic drabbles on the anniversary of Morphic!
- Partners
-
Actually if there was no response, I would've given one to Hello in exchange for one. Even had it up. So yes, I've made prompts I guess.
Just like last year, did a blackout one-shot. Went together a little smoother than the previous, but then, I didn't get a chance to go outside my usual stuff. Bright side, worldbuilding for that stuff.
Spiteful Murkrow
Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
- Partners
-
Ask and ye shall receive. Some of these fills are fairly loose or tangential ones, but I'm back with another Drabble Bingo blackout this year... well "Drabble" Bingo, since the final product came out to be just under 31,000 words long. As is a bit of a running tradition of mine, there's foreign language dialogue courtesy of @Venia Silente in these, though there's no hovertext this time around
Like last year and the year before it, the quality control was turned off for these drabbles in favor of just jamming stuff out, unlike the last times that I took part in Drabble Bingo, these drabbles are written in sequential order and are meant to be read in descending order from top to bottom.
Though consider this a glimpse of things to come in the future after a bit more time in the oven to polish and flesh out the concept a bit more, since if all goes as planned, it won't be the last time you see these characters or the general scenario they're in:
A flash of light melted away the simulated surroundings of her Pokéball as the world around filled in. She looked down at her feet, at her shelled underbelly and red wings that she’d known for all of two days and felt a bitter twinge. It dawned on her that she was in the lobby of a Pokécenter, which looked like the one back home, except a few things were different.
“Welcome to Johto, Marl.”
Marl blinked and craned her head over to the source of the voice. It was a Marowak, holding her bone and looking up at her. That much she’d gotten used to over the past couple days, but…
“Wait, Eira? What are we doing all the way there in Johto? What’s-?”
She turned back towards the doors of the lobby, where she saw her other teammates: Aries the Ampharos, Jaki the Honchkrow, a Lucario and Floatzel that she didn’t recognize, and of course, Roy, the Blastoise and her trainer’s starter, who approached her with a sheepish grin.
“Good to see you again, Marl. You’re… uh… bigger than when we last saw you?”
Yeah, and whose fault was that? Seriously, after everything that happened, Calvin seriously had the gall to send others to see her but not show his face himself.
She then heard footsteps and turned and saw him. A young man with an unplaceable face, who was nervously waving at her.
Her eyes narrowed, as hot anger took over her.
“You!”
She lunged at him. Roy hurriedly dug his claws into her shoulder and clamped her mouth shut, holding her back as Aries and Eira did much the same. All the while, Marl growled and struggled as she tried to pull herself ahead.
“Let go of me!” she snarled. “This doesn’t involve you!”
She thrashed and tried to wrench herself free of her teammates grasp, as the Lucario and Floatzel came in from the side.
“Whoa! Easy! What’s gotten into you?!” the Lucario cried.
“Are, uh… all of his Pokémon like this?” the Floatzel asked. “Since maybe I shouldn’t have come along otherwise.”
Marl had no idea who those two were supposed to be, but she didn’t really care. Her thoughts were of getting to her trainer and making sure he understood his mistake loud and clear, without the excuse of being able to hide behind that human language of his. Maybe a bite would get the message across. Or a clawing. Or-
She felt claws jerk her back and turned to see Roy staring at her with an expression that seemed to be equal measures stern and frantic.
“Marl, I know that a lot’s been going on, I think we really should all take a moment to simmer down and try to explain things-”
“There’s nothing to explain!”
The Salamence tried to push her teammates off of her, her eyes focused on the young man who was nervously backing away. Because of course he’d just try to avoid her more after everything. She heard a faint electric crackle and turned to see Aries sharply frowning at her, with static on his hide.
“Marl, I don’t want for things to come to a Thunder Wave, but you really need to calm down and talk things-!”
“Calvin knew I was about to evolve and you just left me at home for it! It’s been two whole days!”
Everything went silent afterwards aside from the sound of her angry breaths. Wingbeats followed, as her last missing teammate, Jaki flew up. He walked ahead between her and Calvin, traded glances, before rolling his eyes and turning over to Eira with an unimpressed scoff.
“... Okay, bonehead. What happened here?”
The Marowak shook her head and let out a low sigh in reply.
“It’s a bit of a long story…”
Before everything happened, Marl thought her trainer was a kind human, if a bit spacey and prone to distraction sometimes. He’d moved to some ‘college’ thing in Lilycove City a couple years ago, which was cramped to the point that he’d normally have to split up Pokémon from his team between his person and the little three-floor house they all grew up in.
During their last stretch together, Calvin had learned that she was close to evolving, which made her ecstatic for the day when she’d finally leave her cumbersome form as a Shelgon behind and take to the air. It was the most important day in the world for her, and she thought he knew that and was looking forward to seeing it alongside her.
Except, a couple weeks ago, she’d been sent back along with Eira as part of a normal rotation. She was nervous, but her teammates assured her that with the way that ‘PC Network’ worked these days, that near or far, that it wouldn’t take long to reunite when it came time for her evolution.
That moment had come unexpectedly while on a walk around the neighborhood with Eira and Calvin’s parents two days ago. She let the surge of energy overtake her as her body disappeared in warm light and she emerged in the flightworthy body she’d dreamed of since she was a Bagon.
She was ecstatic at first, all but cartwheeling in the air and whooping and hollering in front of Eira and Calvin’s parents over her new body as she thought it’d be the happiest day of her life. It was a bit disappointing that the rest of her team couldn’t be there for the exact moment, but it would be a short trip through the PC Network to be reunited.
They went back to the house, which was suddenly a lot smaller-feeling, to the point where Marl couldn’t go through the hallways normally on her own. She was recalled into her Pokéball to pass the time for what she to be a short phone call, and that they’d be off to a Pokécenter.
Except the short phone call kept dragging on, until the daylight through she could see through the simulated sky in her ball had vanished entirely. She’d started to grow worried, and at night, she was finally let out in the small house’s small yard for Eira to try and break the news on behalf of Calvin’s parents:
That they’d been calling all evening and hadn’t been able to get ahold of him. That given how late it was, that they doubted she would be able to rejoin her friends until the morning.
She felt gutted after hearing that, and spent the night worrying whether or not something had happened to her trainer during the day.
The next morning, Calvin still wasn’t picking up, and his parents started to call around to others that Calvin knew. Marl started to grow increasingly worried, and tried to lift her mood by taking to the air and flying around, but it just increasingly felt hollow as the day wore on.
They finally found out from a roommate well in the evening that Calvin had left some for some sort of ‘open tournament’, but they still couldn’t get ahold of him.
Marl cried after that, and curled up in the yard as Eira tried to pat and reassure her. It didn’t do any good, since she’d pieced things together well enough to know what was happening.
Why her trainer had decided to just leave her behind:
“You just ignored me so that way you could go and have fun without me!” she shouted. “How could you do that to me?!”
Marl bared her fangs, glaring daggers down at her trainer. Her other teammates traded looks with one another, before Roy let out a tired sigh from beside her.
“That… wasn’t what Calvin was doing at all, Marl,” the Blastoise said. “Rako, Aoi, go and get Calvin’s bag. Show her what we were going to give Marl when we met again.”
The pair went up, and after a bit of prodding, managed to get Calvin to part with his bag. The Lucario—‘Aoi’, apparently—returned, before sticking her paw in and pulling out a couple blue-colored cubes from it.
“The plan was to put you over the edge of evolution here after meeting up again so that way Calvin could enter you into the tournament as a Salamence,” the Lucario sighed. “Obviously, things didn’t quite work out.”
Marl blinked and stared down vacantly at the cubes. So… then Calvin hadn’t ignored her all this time? The Floatzel—‘Rako’—stared off back towards Calvin’s direction, before setting his teeth on edge.
“Also, you probably want to chill out,” the Floatzel added. “Since I think your trainer’s about to get in trouble because of you.”
She noticed a police officer coming up, accompanied by a Growlithe who stared at her with his tail and ears pinned back. Not long after, he and Calvin seemed to be in the thick of a rather awkward-sounding conversation. Her breaths evened out as she tried to make sense of everything.
S-So everything that had happened. That happy day that she’d been expecting to share. It’d all been ruined by some mistake?
No, there was no excuse for any of this! Calvin had a PokéNav, and it didn’t need to be plugged into a wall to work like the phone at home!
“B-But you could’ve called!” the Salamence insisted. “And-!”
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t. That one’s kinda my fault.”
Roy and the others let go of her, if still with a close eye, as Roy went over to the bag and rummaged through it himself. After a few clumsy pokes and prods, he pulled out a PokéNav… which had been visibly blackened with portions of melted plastic.
Marl stared at the ruined device, before turning to Aries as he flusteredly hemmed and hawed to himself.
“I kinda wound up electrocuting Calvin’s PokéNav during a sparring match the night before we took the ferry,” the Ampharos explained. “We still haven’t been able to get a proper replacement for it, yet.”
“Not that you wouldn’t have had to wait anyways,” Rako chimed in. “Your trainer was too cheap to pay for cellular service at sea.”
In the background, the police officer had backed off from Calvin as he was going over, Pokéball raised. Marl briefly tensed up, as Roy went over and hurriedly nudged his arm away before trying to explain things.
Marl’s breaths started to hitch and come in and out quicker, as her vision started to grow bleary.
“B-But if he’d just called sooner, then-!”
A cawing scoff cut her off, as she turned and saw Jaki turning his beak up with an unimpressed frown.
“... I’m sorry, but are you stupid?” he harrumphed. “If this was such a big deal for you, you could’ve just suppressed your evolution and waited.”
She began to tear up as a sinking realization came over her: Jaki was right. She’d been so swept up in the moment that it hadn’t even occurred to her to try and put her evolution off if she had to.
“B-But I was looking forward to evolving into a Salamence f-for my entire life! And I- I-”
She was such an idiot.
Marl broke down after that and hung her head as she began to cry bitter tears. She felt a pat against her scales and looked up and saw Roy patting at her, with her trainer standing at arm’s length with a worried expression.
“I know that this wasn’t how you wanted to start life as a Salamence,” the Blastoise said. “But the reason why Calvin called you here was because he wanted you to be a part of this tournament with us. Because he thought that you’d like it.”
Marl listened as her trainer spoke up, still at a distance as he tugged at Roy’s shoulder and motioned over to her. There was a lingering pause, before Roy spoke up and tried to translate things, as Pokémon who first joined humans on their teams often did for others.
“Calvin says like to try and spend a bit more time with you while we’re here, to try and make up for things,” Roy said. “We’re all obviously going to be a bit busy, but won’t you give things a chance?”
Marl hesitated. Even if in the end, it wasn’t all his fault or even what she’d thought had been happening originally. She didn’t have any idea how Calvin was supposed to even begin making up for a moment like that.
But he was there and still looking worriedly at her. And at that moment, she just felt too defeated to protest anymore.
“O… Okay.”
“Welcome to Johto, Marl.”
Marl blinked and craned her head over to the source of the voice. It was a Marowak, holding her bone and looking up at her. That much she’d gotten used to over the past couple days, but…
“Wait, Eira? What are we doing all the way there in Johto? What’s-?”
She turned back towards the doors of the lobby, where she saw her other teammates: Aries the Ampharos, Jaki the Honchkrow, a Lucario and Floatzel that she didn’t recognize, and of course, Roy, the Blastoise and her trainer’s starter, who approached her with a sheepish grin.
“Good to see you again, Marl. You’re… uh… bigger than when we last saw you?”
Yeah, and whose fault was that? Seriously, after everything that happened, Calvin seriously had the gall to send others to see her but not show his face himself.
She then heard footsteps and turned and saw him. A young man with an unplaceable face, who was nervously waving at her.
Her eyes narrowed, as hot anger took over her.
“You!”
She lunged at him. Roy hurriedly dug his claws into her shoulder and clamped her mouth shut, holding her back as Aries and Eira did much the same. All the while, Marl growled and struggled as she tried to pull herself ahead.
“Let go of me!” she snarled. “This doesn’t involve you!”
She thrashed and tried to wrench herself free of her teammates grasp, as the Lucario and Floatzel came in from the side.
“Whoa! Easy! What’s gotten into you?!” the Lucario cried.
“Are, uh… all of his Pokémon like this?” the Floatzel asked. “Since maybe I shouldn’t have come along otherwise.”
Marl had no idea who those two were supposed to be, but she didn’t really care. Her thoughts were of getting to her trainer and making sure he understood his mistake loud and clear, without the excuse of being able to hide behind that human language of his. Maybe a bite would get the message across. Or a clawing. Or-
She felt claws jerk her back and turned to see Roy staring at her with an expression that seemed to be equal measures stern and frantic.
“Marl, I know that a lot’s been going on, I think we really should all take a moment to simmer down and try to explain things-”
“There’s nothing to explain!”
The Salamence tried to push her teammates off of her, her eyes focused on the young man who was nervously backing away. Because of course he’d just try to avoid her more after everything. She heard a faint electric crackle and turned to see Aries sharply frowning at her, with static on his hide.
“Marl, I don’t want for things to come to a Thunder Wave, but you really need to calm down and talk things-!”
“Calvin knew I was about to evolve and you just left me at home for it! It’s been two whole days!”
Everything went silent afterwards aside from the sound of her angry breaths. Wingbeats followed, as her last missing teammate, Jaki flew up. He walked ahead between her and Calvin, traded glances, before rolling his eyes and turning over to Eira with an unimpressed scoff.
“... Okay, bonehead. What happened here?”
The Marowak shook her head and let out a low sigh in reply.
“It’s a bit of a long story…”
Before everything happened, Marl thought her trainer was a kind human, if a bit spacey and prone to distraction sometimes. He’d moved to some ‘college’ thing in Lilycove City a couple years ago, which was cramped to the point that he’d normally have to split up Pokémon from his team between his person and the little three-floor house they all grew up in.
During their last stretch together, Calvin had learned that she was close to evolving, which made her ecstatic for the day when she’d finally leave her cumbersome form as a Shelgon behind and take to the air. It was the most important day in the world for her, and she thought he knew that and was looking forward to seeing it alongside her.
Except, a couple weeks ago, she’d been sent back along with Eira as part of a normal rotation. She was nervous, but her teammates assured her that with the way that ‘PC Network’ worked these days, that near or far, that it wouldn’t take long to reunite when it came time for her evolution.
That moment had come unexpectedly while on a walk around the neighborhood with Eira and Calvin’s parents two days ago. She let the surge of energy overtake her as her body disappeared in warm light and she emerged in the flightworthy body she’d dreamed of since she was a Bagon.
She was ecstatic at first, all but cartwheeling in the air and whooping and hollering in front of Eira and Calvin’s parents over her new body as she thought it’d be the happiest day of her life. It was a bit disappointing that the rest of her team couldn’t be there for the exact moment, but it would be a short trip through the PC Network to be reunited.
They went back to the house, which was suddenly a lot smaller-feeling, to the point where Marl couldn’t go through the hallways normally on her own. She was recalled into her Pokéball to pass the time for what she to be a short phone call, and that they’d be off to a Pokécenter.
Except the short phone call kept dragging on, until the daylight through she could see through the simulated sky in her ball had vanished entirely. She’d started to grow worried, and at night, she was finally let out in the small house’s small yard for Eira to try and break the news on behalf of Calvin’s parents:
That they’d been calling all evening and hadn’t been able to get ahold of him. That given how late it was, that they doubted she would be able to rejoin her friends until the morning.
She felt gutted after hearing that, and spent the night worrying whether or not something had happened to her trainer during the day.
The next morning, Calvin still wasn’t picking up, and his parents started to call around to others that Calvin knew. Marl started to grow increasingly worried, and tried to lift her mood by taking to the air and flying around, but it just increasingly felt hollow as the day wore on.
They finally found out from a roommate well in the evening that Calvin had left some for some sort of ‘open tournament’, but they still couldn’t get ahold of him.
Marl cried after that, and curled up in the yard as Eira tried to pat and reassure her. It didn’t do any good, since she’d pieced things together well enough to know what was happening.
Why her trainer had decided to just leave her behind:
“You just ignored me so that way you could go and have fun without me!” she shouted. “How could you do that to me?!”
Marl bared her fangs, glaring daggers down at her trainer. Her other teammates traded looks with one another, before Roy let out a tired sigh from beside her.
“That… wasn’t what Calvin was doing at all, Marl,” the Blastoise said. “Rako, Aoi, go and get Calvin’s bag. Show her what we were going to give Marl when we met again.”
The pair went up, and after a bit of prodding, managed to get Calvin to part with his bag. The Lucario—‘Aoi’, apparently—returned, before sticking her paw in and pulling out a couple blue-colored cubes from it.
“The plan was to put you over the edge of evolution here after meeting up again so that way Calvin could enter you into the tournament as a Salamence,” the Lucario sighed. “Obviously, things didn’t quite work out.”
Marl blinked and stared down vacantly at the cubes. So… then Calvin hadn’t ignored her all this time? The Floatzel—‘Rako’—stared off back towards Calvin’s direction, before setting his teeth on edge.
“Also, you probably want to chill out,” the Floatzel added. “Since I think your trainer’s about to get in trouble because of you.”
She noticed a police officer coming up, accompanied by a Growlithe who stared at her with his tail and ears pinned back. Not long after, he and Calvin seemed to be in the thick of a rather awkward-sounding conversation. Her breaths evened out as she tried to make sense of everything.
S-So everything that had happened. That happy day that she’d been expecting to share. It’d all been ruined by some mistake?
No, there was no excuse for any of this! Calvin had a PokéNav, and it didn’t need to be plugged into a wall to work like the phone at home!
“B-But you could’ve called!” the Salamence insisted. “And-!”
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t. That one’s kinda my fault.”
Roy and the others let go of her, if still with a close eye, as Roy went over to the bag and rummaged through it himself. After a few clumsy pokes and prods, he pulled out a PokéNav… which had been visibly blackened with portions of melted plastic.
Marl stared at the ruined device, before turning to Aries as he flusteredly hemmed and hawed to himself.
“I kinda wound up electrocuting Calvin’s PokéNav during a sparring match the night before we took the ferry,” the Ampharos explained. “We still haven’t been able to get a proper replacement for it, yet.”
“Not that you wouldn’t have had to wait anyways,” Rako chimed in. “Your trainer was too cheap to pay for cellular service at sea.”
In the background, the police officer had backed off from Calvin as he was going over, Pokéball raised. Marl briefly tensed up, as Roy went over and hurriedly nudged his arm away before trying to explain things.
Marl’s breaths started to hitch and come in and out quicker, as her vision started to grow bleary.
“B-But if he’d just called sooner, then-!”
A cawing scoff cut her off, as she turned and saw Jaki turning his beak up with an unimpressed frown.
“... I’m sorry, but are you stupid?” he harrumphed. “If this was such a big deal for you, you could’ve just suppressed your evolution and waited.”
She began to tear up as a sinking realization came over her: Jaki was right. She’d been so swept up in the moment that it hadn’t even occurred to her to try and put her evolution off if she had to.
“B-But I was looking forward to evolving into a Salamence f-for my entire life! And I- I-”
She was such an idiot.
Marl broke down after that and hung her head as she began to cry bitter tears. She felt a pat against her scales and looked up and saw Roy patting at her, with her trainer standing at arm’s length with a worried expression.
“I know that this wasn’t how you wanted to start life as a Salamence,” the Blastoise said. “But the reason why Calvin called you here was because he wanted you to be a part of this tournament with us. Because he thought that you’d like it.”
Marl listened as her trainer spoke up, still at a distance as he tugged at Roy’s shoulder and motioned over to her. There was a lingering pause, before Roy spoke up and tried to translate things, as Pokémon who first joined humans on their teams often did for others.
“Calvin says like to try and spend a bit more time with you while we’re here, to try and make up for things,” Roy said. “We’re all obviously going to be a bit busy, but won’t you give things a chance?”
Marl hesitated. Even if in the end, it wasn’t all his fault or even what she’d thought had been happening originally. She didn’t have any idea how Calvin was supposed to even begin making up for a moment like that.
But he was there and still looking worriedly at her. And at that moment, she just felt too defeated to protest anymore.
“O… Okay.”
The Pokécenter room that her trainer booked was too small for everyone to rest in outside their Pokéballs. Not that Marl was particularly motivated to do so. She’d heard the explanations that everyone gave for how Calvin managed to miss her evolution, but surely there was something he could’ve done.
He could’ve called home sooner. Or paid for that phone service during the ferry ride. Or something.
Finally becoming a Salamence was the biggest day in the world for her, and she’d had to spend it cooped up in a cramped house just waiting.
When Marl roused from her sleep the following morning, she woke up to the simulated mountains inside her Pokéball that had been there since she was a little Bagon. She stretched and groggily brushed a wing against her face when she noticed dark shapes in her Pokéball’s simulated sky:
Of people and Pokémon all around her in some sort of line. It went ahead a little ways before clearing out where she saw a red flash and Roy materializing outside before the Blastoise lumbered off outside her field of view. A little while later, the same happened with Aries as an Ampharos passed. She saw Eira and Jaki do much the same later as she spotted the Marowak and Honchkrow heading off.
She finally saw her trainer’s hand come down on her Pokéball and her surroundings melted away in a flash of light. Marl blinked and let her eyes adjust as she saw she was in some sort of space covered by a concrete awning with colorful banners on the side—for this ‘Goldenrod Open’ they were all supposed to join.
“Next!”
The Salamence turned her head rightwards towards something that looked like a low-slung stage with a lined background with some of those human ‘computers’ set up on a desk in front of it, where a Farfetch’d alongside a human in a sporting uniform was standing and looking down at her. She felt a prod at her wing and saw Calvin, with his strangely hard-to-place face motioning forward and saying something. Maybe it was just morning grogginess but it took her a moment for it to occur to her that he wanted her on that stage.
She made her way forward and spotted Calvin handing off her Pokéball when the human motioned for a stop and the Farfetch’d suddenly piped up.
“That’s good enough, just stay there and stand as upright as you normally would for a moment,” the Farfetch’d said.
Marl stopped and waited as the humans at the computers punched a few keys and looked down at monitors that she couldn’t see. After a moment, they motioned back at the Farfetch’d and her trainer as they went up and circled around and seemed to eye her weirdly closely, before the Farfetch’d trainer motioned forward.
“You’re good, you can get off the scale now,” the Farfetch’d said. “Next!”
Marl made her way off the platform and down a small ramp on the opposite side. That stage that she was on was a scale? Like that little pad thing that Calvin’s parents kept back home in their house? Her trainer went up to her and tugged at her to come along. She brushed him away, since she still wasn’t happy over him missing her evolution, but curiosity couldn’t help but get the better of her.
“What on earth was that, about?”
“It’s an inspection to make sure that there’s no obvious discrepancies with the information logged by your Pokéball and that you’re not secretly hiding anything that would give an unfair advantage,” a yipping voice said from behind.
Marl craned her head back to the scale and the lined background, which suddenly occurred to her must’ve been a height chart, when that Lucario she’d briefly seen in the Pokécenter the other day stepped up. ‘Aoi’, she was pretty sure. She didn’t remember Calvin having any additional Pokémon join his team lately, much less something as uncommon as a Lucario, so…
“... Who are you anyways?”
“What, my species?” Aoi replied. “I’m a Lucario. I get that we’re not exactly common encounters in the wilds of these regions anymore, but-”
“No, I know that part, but who are you?” Marl replied. “Since Calvin never trained a Lucario, and I’d think I’d notice if he started with how long we’ve been together.”
There was some chatter from the computers as some text and images flickered on the screens, when the Lucario twitched her feelers and held her head at a tilt.
“The ‘Field Biology’ course your trainer’s in? Ring any bells?”
Right, that course that sometimes took Calvin out of his college and into the wilds. Even if she could’ve sworn that it was supposed to be some student-led course that Calvin had apparently helped started teaching that wasn’t as serious as the others he’d taken. She knew that there were a few cases of Pokémon being temporarily assigned for outings, but…
“I was there on and off,” she said. “My trainer didn’t have a lot of space in his dorm room and normally rotated me and my teammates between there and his normal home.”
“... Guess we haven’t met all that much, but the point is that I basically got assigned to tag along with your trainer to go out in the field and go to study the behavior of Pokémon like me in the wilds. It’s apparently part of some initiative to help set up some ‘Safari Zone’ in the south of this region based on the one back in Hoenn.”
The human and the Farfetch’d called the Lucario along as she made her way down the ramp. Marl supposed that explained where the Lucario came from, but…
“That doesn’t explain why you’re here,” she said. “What on earth does a tournament have to do with a ‘Field Biology’ course?”
“I mean, Calvin needed a sixth Pokémon for this tournament, he talked the instructors of his course into agreeing that it’d help gather data about Lucario, since that was apparently one of the species being considered for that Safari Zone,” Aoi said, giving a bemused smile back in reply. “I wanted a chance to get to do battle with more than wilds in the tall grass for once. So it was kinda a win-win situation for everyone involved.”
Was that normal for human college classes? Or was that a student-led class sort of thing? Aoi gave a bemused chuckle, before brushing at the feelers on her head.
“Who knows? If I wind up having fun, I might try and stick around your team for a while,” the Lucario said. “It’s not that rare for Pokémon from my program to wind up staying with a trainer as part of long-term research.”
Marl blinked for a moment as the rest of her teammates joined along. It was a bit weird having to share a team with someone that she didn’t really know, but she supposed that everyone else had gone through that at some point as part of being trained, so-
“Floatzel, what do you think you’re doing?”
Marl turned her head back towards the scale as the Floatzel from the day before, sauntered onto the scale in front of the Farfetch’d and the onlooking humans. He pumped an arm, and spun his tails briefly with a toothy grin.
“Getting registered as part of the team,” the Floatzel replied. “Don’t think that just because I’m short that I can’t throw down with the best of them!”
There was a noticeable pause, before Aoi stepped over towards the scale and looked up. Her feelers twitched and Marl briefly felt some sort of sensation roll off in the direction of the Lucario.
Was that annoyance?
“Rako, this tournament is for teams of six.”
“Yeah, and?” the Floatzel retorted. “There’s nothing keeping trainers from having extra teammates, right?”
From the unamused expressions Roy and a couple of her other teammates had, Marl guessed that that probably had something to do with why he’d stowed away in Calvin’s luggage.
“Rako, you’re literally a field service ‘mon!” the Lucario snapped. “Half the Pokémon joining this tournament would probably be able to eat you for lunch!”
“Look, I’m not a pushover, alright? Though you meant that ‘eat me’ part figuratively, right?”
“I’m sorry, he’s a what now?”
A loud sigh turned Marl’s attention off toward her other teammates, as Roy shook his head and raised a claw to his temple.
“Basically, he’s another Pokémon from the same Pokémon as Aoi helps trainers and their teams get around while going out in the field,” the Blastoise explained. “So he’s skilled at crossing and getting past obstacles. Even if I don’t think that’d help him get far into a more proper tournament like this.”
A few looks went among the others, before Eira raised her bone with a disbelieving tilt of her head.
“I’m sorry, but how’d he get here again?” the Marowak asked.
“He was supposed to join us after the tournament for a field assignment,” Aries explained. “But he wound up inviting himself and sneaking his Pokéball into Calvin’s bag.”
“Ow! Ow! Okay! I’m going!”
Marl looked back towards the scale where there was Rako… getting dragged along towards them flailing by Aoi by his head crest. Marl beat her wings and shot an askew glance back at her Blastoise teammate.
“These two do this a lot, don’t they?” she asked.
“More than I’d care to admit,” the Blastoise sighed.
Partway over, Calvin called out to the pair and the Lucario let go. The Floatzel instinctively bolted over and hid behind the trainer with the unplaceable face, pawing at his head crest as Calvin’s hand went for a Pokéball on a belt.
“Gah! I hope those friends of your trainer aren’t a bunch of pills like you!” the Floatzel piped.
A flash of red light followed as the Floatzel was recalled, and then the Lucario that dragged him over. Calvin started to work through the other Pokémon on the team, as something about the Floatzel’s whining stuck with her.
“Wait, ‘friends’? From college?”
“Not quite,” Roy replied. “You remember Garrett? That Unovan exchange student from back in high school?”
Marl blinked as her mouth briefly fell open in reply.
“Numa and Ryuko’s trainer? They’re here, too?”
A wave of memories came back to Marl in a flash. Garrett was a trainer who came from a faraway land whose speech carried a peculiar sound to it and with skin and hair that looked very different from what the humans around Hoenn normally looked like. He’d apparently picked up a Mudkip—Numa, as Garrett apparently named him—from a starter program and gotten very far into the Hoenn League, enough so that she distinctly remembered times when Calvin was quietly jealous about it.
As tough and as quickly as Numa evolved into a Swampert back then, he had been a close friend. But closer still was Ryuko, the Salamence Garrett had wound up training. Who Marl had both respected and been quietly envious of how quickly she’d managed to evolve. Marl remembered that Ryuko was always happy to take her out on flights and she learned a lot from her, and Calvin had learned things like how to scratch at her chin to lift her mood from Garrett’s experience.
“How on earth did they get all the way out here in Johto of all places?” she asked.
“Garrett apparently knows one of Calvin’s friends through that ‘internet’ thing that lives in this region. That’s how we got the invite to come and enter this tournament in the first place,” the Blastoise explained. “I’m not fully sure what to expect since it’s been a few years since we last met, but we were planning to meet at the square outside after this to catch up.”
Calvin abruptly called Roy’s name as he and Marl turned and saw their trainer raise a Pokéball at the Blastoise. There was still so much to take in all at once, but in spite of it all, Roy cracked a small smile at her.
“We’ll talk more when we get there, but I’m sure that it’ll be fun.”
The square Roy mentioned was a mostly-paved space just west of the stadium hemmed in by a river passing by, which from what her teammates said was apparently more commonly used to host something called a ‘Pokéthalon’. Aside from some planters and a couple stands at the center and light poles along the edge, it seemed like there wasn’t a whole lot there to the place.
Or at least not on its own. Calvin had said that the square was relatively quiet at the moment, but even still there were still no shortage of humans and their Pokémon about even before he sent out the rest of her teammates. As they went along, Marl noticed that a number of smaller Pokémon and even some of their trainers would abruptly give her a berth. She wasn’t really sure if she was annoyed or relieved by that. Maybe that lingering frustration over Calvin missing out on her evolution was carrying over to her body language.
It didn’t take long before they found Garrett. Sure enough, Numa was out by his side, though there was another human with a Nidorino beside him that she didn’t recognize. For a brief moment, she wondered if maybe they’d run into some sort of doppleganger, only for the trainers’ words to start carrying along in the air.
And at once, Aoi and Rako stiffened up and traded puzzled looks with each other.
“Wait, what’s up with those humans?” the Floatzel asked. “I know that their language is an arrhythmic mess, but I can’t make sense of anything they’re saying there.”
Aoi flared her feelers and closed her eyes in focus briefly. Marl briefly raised a brow before the Lucario’s feelers fell and she opened her eyes.
“They seem to be talking about past events and getting nostalgic about it, but that’s just based on their feelings,” the Lucario said. “I can’t tell what they’re saying at all just from their voices.”
Right, Lucario had that ‘aura’ thing that they could sense. Marl supposed that would help Aoi get an idea of what was going on, even if there was a much simpler explanation for why she didn’t recognize anything of what they were saying. A cawing scoff reached her ears, as she turned and saw Jaki ruffling his feathers and giving an unimpressed frown.
“... You two don’t get around much, do you?” the Honchkrow scoffed. “Those two humans are speaking Unovan.”
The explanation seemed to catch the two aback and left them blinking. There was a moment’s quiet, before Jaki turned his head and rolled his eyes.
“You know, a completely different human language from across the sea?” Jaki asked. “What, did you expect humans would all speak the same language everywhere in the world?”
“I mean, they do it across regions here,” Rako retorted. “They’re mostly separated by the sea, so…”
“Wait, Marl? Is that you?”
Marl looked up and saw that Garrett and the Nidorino trainer were now much closer. The Swampert was ahead of the two as a moment of awed surprise lingered on his face. There was a moment of mutual, incredulous excitement as the Swampert’s dumbfounded expression gave way to a growing grin, as he reared up and held a hand out in greeting.
“Hah! You’ve really grown strong since we’ve last met!” the Swampert chuckled. “You and Calvin were over the moon when you evolved!”
And just as quick as it came, Marl’s mood came crashing back down to earth. She felt her mouth curl down and turned aside with a bitter growl under her breath.
“I spent it at home with Eira and Calvin’s parents. He missed it by two days and he just saw it for the first time yesterday.”
She couldn’t see Numa’s reaction, but just from the pregnant silence and the way he was awkwardly shuffling his limbs from the corner of her vision, she supposed that she must have ruined the mood.
“Oh. Uh… That’s really… Er… Wait, how on earth did that even happen?”
“It’s a long story that we don’t need to get into right now,” Eira replied. “Though I take it that Garrett came here to enter the tournament?”
“Of course!” Numa replied. “Garrett hasn’t exactly gotten less skilled as a trainer since high school, so of course he was going to show off how far he’s come!”
Marl turned back towards the Swampert. Calvin and Garrett were talking with each other and the Nidorino trainer. She couldn’t make out what they were saying in Unovan since she hadn’t picked up on much of it while Garrett was around in high school. From what she could make out, the Nidorino trainer was apparently called ‘Alberi’ and the Nidorino was Rinaldo and that they’d come along with Garrett for a reason she couldn’t pick up on.
Though if Garrett was here to show off his prowess as a trainer, then did that mean that the rest of Numa’s teammates were here too?
“Is Ryuko here with you?” she asked. “Since it’d be nice to catch up with her a bit…”
Numa hesitated and quietly bit the inside of his cheek, before giving an apologetic shake of his head.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but she’s not this time. I’m actually just here myself to cheer Garrett on this time around since I’m his first Pokémon,” the Swampert explained. “He’s entering a team that he trained up after moving back to Unova, said that he wanted to give them a chance to shine.”
… Of course. Since after the whole incident with her evolution, of course things would just keep going wrong. Marl lowered her head with a disappointed sigh, when a series of red lights caught her eye. She turned and saw that all of a sudden, there was an entire group of Pokémon out alongside Garrett, which her own trainer was stopping to greet and size up.
“I think that that’s our cue to go over and say hi,” Eira said.
“Just as well,” Numa said. “I’m sure that you’ll have fun meeting the gang.”
Marl made her way over alongside her teammates and at once, the thing that took her aback about this ‘team from Unova’ was how strong it looked. Samurott, Eelektross, Lucario, Ferrothorn, Volcarona, Hydreigon… just how far had he gotten in whatever League was out in Unova?
A brief glance revealed the others were similarly surprised, with Rako in particular staring blankly ahead, in particular at the Samurott.
“Still think you’re be cut out for the tournament, Floatzel?” Jaki scoffed.
Garrett said something to the Samurott, who let out a grunt before unsheathing a blade and raising it up in the air with an audible rattle. The foreign Pokémon left the blade up to bask in a few impressed-sounding words from the other trainers present, as the color visibly drained from the Floatzel’s face.
“I… uh… probably need to squeeze in a little more training before trying to battle them.”
“Oh hey! You’ve got a Lucario, too!”
Much to Marl’s surprise, Aoi cut in front of her, walking up with a sauntering gait to Garrett’s Lucario. She circled about the stranger, before giving a teasing prod at his side.
“So, just what are Lucario from this ‘Unova’ like anyways? Are they all cute-looking like you?”
The other Lucario blinked before closing his eyes and flaring his own feelers. There was a moment’s pause when they fell, and his expression changed to a sheepish looking grin before he looked over at the Samurott on his team.
“Uhh… ¿eso es que le gusto, no, Miyamoto? Porque se siente como que le gusto.¹”
Aoi stiffened up in surprise and Marl couldn’t say she could fault her. What sort of response was that?
“Fenris, en serio. Piensa en conocer a estos Pokémon primero, antes de hacerte el de ideas románticas.²”
It dawned on Marl that the pair must’ve been speaking a different language. She supposed that she’d heard other Pokémon mention that ones from faraway lands couldn’t be understood, but it was still surprising to see Pokémon that looked so much like ones that she recognize sound so… different.
“I… didn’t quite catch that. Could you repeat things?”
“Don’t bother. They’re speaking Unovan. Or the Unovan that Pokémon from there speak,” Jaki scoffed. “You might as well be talking to a brick wall.”
“Or, you could just tell them a thing or two in their own language,” Numa countered.
Marl did a double-take at the Swampert as he walked over to the Lucario, before speaking up in that strange language with its fast and staccato rhythm. Partway through, a widening grin spread over the foreign Lucario’s face, as he held out a paw and his tail began to wag back and forth.
“¡Jo! ¡Lo sabía! ¡No esperes que sea suave contigo allá en el campo de batalla, dulzura!³”
Marl’s jaw flopped open as she stared at Numa. She hadn’t been able to make sense of anything those two had said, but…
“Wait, Numa, you can understand them?”
“You pick up a few things while traveling around,” the Swampert said, pawing at the back of his head. “The new ‘mons have done a bit of the same on their end, too. I’ll help introduce you all.”
Numa helped introduce them to each other afterwards taking turns. Some of Garrett’s Pokémon like his Samurott had names like ‘Miyamoto’ that felt like they’d have been right at home back home. Others like his Lucario had names like ‘Fenris’ that sounded like they had come from faraway places. Things went back and forth with greetings from both sides, until it came time for the Hydreigon to introduce herself:
“Mi nombre es Sazandora. Un gusto de conocerte, supongo, pero ¿vamos a comer algo ya? Un gusto sería comer algo ahora mismo.⁴”
Marl tilted her head with a puzzled frown. Maybe she was hearing things, but-
“... Wait, her name’s ‘Hydreigon’?” Aries asked.
“That’s… uh, a bit more on the nose than I was expecting from Garrett for her name, really,” Roy said.
“She’s… not quite the only Pokémon he’s named in that style before,” Numa explained. “Though to be fair, her name doesn’t mean ‘Hydreigon’ back in Unova and she apparently liked the sound of it, so…”
… So Marl wasn’t hearing things. She supposed that she’d heard that some trainers didn’t give names to the Pokémon they partnered with, but somehow Marl doubted this Pokémon even knew what she agreed to in the first place.
“Tch, more like she didn’t know any better,” she scoffed. “She’s lucky she didn’t wind up agreeing to some stupid name.”
The Hydreigon abruptly perked up to attention, as her eyes suddenly narrowed.
“... ¿Me acabas de llamar 'estúpida'?⁵”
Marl noticed alarmed looks come over Numa and his companions’ faces as it suddenly sank in that Garrett’s Hydreigon was staring at her. She blinked slowly, before curling her mouth into a sharp frown.
“Numa, what on earth is her problem?”
“I think there’s been a bit of miscommunication,” the Swampert said. “Give me a moment to try and clear things up.”
He turned to the Hydreigon and pulled her aside, speaking up in that strange, fast language the others did.
“Sazandora, tranquila. No dijo lo que parece que dijo.⁶”
“¡Numa, sé lo que oí! ¡Bien claro escuché que dijo 'baka'! Me dijiste específicamente que es lo que los Pokémon de estas regiones dicen para llamar a otro estúpido.⁷”
‘Stupid’ huh? So this Hydreigon had understood a couple of words she said and was getting bent out of shape? What was she, a hatchling?
“I’m sorry, are you stupid?” Marl harrumphed. “Or do Pokémon from your region just reflexively assume the worst when they don’t understand what others are saying?”
Numa’s eyes widened as the gathering suddenly grew quiet enough to hear a pin drop beyond hearing a faint tapping noise. Marl briefly noticed that Jaki was pecking at some loose popcorn on the pavement, when a sharp snarl filled her ears.
“¡De veras que me llamaste estúpida!⁸”
The Hydreigon fanned her wings out and flashed her fangs. That one didn’t go unnoticed, as the trainers whipped their heads around from their conversation, and the Samurott and Lucario were backpedaling alongside their other teammates.
“Ay, caramba.⁹”
“Y bueno, fue un placer conocerla.¹⁰”
Marl felt her heart skip a beat. Had the Hydreigon understood her? Even if she had, it wasn’t anything that was worth getting this upset about, was it. She looked back at her own teammates who similarly appeared on-edge. Roy went up to her and hurriedly tugged at her, or at least as much as a Blastoise could.
“... Marl, I think that you should apologize to her,” Roy whispered. “Now.”
Marl found herself backing away as she felt the Hydreigon’s hot breaths against her scales and saw her fangs. After a few paces backwards, she dug her claws into the pavement and stopped.
No, she was a Salamence. Even if her opponent was obviously strong, she was strong too. And after everything that had happened the past couple days, she wasn’t going to just take being bullied around by a complete stranger in front of her friends.
“Roy, it was just some words,” she protested. “She didn’t even understand most of what I said!”
“Marl, please. Just give an apology to Hydreigon and don’t pick a fight with her,” Numa insisted. “If you really just evolved, it’s not a fight that you can-”
She fanned her wings out and let a low growl come from her throat. She briefly saw movement coming from Calvin and Garrett’s direction, but didn’t pay much mind as she locked eyes with this ‘Hydreigon’ and bared her fangs.
“You know what? No,” she snarled. “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m not going to be bullied by some thin-hided-”
A trio of blue, fiery pulses cut her off and sent her tumbling back. The world spun around her as she heard her trainer and teammates crying out and hurried onto her feet as she briefly glimpsed nearby humans and Pokémon hurrying out of the way. There were scorch marks on her side’s scales and her breaths were ragged and uneven. That must have been a Dragon Pulse, but she’d never felt one that hurt like that before.
She tightened her claws against the pavement. No, she wouldn’t let her push her around like this. She was a Salamence now, a Pokémon whose mere cry was supposed to send other Pokémon fleeing with their tails between their legs in the wild.
And Spoink would fly before she just yielded and accepted getting pushed around like this.
“Grr! Fine!” she bellowed. “You want a fight so badly? I’ll give you one!”
Marl beat her wings and lunged forward. They weren’t as steady as she imagined they’d be, and she ignored her trainer’s cries in the background as dragonfire built on her claws. She lunged ahead, bringing it down in between the Hydreigon’s left and center heads. The Hydreigon let out a satisfying, pained bellow as Marl tumbled back with her, not noticing the red lights that missed the two…
Or the dragonfire that was wreathing the Hydreigon’s tail.
Something heavy and burning struck her in her underbelly and sent her flying. Marl felt something cold and hard strike the joint of her left wing. There was a sickening crack and it wrenched forward as she crashed to the ground on her side.
She bellowed in agony and tried to thrash only to freeze as the pain in her wing came back worse.
She’d felt a pain like this before when she was still a little Bagon. And right now, she felt every bit as helpless as she did back then.
“Marl!”
Marl felt claws latch onto her forelegs and pull her up. She briefly saw ‘Hydreigon’s form vanish into red light in the background as her teammates crowded around her. Her left wing was hanging limply and hurt when it moved even slightly.
Her vision started to grow bleary and she tried and failed to fight back a whine from her throat. If this pain was what it was, then she wasn’t going to be flying after this.
And she didn’t know when she would again.
“It’s- It’s going to be alright,” Roy insisted. “You’re going to be alright-”
Her trainer raised a Pokéball at her and tapped its center. Marl briefly saw the red flash overtake her, and then everything went black.
He could’ve called home sooner. Or paid for that phone service during the ferry ride. Or something.
Finally becoming a Salamence was the biggest day in the world for her, and she’d had to spend it cooped up in a cramped house just waiting.
When Marl roused from her sleep the following morning, she woke up to the simulated mountains inside her Pokéball that had been there since she was a little Bagon. She stretched and groggily brushed a wing against her face when she noticed dark shapes in her Pokéball’s simulated sky:
Of people and Pokémon all around her in some sort of line. It went ahead a little ways before clearing out where she saw a red flash and Roy materializing outside before the Blastoise lumbered off outside her field of view. A little while later, the same happened with Aries as an Ampharos passed. She saw Eira and Jaki do much the same later as she spotted the Marowak and Honchkrow heading off.
She finally saw her trainer’s hand come down on her Pokéball and her surroundings melted away in a flash of light. Marl blinked and let her eyes adjust as she saw she was in some sort of space covered by a concrete awning with colorful banners on the side—for this ‘Goldenrod Open’ they were all supposed to join.
“Next!”
The Salamence turned her head rightwards towards something that looked like a low-slung stage with a lined background with some of those human ‘computers’ set up on a desk in front of it, where a Farfetch’d alongside a human in a sporting uniform was standing and looking down at her. She felt a prod at her wing and saw Calvin, with his strangely hard-to-place face motioning forward and saying something. Maybe it was just morning grogginess but it took her a moment for it to occur to her that he wanted her on that stage.
She made her way forward and spotted Calvin handing off her Pokéball when the human motioned for a stop and the Farfetch’d suddenly piped up.
“That’s good enough, just stay there and stand as upright as you normally would for a moment,” the Farfetch’d said.
Marl stopped and waited as the humans at the computers punched a few keys and looked down at monitors that she couldn’t see. After a moment, they motioned back at the Farfetch’d and her trainer as they went up and circled around and seemed to eye her weirdly closely, before the Farfetch’d trainer motioned forward.
“You’re good, you can get off the scale now,” the Farfetch’d said. “Next!”
Marl made her way off the platform and down a small ramp on the opposite side. That stage that she was on was a scale? Like that little pad thing that Calvin’s parents kept back home in their house? Her trainer went up to her and tugged at her to come along. She brushed him away, since she still wasn’t happy over him missing her evolution, but curiosity couldn’t help but get the better of her.
“What on earth was that, about?”
“It’s an inspection to make sure that there’s no obvious discrepancies with the information logged by your Pokéball and that you’re not secretly hiding anything that would give an unfair advantage,” a yipping voice said from behind.
Marl craned her head back to the scale and the lined background, which suddenly occurred to her must’ve been a height chart, when that Lucario she’d briefly seen in the Pokécenter the other day stepped up. ‘Aoi’, she was pretty sure. She didn’t remember Calvin having any additional Pokémon join his team lately, much less something as uncommon as a Lucario, so…
“... Who are you anyways?”
“What, my species?” Aoi replied. “I’m a Lucario. I get that we’re not exactly common encounters in the wilds of these regions anymore, but-”
“No, I know that part, but who are you?” Marl replied. “Since Calvin never trained a Lucario, and I’d think I’d notice if he started with how long we’ve been together.”
There was some chatter from the computers as some text and images flickered on the screens, when the Lucario twitched her feelers and held her head at a tilt.
“The ‘Field Biology’ course your trainer’s in? Ring any bells?”
Right, that course that sometimes took Calvin out of his college and into the wilds. Even if she could’ve sworn that it was supposed to be some student-led course that Calvin had apparently helped started teaching that wasn’t as serious as the others he’d taken. She knew that there were a few cases of Pokémon being temporarily assigned for outings, but…
“I was there on and off,” she said. “My trainer didn’t have a lot of space in his dorm room and normally rotated me and my teammates between there and his normal home.”
“... Guess we haven’t met all that much, but the point is that I basically got assigned to tag along with your trainer to go out in the field and go to study the behavior of Pokémon like me in the wilds. It’s apparently part of some initiative to help set up some ‘Safari Zone’ in the south of this region based on the one back in Hoenn.”
The human and the Farfetch’d called the Lucario along as she made her way down the ramp. Marl supposed that explained where the Lucario came from, but…
“That doesn’t explain why you’re here,” she said. “What on earth does a tournament have to do with a ‘Field Biology’ course?”
“I mean, Calvin needed a sixth Pokémon for this tournament, he talked the instructors of his course into agreeing that it’d help gather data about Lucario, since that was apparently one of the species being considered for that Safari Zone,” Aoi said, giving a bemused smile back in reply. “I wanted a chance to get to do battle with more than wilds in the tall grass for once. So it was kinda a win-win situation for everyone involved.”
Was that normal for human college classes? Or was that a student-led class sort of thing? Aoi gave a bemused chuckle, before brushing at the feelers on her head.
“Who knows? If I wind up having fun, I might try and stick around your team for a while,” the Lucario said. “It’s not that rare for Pokémon from my program to wind up staying with a trainer as part of long-term research.”
Marl blinked for a moment as the rest of her teammates joined along. It was a bit weird having to share a team with someone that she didn’t really know, but she supposed that everyone else had gone through that at some point as part of being trained, so-
“Floatzel, what do you think you’re doing?”
Marl turned her head back towards the scale as the Floatzel from the day before, sauntered onto the scale in front of the Farfetch’d and the onlooking humans. He pumped an arm, and spun his tails briefly with a toothy grin.
“Getting registered as part of the team,” the Floatzel replied. “Don’t think that just because I’m short that I can’t throw down with the best of them!”
There was a noticeable pause, before Aoi stepped over towards the scale and looked up. Her feelers twitched and Marl briefly felt some sort of sensation roll off in the direction of the Lucario.
Was that annoyance?
“Rako, this tournament is for teams of six.”
“Yeah, and?” the Floatzel retorted. “There’s nothing keeping trainers from having extra teammates, right?”
From the unamused expressions Roy and a couple of her other teammates had, Marl guessed that that probably had something to do with why he’d stowed away in Calvin’s luggage.
“Rako, you’re literally a field service ‘mon!” the Lucario snapped. “Half the Pokémon joining this tournament would probably be able to eat you for lunch!”
“Look, I’m not a pushover, alright? Though you meant that ‘eat me’ part figuratively, right?”
“I’m sorry, he’s a what now?”
A loud sigh turned Marl’s attention off toward her other teammates, as Roy shook his head and raised a claw to his temple.
“Basically, he’s another Pokémon from the same Pokémon as Aoi helps trainers and their teams get around while going out in the field,” the Blastoise explained. “So he’s skilled at crossing and getting past obstacles. Even if I don’t think that’d help him get far into a more proper tournament like this.”
A few looks went among the others, before Eira raised her bone with a disbelieving tilt of her head.
“I’m sorry, but how’d he get here again?” the Marowak asked.
“He was supposed to join us after the tournament for a field assignment,” Aries explained. “But he wound up inviting himself and sneaking his Pokéball into Calvin’s bag.”
“Ow! Ow! Okay! I’m going!”
Marl looked back towards the scale where there was Rako… getting dragged along towards them flailing by Aoi by his head crest. Marl beat her wings and shot an askew glance back at her Blastoise teammate.
“These two do this a lot, don’t they?” she asked.
“More than I’d care to admit,” the Blastoise sighed.
Partway over, Calvin called out to the pair and the Lucario let go. The Floatzel instinctively bolted over and hid behind the trainer with the unplaceable face, pawing at his head crest as Calvin’s hand went for a Pokéball on a belt.
“Gah! I hope those friends of your trainer aren’t a bunch of pills like you!” the Floatzel piped.
A flash of red light followed as the Floatzel was recalled, and then the Lucario that dragged him over. Calvin started to work through the other Pokémon on the team, as something about the Floatzel’s whining stuck with her.
“Wait, ‘friends’? From college?”
“Not quite,” Roy replied. “You remember Garrett? That Unovan exchange student from back in high school?”
Marl blinked as her mouth briefly fell open in reply.
“Numa and Ryuko’s trainer? They’re here, too?”
A wave of memories came back to Marl in a flash. Garrett was a trainer who came from a faraway land whose speech carried a peculiar sound to it and with skin and hair that looked very different from what the humans around Hoenn normally looked like. He’d apparently picked up a Mudkip—Numa, as Garrett apparently named him—from a starter program and gotten very far into the Hoenn League, enough so that she distinctly remembered times when Calvin was quietly jealous about it.
As tough and as quickly as Numa evolved into a Swampert back then, he had been a close friend. But closer still was Ryuko, the Salamence Garrett had wound up training. Who Marl had both respected and been quietly envious of how quickly she’d managed to evolve. Marl remembered that Ryuko was always happy to take her out on flights and she learned a lot from her, and Calvin had learned things like how to scratch at her chin to lift her mood from Garrett’s experience.
“How on earth did they get all the way out here in Johto of all places?” she asked.
“Garrett apparently knows one of Calvin’s friends through that ‘internet’ thing that lives in this region. That’s how we got the invite to come and enter this tournament in the first place,” the Blastoise explained. “I’m not fully sure what to expect since it’s been a few years since we last met, but we were planning to meet at the square outside after this to catch up.”
Calvin abruptly called Roy’s name as he and Marl turned and saw their trainer raise a Pokéball at the Blastoise. There was still so much to take in all at once, but in spite of it all, Roy cracked a small smile at her.
“We’ll talk more when we get there, but I’m sure that it’ll be fun.”
The square Roy mentioned was a mostly-paved space just west of the stadium hemmed in by a river passing by, which from what her teammates said was apparently more commonly used to host something called a ‘Pokéthalon’. Aside from some planters and a couple stands at the center and light poles along the edge, it seemed like there wasn’t a whole lot there to the place.
Or at least not on its own. Calvin had said that the square was relatively quiet at the moment, but even still there were still no shortage of humans and their Pokémon about even before he sent out the rest of her teammates. As they went along, Marl noticed that a number of smaller Pokémon and even some of their trainers would abruptly give her a berth. She wasn’t really sure if she was annoyed or relieved by that. Maybe that lingering frustration over Calvin missing out on her evolution was carrying over to her body language.
It didn’t take long before they found Garrett. Sure enough, Numa was out by his side, though there was another human with a Nidorino beside him that she didn’t recognize. For a brief moment, she wondered if maybe they’d run into some sort of doppleganger, only for the trainers’ words to start carrying along in the air.
And at once, Aoi and Rako stiffened up and traded puzzled looks with each other.
“Wait, what’s up with those humans?” the Floatzel asked. “I know that their language is an arrhythmic mess, but I can’t make sense of anything they’re saying there.”
Aoi flared her feelers and closed her eyes in focus briefly. Marl briefly raised a brow before the Lucario’s feelers fell and she opened her eyes.
“They seem to be talking about past events and getting nostalgic about it, but that’s just based on their feelings,” the Lucario said. “I can’t tell what they’re saying at all just from their voices.”
Right, Lucario had that ‘aura’ thing that they could sense. Marl supposed that would help Aoi get an idea of what was going on, even if there was a much simpler explanation for why she didn’t recognize anything of what they were saying. A cawing scoff reached her ears, as she turned and saw Jaki ruffling his feathers and giving an unimpressed frown.
“... You two don’t get around much, do you?” the Honchkrow scoffed. “Those two humans are speaking Unovan.”
The explanation seemed to catch the two aback and left them blinking. There was a moment’s quiet, before Jaki turned his head and rolled his eyes.
“You know, a completely different human language from across the sea?” Jaki asked. “What, did you expect humans would all speak the same language everywhere in the world?”
“I mean, they do it across regions here,” Rako retorted. “They’re mostly separated by the sea, so…”
“Wait, Marl? Is that you?”
Marl looked up and saw that Garrett and the Nidorino trainer were now much closer. The Swampert was ahead of the two as a moment of awed surprise lingered on his face. There was a moment of mutual, incredulous excitement as the Swampert’s dumbfounded expression gave way to a growing grin, as he reared up and held a hand out in greeting.
“Hah! You’ve really grown strong since we’ve last met!” the Swampert chuckled. “You and Calvin were over the moon when you evolved!”
And just as quick as it came, Marl’s mood came crashing back down to earth. She felt her mouth curl down and turned aside with a bitter growl under her breath.
“I spent it at home with Eira and Calvin’s parents. He missed it by two days and he just saw it for the first time yesterday.”
She couldn’t see Numa’s reaction, but just from the pregnant silence and the way he was awkwardly shuffling his limbs from the corner of her vision, she supposed that she must have ruined the mood.
“Oh. Uh… That’s really… Er… Wait, how on earth did that even happen?”
“It’s a long story that we don’t need to get into right now,” Eira replied. “Though I take it that Garrett came here to enter the tournament?”
“Of course!” Numa replied. “Garrett hasn’t exactly gotten less skilled as a trainer since high school, so of course he was going to show off how far he’s come!”
Marl turned back towards the Swampert. Calvin and Garrett were talking with each other and the Nidorino trainer. She couldn’t make out what they were saying in Unovan since she hadn’t picked up on much of it while Garrett was around in high school. From what she could make out, the Nidorino trainer was apparently called ‘Alberi’ and the Nidorino was Rinaldo and that they’d come along with Garrett for a reason she couldn’t pick up on.
Though if Garrett was here to show off his prowess as a trainer, then did that mean that the rest of Numa’s teammates were here too?
“Is Ryuko here with you?” she asked. “Since it’d be nice to catch up with her a bit…”
Numa hesitated and quietly bit the inside of his cheek, before giving an apologetic shake of his head.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but she’s not this time. I’m actually just here myself to cheer Garrett on this time around since I’m his first Pokémon,” the Swampert explained. “He’s entering a team that he trained up after moving back to Unova, said that he wanted to give them a chance to shine.”
… Of course. Since after the whole incident with her evolution, of course things would just keep going wrong. Marl lowered her head with a disappointed sigh, when a series of red lights caught her eye. She turned and saw that all of a sudden, there was an entire group of Pokémon out alongside Garrett, which her own trainer was stopping to greet and size up.
“I think that that’s our cue to go over and say hi,” Eira said.
“Just as well,” Numa said. “I’m sure that you’ll have fun meeting the gang.”
Marl made her way over alongside her teammates and at once, the thing that took her aback about this ‘team from Unova’ was how strong it looked. Samurott, Eelektross, Lucario, Ferrothorn, Volcarona, Hydreigon… just how far had he gotten in whatever League was out in Unova?
A brief glance revealed the others were similarly surprised, with Rako in particular staring blankly ahead, in particular at the Samurott.
“Still think you’re be cut out for the tournament, Floatzel?” Jaki scoffed.
Garrett said something to the Samurott, who let out a grunt before unsheathing a blade and raising it up in the air with an audible rattle. The foreign Pokémon left the blade up to bask in a few impressed-sounding words from the other trainers present, as the color visibly drained from the Floatzel’s face.
“I… uh… probably need to squeeze in a little more training before trying to battle them.”
“Oh hey! You’ve got a Lucario, too!”
Much to Marl’s surprise, Aoi cut in front of her, walking up with a sauntering gait to Garrett’s Lucario. She circled about the stranger, before giving a teasing prod at his side.
“So, just what are Lucario from this ‘Unova’ like anyways? Are they all cute-looking like you?”
The other Lucario blinked before closing his eyes and flaring his own feelers. There was a moment’s pause when they fell, and his expression changed to a sheepish looking grin before he looked over at the Samurott on his team.
“Uhh… ¿eso es que le gusto, no, Miyamoto? Porque se siente como que le gusto.¹”
Aoi stiffened up in surprise and Marl couldn’t say she could fault her. What sort of response was that?
“Fenris, en serio. Piensa en conocer a estos Pokémon primero, antes de hacerte el de ideas románticas.²”
It dawned on Marl that the pair must’ve been speaking a different language. She supposed that she’d heard other Pokémon mention that ones from faraway lands couldn’t be understood, but it was still surprising to see Pokémon that looked so much like ones that she recognize sound so… different.
“I… didn’t quite catch that. Could you repeat things?”
“Don’t bother. They’re speaking Unovan. Or the Unovan that Pokémon from there speak,” Jaki scoffed. “You might as well be talking to a brick wall.”
“Or, you could just tell them a thing or two in their own language,” Numa countered.
Marl did a double-take at the Swampert as he walked over to the Lucario, before speaking up in that strange language with its fast and staccato rhythm. Partway through, a widening grin spread over the foreign Lucario’s face, as he held out a paw and his tail began to wag back and forth.
“¡Jo! ¡Lo sabía! ¡No esperes que sea suave contigo allá en el campo de batalla, dulzura!³”
Marl’s jaw flopped open as she stared at Numa. She hadn’t been able to make sense of anything those two had said, but…
“Wait, Numa, you can understand them?”
“You pick up a few things while traveling around,” the Swampert said, pawing at the back of his head. “The new ‘mons have done a bit of the same on their end, too. I’ll help introduce you all.”
Numa helped introduce them to each other afterwards taking turns. Some of Garrett’s Pokémon like his Samurott had names like ‘Miyamoto’ that felt like they’d have been right at home back home. Others like his Lucario had names like ‘Fenris’ that sounded like they had come from faraway places. Things went back and forth with greetings from both sides, until it came time for the Hydreigon to introduce herself:
“Mi nombre es Sazandora. Un gusto de conocerte, supongo, pero ¿vamos a comer algo ya? Un gusto sería comer algo ahora mismo.⁴”
Marl tilted her head with a puzzled frown. Maybe she was hearing things, but-
“... Wait, her name’s ‘Hydreigon’?” Aries asked.
“That’s… uh, a bit more on the nose than I was expecting from Garrett for her name, really,” Roy said.
“She’s… not quite the only Pokémon he’s named in that style before,” Numa explained. “Though to be fair, her name doesn’t mean ‘Hydreigon’ back in Unova and she apparently liked the sound of it, so…”
… So Marl wasn’t hearing things. She supposed that she’d heard that some trainers didn’t give names to the Pokémon they partnered with, but somehow Marl doubted this Pokémon even knew what she agreed to in the first place.
“Tch, more like she didn’t know any better,” she scoffed. “She’s lucky she didn’t wind up agreeing to some stupid name.”
The Hydreigon abruptly perked up to attention, as her eyes suddenly narrowed.
“... ¿Me acabas de llamar 'estúpida'?⁵”
Marl noticed alarmed looks come over Numa and his companions’ faces as it suddenly sank in that Garrett’s Hydreigon was staring at her. She blinked slowly, before curling her mouth into a sharp frown.
“Numa, what on earth is her problem?”
“I think there’s been a bit of miscommunication,” the Swampert said. “Give me a moment to try and clear things up.”
He turned to the Hydreigon and pulled her aside, speaking up in that strange, fast language the others did.
“Sazandora, tranquila. No dijo lo que parece que dijo.⁶”
“¡Numa, sé lo que oí! ¡Bien claro escuché que dijo 'baka'! Me dijiste específicamente que es lo que los Pokémon de estas regiones dicen para llamar a otro estúpido.⁷”
‘Stupid’ huh? So this Hydreigon had understood a couple of words she said and was getting bent out of shape? What was she, a hatchling?
“I’m sorry, are you stupid?” Marl harrumphed. “Or do Pokémon from your region just reflexively assume the worst when they don’t understand what others are saying?”
Numa’s eyes widened as the gathering suddenly grew quiet enough to hear a pin drop beyond hearing a faint tapping noise. Marl briefly noticed that Jaki was pecking at some loose popcorn on the pavement, when a sharp snarl filled her ears.
“¡De veras que me llamaste estúpida!⁸”
The Hydreigon fanned her wings out and flashed her fangs. That one didn’t go unnoticed, as the trainers whipped their heads around from their conversation, and the Samurott and Lucario were backpedaling alongside their other teammates.
“Ay, caramba.⁹”
“Y bueno, fue un placer conocerla.¹⁰”
Marl felt her heart skip a beat. Had the Hydreigon understood her? Even if she had, it wasn’t anything that was worth getting this upset about, was it. She looked back at her own teammates who similarly appeared on-edge. Roy went up to her and hurriedly tugged at her, or at least as much as a Blastoise could.
“... Marl, I think that you should apologize to her,” Roy whispered. “Now.”
Marl found herself backing away as she felt the Hydreigon’s hot breaths against her scales and saw her fangs. After a few paces backwards, she dug her claws into the pavement and stopped.
No, she was a Salamence. Even if her opponent was obviously strong, she was strong too. And after everything that had happened the past couple days, she wasn’t going to just take being bullied around by a complete stranger in front of her friends.
“Roy, it was just some words,” she protested. “She didn’t even understand most of what I said!”
“Marl, please. Just give an apology to Hydreigon and don’t pick a fight with her,” Numa insisted. “If you really just evolved, it’s not a fight that you can-”
She fanned her wings out and let a low growl come from her throat. She briefly saw movement coming from Calvin and Garrett’s direction, but didn’t pay much mind as she locked eyes with this ‘Hydreigon’ and bared her fangs.
“You know what? No,” she snarled. “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m not going to be bullied by some thin-hided-”
A trio of blue, fiery pulses cut her off and sent her tumbling back. The world spun around her as she heard her trainer and teammates crying out and hurried onto her feet as she briefly glimpsed nearby humans and Pokémon hurrying out of the way. There were scorch marks on her side’s scales and her breaths were ragged and uneven. That must have been a Dragon Pulse, but she’d never felt one that hurt like that before.
She tightened her claws against the pavement. No, she wouldn’t let her push her around like this. She was a Salamence now, a Pokémon whose mere cry was supposed to send other Pokémon fleeing with their tails between their legs in the wild.
And Spoink would fly before she just yielded and accepted getting pushed around like this.
“Grr! Fine!” she bellowed. “You want a fight so badly? I’ll give you one!”
Marl beat her wings and lunged forward. They weren’t as steady as she imagined they’d be, and she ignored her trainer’s cries in the background as dragonfire built on her claws. She lunged ahead, bringing it down in between the Hydreigon’s left and center heads. The Hydreigon let out a satisfying, pained bellow as Marl tumbled back with her, not noticing the red lights that missed the two…
Or the dragonfire that was wreathing the Hydreigon’s tail.
Something heavy and burning struck her in her underbelly and sent her flying. Marl felt something cold and hard strike the joint of her left wing. There was a sickening crack and it wrenched forward as she crashed to the ground on her side.
She bellowed in agony and tried to thrash only to freeze as the pain in her wing came back worse.
She’d felt a pain like this before when she was still a little Bagon. And right now, she felt every bit as helpless as she did back then.
“Marl!”
Marl felt claws latch onto her forelegs and pull her up. She briefly saw ‘Hydreigon’s form vanish into red light in the background as her teammates crowded around her. Her left wing was hanging limply and hurt when it moved even slightly.
Her vision started to grow bleary and she tried and failed to fight back a whine from her throat. If this pain was what it was, then she wasn’t going to be flying after this.
And she didn’t know when she would again.
“It’s- It’s going to be alright,” Roy insisted. “You’re going to be alright-”
Her trainer raised a Pokéball at her and tapped its center. Marl briefly saw the red flash overtake her, and then everything went black.
1. “Uh, this is about her liking me, right Miyamoto? Because it feels like she likes me.”
2. "Fenris, really. Ponder getting to know these Pokémon before fancying yourself the romantic one."
3. "Ha! I knew it! Just don't expect me to go easy out there on the battlefield, pretty!"
4. "My name is Sazandora. Pleased to meet you I guess, but are we going to eat soon? I'd be more pleased to eat right now."
5. "Did you just call me 'stupid'?"
6. "Sazandora, easy. She did not say what it looks like she did."
7. "Numa, I know what I heard! I clearly heard she said 'baka'! You told me specifically what Pokémon from these regions say to call another stupid.”
8. "You actually called me stupid!"
9. "Oh, golly.”
10. "Oh well, it was nice having met her."
2. "Fenris, really. Ponder getting to know these Pokémon before fancying yourself the romantic one."
3. "Ha! I knew it! Just don't expect me to go easy out there on the battlefield, pretty!"
4. "My name is Sazandora. Pleased to meet you I guess, but are we going to eat soon? I'd be more pleased to eat right now."
5. "Did you just call me 'stupid'?"
6. "Sazandora, easy. She did not say what it looks like she did."
7. "Numa, I know what I heard! I clearly heard she said 'baka'! You told me specifically what Pokémon from these regions say to call another stupid.”
8. "You actually called me stupid!"
9. "Oh, golly.”
10. "Oh well, it was nice having met her."
It wasn’t the first time that Marl remembered blacking out after being recalled to her Pokéball in the past. It was the telltale sign of medical stasis, that the Pokéball determined it was best to leave its occupant in limbo until their wounds could be treated. It apparently kicked in when Pokémon were returned to their Pokéballs fainted, and like the time when she’d broken her leg jumping from the bedroom window.
She didn’t realize what had happened until she woke up in the backroom of a Pokécenter. Apparently there was one on-site at the stadium in case anything happened to the Pokémon who participated in events there. It wasn’t all that different from the backrooms of Pokécenters that she’d seen in the past: the same beds, the same outfits on the human staff working alongside the same Chansey.
And much as she’d feared when the pain came back to her wing, it had been broken. Everything had gone by in a dull blur afterwards: seeing the black-and-white ‘X-ray’ of the joint where the bones that held up her left wing’s membrane were, the pained yelps she choked back as the medics splinted it to keep it from moving, and the procession of her teammates who came to cheer her up alongside her trainer in a room that was too small to hold them all unlike the last time she’d been a moment like this back when she was little.
Before she knew it, it was just her laying on a set of bedding spread out and her trainer uneasily sitting beside her and patting at her foreleg. Marl heard slow, lumbering footsteps come towards her and looked up to see Roy beside her and her trainer, looking down with his teeth set on edge.
“Hey, are you doing alright?”
Marl turned her head away after the words reached her ears. She knew that her teammate had surely meant well, but…
“Roy, my wing’s broken. Of course I’m not doing alright.”
A noticeable pause followed afterwards, before Roy sighed and spoke up again.
“Yeah, I kinda figured,” he said. “I suppose that Numa’s warning didn’t come from nowhere, huh?”
Marl whirled her head around and narrowed her eyes, forcefully enough that Calvin stumbled back from her. Was Roy seriously insinuating that this was somehow her fault?!
“Roy, that Hydreigon attacked me first!”
“Marl.”
“I didn’t even start it! She was-!”
“Marl.”
The Salamence bit her tongue and caught herself. That was the sort of tone of voice that Roy took with her whenever she was in trouble. She hesitated and looked up, but instead of the scowl or annoyed expression she was expecting, Roy looked tired. He looked aside, pawing at his shoulder with a low sigh.
“It doesn’t matter at this point, Marl. The damage is already done,” he said. “It’s nothing permanent, but it’ll still take time to heal.”
Marl lowered her head and slunk against her bedding. She’d been a Salamence for all of three days and her dream of flying had been snatched away from her. She almost wished that it’d been one of her legs that she smashed into the lightpole and that she’d broken it again.
At least she’d still have been able to fly that way…
“Garrett felt guilty over not being able to recall… er… ‘Hydreigon’ in time and so he’s covering the cost of the Potions and other materials needed to help you recover.”
“Yay me, I guess.”
Calvin hesitated a moment at her side and scratched under her chin to turn his attention up. Much of human tongue was still a mystery to her even after the years she’d spent growing up alongside them, but she caught that he was saying something about the tournament and about going home.
Her breath caught for a moment as she turned to Roy. The Blastoise seemed visibly hesitant, before he spoke up after their trainer.
“I suppose that it should go without saying that you can’t go battling in this condition,” Roy said. “Calvin pulled you from the team roster for the tournament about an hour ago and is trying to line up a replacement.”
Marl’s mouth hung open. She turned to the young man with the unplaceable face and as her vision began to turn bleary. It wasn’t that anything that Roy said was wrong, but after everything that happened… Calvin was just going to push her aside?
“Y-You’re really going to send me back home? L-Like thi-?”
She felt a stroke at her neck as her trainer spoke soothing words in his language. That things would be okay, that she’d be better soon enough. From the side, Roy listened in briefly, before waiting for their trainer to fall silent before speaking.
“He considered it, but no. Or at least not if it’s not what you want,” Roy explained. “In the end, your wing needs someone to observe it and treat it as it heals, and there’s nothing saying that it can’t be done here.”
Roy looked at the man with the unplaceable face as the Blastoise. The Water-type listened and nodded along before the man got up, Roy took his place and raised out a claw to her.
“Calvin still wanted to make good on his promise of spending more time with you. And there should be plenty of time whenever he’s not battling or preparing for the next match,” he explained. “Is that something you’d like? Those friends that Garrett came here with offered to help keep an eye on you when that’s not possible.”
Marl bit the inside of her cheek and looked aside. She didn’t want to just go back to laying around a room alone back at the house. Not when she could barely fit through the hallways after evolving. Not now...
“I guess… but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do right now,” she said. “All I’d be able to do is just sit around. I can’t even work on my flying with my wing in this state…”
“Then stay around with us,” Roy insisted. “I’m sure that there’s things that can be done for fun around the stadium.”
The Blastoise paused, and pawed at the back of his head.
“And if you change your mind about wanting to be here… just let us know, okay?”
Marl hung her head, as her words came out in a defeated croak.
“Okay…”
Marl had trouble sleeping that night, partly because having a limb broken meant having to stay outside of her Pokéball in Calvin’s cramped room in the Pokécenter taking up most of the floor space beside the bed—her wound wouldn’t heal properly while in stasis, it’d been explained to her. Partly because she kept revisiting all the things that had gone wrong in the past few days in her dreams.
Waking up, putting on the morning dose of Potion on her splinted wing, and making their way back to the stadium did little to lift her mood. The medical stasis meant that when she had to go back in her Pokéball as part of the bus trip, that she couldn’t see or sense anything from outside like she normally could. Her next memory was coming out in front of the entrance where they met up with Garrett, Alberi, and a friend of Calvin’s from the internet who’d initially looped them into the tournament—a man with brown hair and a Tropius who was apparently called ‘Sessen’.
The latter two led her off along with that Floatzel who snuck along with her trainer. The whole time, she kept noticing others, both humans and Pokémon staring at her. At the left wing that based on how it felt surely looked swollen, and that ugly splint that was holding it stiff and in place.
Before long, they were in an underground room lined with lockers, kinda like the ones that were around in Calvin’s high school, or the sports facilities in Calvin’s college. There were other trainers with their Pokémon out, and even here she was getting occasional looks.
“So… uh… why am I not with the rest of the team again?”
And of course, there was that stupid Floatzel who was still pouting and grumbling about not getting his big break to join Calvin’s team. As if Marl needed more things to make her feel pathetic and useless right now. She didn’t bother turning to bare her teeth, when she saw Sessen’s Tropius step forward and lean in on him with a piercing glare.
“Because you’re not joining,” she said. “Your trainer needed a flier to fill in for your teammate and unless if you’re suddenly going to sprout wings, you might as well do your part trying to help her settle in.”
Rako shut up after that, not that it did much to get Marl’s mind off the pain in her left wing. She heard plodding footsteps and look up to see Sessen’s Tropius looking down at her and giving a wave of her wings.
“Hi, it’s ‘Bushel’. I know that things got cut short a bit yesterday, but my trainer’s a friend of yours and he asked us to keep an eye on you and your wing whenever the tournament kept him from being able to do so on his own.”
Marl looked up and at the Tropius’ waving wings, and then off at her own before hanging her head. Bushel hesitated a moment, before catching her wings and shaking her head with a low sigh.
“Right, I probably should’ve given a different greeting to you than that,” she murmured. “I know that you’re probably not doing well right now since flying means a lot to Salamence like you, but if there’s anything you need, don’t be afraid to let us know.”
… This was a mistake. She should’ve just gone home last night. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about others seeing her like this…
“Hey, what’s that?”
Rako raised a paw and pointed up as Bushel turned her head to follow and Marl briefly did as well. It was a boxy television that had been mounted to the ceiling with a pair of humans seated in front of large windows overlooking a field and crowded stands. The same field that was just outside this locker room.
“It’s what humans call a ‘pre-show’,” Bushel explained. “Most of it’s just a bunch of talking heads to me and goes over my head, but humans into these tournaments tend to like them.”
Was that really what a pre-show was? It looked a lot more boring than she’d have expected from the way that humans would start watching tournaments and other sporting events earlier to catch them. The humans were going on about the tournament and some ‘opening ceremony’ that would start in a few minutes, which prompted Rako to tilt his head at the sight.
“Sounds like Calvin’s cutting it a bit close,” Rako said to himself. “Whelp, if he didn’t find anyone to fill in for the team guess that means that it’s my turn to-”
“Hey! We’re back!”
That was Numa’s voice. Marl got up and looked in the direction of the entrance into the locker room from the stadium, where there was the Swampert along with Garrett hurrying up, with Calvin doing much the same. He took a moment to let Roy out of his Pokéball and stretch—a sign that the Blastoise hadn’t been able to keep up—while he fetched another Pokéball from his bag. A blue-and-white one with red ridges that she hadn’t seen before.
“It took a little wrangling, but there was a Rental Pokémon stand here,” Numa said. “And we were able to line up a sixth Pokémon for your trainer’s team so he won’t have to dro-!”
“Numa.”
Marl’s face sagged as Roy pointed her out and the Swampert turned over to her and abruptly bit her tongue. A loud groan turned her attention rightward, where there was Rako, folding his arms and turning his snout up with a low grumble.
“A Rental Pokémon? Seriously? There’s no way that I couldn’t have-!”
There was a flash of red as Calvin let a Pokémon out from inside the Great Ball, but before Marl could see what the Pokémon, a purple blur shot forward towards Rako. It knocked him over with a yelp, where she whirled around and saw Rako flat on his back and staring up wide-eyed at a Gliscor perched on top of him and looking down.
“Oh, so you’re on that team I’m joining!” he cheered. “Hey there! My name’s Mathias, and-!”
“Eyaaah! Get him off! Get him off!”
The Floatzel let out a loud noise that Marl swore sounded not too different from a stuck Spoink from how loud and shrill it was and wrenched himself free. He beelined behind Roy’s shell and peeked out before from behind it, as the Gliscor looked back with a sour frown.
“Hey! What’s the big deal?” the Gliscor protested. “Being affectionate and putting a smile on the teams I partner up with is part of my job too, you know!
“That doesn’t work when you shove your fangs in my face!” the Floatzel snapped.
“Rako actually won’t be fighting on the team,” Roy explained. “He’s playing an observing role along with our friends. Since… we kinda needed to keep an eye on our normal flier.”
Marl’s breathing grew uneven as her head began to spin. Calvin really was replacing her, why on earth would he just rub it in like this? She turned but much to her surprise, the Gliscor’s face didn’t look satisfied at all. He played briefly with his claws, before looking aside with an uneasy murmur.
“Oh… I’m really sorry to hear that,” he said. “But don’t worry! I’m plenty good at battling! I can hold my weight until you get bet-!”
“Just leave me alone.”
Marl turned away with a low growl and looked away, blinking her eyes long and hard. There was an awkward silence as her trainer came up to her and tried to scratch at her chin, but between the pain in her wing and knowing that she was just being replaced, it just didn’t do anything for her mood.
Something came over the other humans and Pokémon in the locker room started getting up. Marl looked over and saw Numa doing much the same as Garrett sent out that Samurott of his. The Swampert looked over towards her and Rako, and pawed at his shoulder.
“The opening ceremony’s about to start and you need to clear out as visitors. I don’t know why the humans here are so hung up about it, but it’s apparently policy.”
Calvin let go and stepped away as Marl looked on blankly. She felt a nudge at her side, and saw Bushel looking over at her.
“Sessen’s place in the stands isn’t that far away, will you be alright going there, Marl?”
“I’ll be fine.”
The words didn’t sound convincing even to her own ears as she felt a pit in her stomach. Sessen pointed a Pokéball at Rako and recalled him as Garrett did much the same with Numa, leaving Marl to follow after Bushel as she followed her trainer out of the locker room.
The whole time, she found herself trying to blink back tears welling up in her eyes.
She didn’t realize what had happened until she woke up in the backroom of a Pokécenter. Apparently there was one on-site at the stadium in case anything happened to the Pokémon who participated in events there. It wasn’t all that different from the backrooms of Pokécenters that she’d seen in the past: the same beds, the same outfits on the human staff working alongside the same Chansey.
And much as she’d feared when the pain came back to her wing, it had been broken. Everything had gone by in a dull blur afterwards: seeing the black-and-white ‘X-ray’ of the joint where the bones that held up her left wing’s membrane were, the pained yelps she choked back as the medics splinted it to keep it from moving, and the procession of her teammates who came to cheer her up alongside her trainer in a room that was too small to hold them all unlike the last time she’d been a moment like this back when she was little.
Before she knew it, it was just her laying on a set of bedding spread out and her trainer uneasily sitting beside her and patting at her foreleg. Marl heard slow, lumbering footsteps come towards her and looked up to see Roy beside her and her trainer, looking down with his teeth set on edge.
“Hey, are you doing alright?”
Marl turned her head away after the words reached her ears. She knew that her teammate had surely meant well, but…
“Roy, my wing’s broken. Of course I’m not doing alright.”
A noticeable pause followed afterwards, before Roy sighed and spoke up again.
“Yeah, I kinda figured,” he said. “I suppose that Numa’s warning didn’t come from nowhere, huh?”
Marl whirled her head around and narrowed her eyes, forcefully enough that Calvin stumbled back from her. Was Roy seriously insinuating that this was somehow her fault?!
“Roy, that Hydreigon attacked me first!”
“Marl.”
“I didn’t even start it! She was-!”
“Marl.”
The Salamence bit her tongue and caught herself. That was the sort of tone of voice that Roy took with her whenever she was in trouble. She hesitated and looked up, but instead of the scowl or annoyed expression she was expecting, Roy looked tired. He looked aside, pawing at his shoulder with a low sigh.
“It doesn’t matter at this point, Marl. The damage is already done,” he said. “It’s nothing permanent, but it’ll still take time to heal.”
Marl lowered her head and slunk against her bedding. She’d been a Salamence for all of three days and her dream of flying had been snatched away from her. She almost wished that it’d been one of her legs that she smashed into the lightpole and that she’d broken it again.
At least she’d still have been able to fly that way…
“Garrett felt guilty over not being able to recall… er… ‘Hydreigon’ in time and so he’s covering the cost of the Potions and other materials needed to help you recover.”
“Yay me, I guess.”
Calvin hesitated a moment at her side and scratched under her chin to turn his attention up. Much of human tongue was still a mystery to her even after the years she’d spent growing up alongside them, but she caught that he was saying something about the tournament and about going home.
Her breath caught for a moment as she turned to Roy. The Blastoise seemed visibly hesitant, before he spoke up after their trainer.
“I suppose that it should go without saying that you can’t go battling in this condition,” Roy said. “Calvin pulled you from the team roster for the tournament about an hour ago and is trying to line up a replacement.”
Marl’s mouth hung open. She turned to the young man with the unplaceable face and as her vision began to turn bleary. It wasn’t that anything that Roy said was wrong, but after everything that happened… Calvin was just going to push her aside?
“Y-You’re really going to send me back home? L-Like thi-?”
She felt a stroke at her neck as her trainer spoke soothing words in his language. That things would be okay, that she’d be better soon enough. From the side, Roy listened in briefly, before waiting for their trainer to fall silent before speaking.
“He considered it, but no. Or at least not if it’s not what you want,” Roy explained. “In the end, your wing needs someone to observe it and treat it as it heals, and there’s nothing saying that it can’t be done here.”
Roy looked at the man with the unplaceable face as the Blastoise. The Water-type listened and nodded along before the man got up, Roy took his place and raised out a claw to her.
“Calvin still wanted to make good on his promise of spending more time with you. And there should be plenty of time whenever he’s not battling or preparing for the next match,” he explained. “Is that something you’d like? Those friends that Garrett came here with offered to help keep an eye on you when that’s not possible.”
Marl bit the inside of her cheek and looked aside. She didn’t want to just go back to laying around a room alone back at the house. Not when she could barely fit through the hallways after evolving. Not now...
“I guess… but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do right now,” she said. “All I’d be able to do is just sit around. I can’t even work on my flying with my wing in this state…”
“Then stay around with us,” Roy insisted. “I’m sure that there’s things that can be done for fun around the stadium.”
The Blastoise paused, and pawed at the back of his head.
“And if you change your mind about wanting to be here… just let us know, okay?”
Marl hung her head, as her words came out in a defeated croak.
“Okay…”
Marl had trouble sleeping that night, partly because having a limb broken meant having to stay outside of her Pokéball in Calvin’s cramped room in the Pokécenter taking up most of the floor space beside the bed—her wound wouldn’t heal properly while in stasis, it’d been explained to her. Partly because she kept revisiting all the things that had gone wrong in the past few days in her dreams.
Waking up, putting on the morning dose of Potion on her splinted wing, and making their way back to the stadium did little to lift her mood. The medical stasis meant that when she had to go back in her Pokéball as part of the bus trip, that she couldn’t see or sense anything from outside like she normally could. Her next memory was coming out in front of the entrance where they met up with Garrett, Alberi, and a friend of Calvin’s from the internet who’d initially looped them into the tournament—a man with brown hair and a Tropius who was apparently called ‘Sessen’.
The latter two led her off along with that Floatzel who snuck along with her trainer. The whole time, she kept noticing others, both humans and Pokémon staring at her. At the left wing that based on how it felt surely looked swollen, and that ugly splint that was holding it stiff and in place.
Before long, they were in an underground room lined with lockers, kinda like the ones that were around in Calvin’s high school, or the sports facilities in Calvin’s college. There were other trainers with their Pokémon out, and even here she was getting occasional looks.
“So… uh… why am I not with the rest of the team again?”
And of course, there was that stupid Floatzel who was still pouting and grumbling about not getting his big break to join Calvin’s team. As if Marl needed more things to make her feel pathetic and useless right now. She didn’t bother turning to bare her teeth, when she saw Sessen’s Tropius step forward and lean in on him with a piercing glare.
“Because you’re not joining,” she said. “Your trainer needed a flier to fill in for your teammate and unless if you’re suddenly going to sprout wings, you might as well do your part trying to help her settle in.”
Rako shut up after that, not that it did much to get Marl’s mind off the pain in her left wing. She heard plodding footsteps and look up to see Sessen’s Tropius looking down at her and giving a wave of her wings.
“Hi, it’s ‘Bushel’. I know that things got cut short a bit yesterday, but my trainer’s a friend of yours and he asked us to keep an eye on you and your wing whenever the tournament kept him from being able to do so on his own.”
Marl looked up and at the Tropius’ waving wings, and then off at her own before hanging her head. Bushel hesitated a moment, before catching her wings and shaking her head with a low sigh.
“Right, I probably should’ve given a different greeting to you than that,” she murmured. “I know that you’re probably not doing well right now since flying means a lot to Salamence like you, but if there’s anything you need, don’t be afraid to let us know.”
… This was a mistake. She should’ve just gone home last night. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about others seeing her like this…
“Hey, what’s that?”
Rako raised a paw and pointed up as Bushel turned her head to follow and Marl briefly did as well. It was a boxy television that had been mounted to the ceiling with a pair of humans seated in front of large windows overlooking a field and crowded stands. The same field that was just outside this locker room.
“It’s what humans call a ‘pre-show’,” Bushel explained. “Most of it’s just a bunch of talking heads to me and goes over my head, but humans into these tournaments tend to like them.”
Was that really what a pre-show was? It looked a lot more boring than she’d have expected from the way that humans would start watching tournaments and other sporting events earlier to catch them. The humans were going on about the tournament and some ‘opening ceremony’ that would start in a few minutes, which prompted Rako to tilt his head at the sight.
“Sounds like Calvin’s cutting it a bit close,” Rako said to himself. “Whelp, if he didn’t find anyone to fill in for the team guess that means that it’s my turn to-”
“Hey! We’re back!”
That was Numa’s voice. Marl got up and looked in the direction of the entrance into the locker room from the stadium, where there was the Swampert along with Garrett hurrying up, with Calvin doing much the same. He took a moment to let Roy out of his Pokéball and stretch—a sign that the Blastoise hadn’t been able to keep up—while he fetched another Pokéball from his bag. A blue-and-white one with red ridges that she hadn’t seen before.
“It took a little wrangling, but there was a Rental Pokémon stand here,” Numa said. “And we were able to line up a sixth Pokémon for your trainer’s team so he won’t have to dro-!”
“Numa.”
Marl’s face sagged as Roy pointed her out and the Swampert turned over to her and abruptly bit her tongue. A loud groan turned her attention rightward, where there was Rako, folding his arms and turning his snout up with a low grumble.
“A Rental Pokémon? Seriously? There’s no way that I couldn’t have-!”
There was a flash of red as Calvin let a Pokémon out from inside the Great Ball, but before Marl could see what the Pokémon, a purple blur shot forward towards Rako. It knocked him over with a yelp, where she whirled around and saw Rako flat on his back and staring up wide-eyed at a Gliscor perched on top of him and looking down.
“Oh, so you’re on that team I’m joining!” he cheered. “Hey there! My name’s Mathias, and-!”
“Eyaaah! Get him off! Get him off!”
The Floatzel let out a loud noise that Marl swore sounded not too different from a stuck Spoink from how loud and shrill it was and wrenched himself free. He beelined behind Roy’s shell and peeked out before from behind it, as the Gliscor looked back with a sour frown.
“Hey! What’s the big deal?” the Gliscor protested. “Being affectionate and putting a smile on the teams I partner up with is part of my job too, you know!
“That doesn’t work when you shove your fangs in my face!” the Floatzel snapped.
“Rako actually won’t be fighting on the team,” Roy explained. “He’s playing an observing role along with our friends. Since… we kinda needed to keep an eye on our normal flier.”
Marl’s breathing grew uneven as her head began to spin. Calvin really was replacing her, why on earth would he just rub it in like this? She turned but much to her surprise, the Gliscor’s face didn’t look satisfied at all. He played briefly with his claws, before looking aside with an uneasy murmur.
“Oh… I’m really sorry to hear that,” he said. “But don’t worry! I’m plenty good at battling! I can hold my weight until you get bet-!”
“Just leave me alone.”
Marl turned away with a low growl and looked away, blinking her eyes long and hard. There was an awkward silence as her trainer came up to her and tried to scratch at her chin, but between the pain in her wing and knowing that she was just being replaced, it just didn’t do anything for her mood.
Something came over the other humans and Pokémon in the locker room started getting up. Marl looked over and saw Numa doing much the same as Garrett sent out that Samurott of his. The Swampert looked over towards her and Rako, and pawed at his shoulder.
“The opening ceremony’s about to start and you need to clear out as visitors. I don’t know why the humans here are so hung up about it, but it’s apparently policy.”
Calvin let go and stepped away as Marl looked on blankly. She felt a nudge at her side, and saw Bushel looking over at her.
“Sessen’s place in the stands isn’t that far away, will you be alright going there, Marl?”
“I’ll be fine.”
The words didn’t sound convincing even to her own ears as she felt a pit in her stomach. Sessen pointed a Pokéball at Rako and recalled him as Garrett did much the same with Numa, leaving Marl to follow after Bushel as she followed her trainer out of the locker room.
The whole time, she found herself trying to blink back tears welling up in her eyes.
Marl didn’t pay much attention on the way over to Alberi and Sessen’s seats in the stands. What was the point when it’d inevitably be more of the same as what she went through on the way to the locker room? The roar of the crowds or the parade of trainers and their Pokémon out on the battlefield similarly went by in a blur whenever she bothered to raise her head to see things. The times she didn’t, she laid on the concrete just behind the row of seats, curled up on herself as Alberi or Sessen or one of their Pokémon would come by, much like that Tropius was doing right now.
Bushel hesitated briefly while passing, but otherwise left her alone as she went down the steps and over to a waiting Geodude and Wooper.
“I hope she’ll be alright,” the Tropius said. “Poor thing.”
“Wasn’t Sessen going to take part of that Bug-Catching Contest partway through the tournament?” the Geodude asked. “We’re not supposed to just bring her along like this, are we?”
“Maybe if I made a bubble for her, she’d feel better?” the Wooper asked.
Marl wasn’t holding her breath, not that any of the bystanders, human or Pokémon alike, had really stopped to get close to her. She hadn’t been in the mood to talk much with the other Pokémon with her, but it was still. She supposed that that shouldn’t have been a surprise since she was still a Salamence, even if it was hard for her to imagine that she looked more fearsome than pathetic right now grounded and with her wing in that ugly splint for the world to see…
“¡Hey, ya llegamos!¹”
She heard Garrett’s Samurott call out in that strange language of his, and sure enough, the Samurott and his trainer were approaching. Calvin was there alongside Aries, who’d become a common partner for longer walks after Roy’s final evolution. The two trainers paused after they saw her, as the Ampharos pawed at his shoulder with an apologetic gaze.
“I take it that you didn’t have fun with the opening ceremony,” he said.
Marl lowered her head and turned away. The answer was obviously ‘no’, but even a Zubat could surely tell seeing her like this. The Ampharos went over a short ways to that Floatzel as he made his way up from the stands, before turning a sharp glare down.
“You and the others seriously just left her lying around like this the entire time?” he hissed.
“Look, getting mauled by a Salamence in a terrible mood’s not my idea of a good time, okay?” Rako huffed. “She said she wanted to be left alone. What on earth were we supposed to do?”
… Yes, Marl supposed that she had said that, even if a part of her hoped that at least one of the other Pokémon Alberi and Sessen were watching over would’ve ignored her. She supposed that it was just another mistake of hers, like how it was one to agree to come out here in the first place.
The other trainers and their Pokémon made their way up and gathered around, with Bushel trading glances between her and Aries with a puzzled tilt of her head.
“Doesn’t your trainer usually go around with that Blastoise teammate of yours?” the Tropius asked.
“He tends to skip out on longer walks ever since he evolved,” the Ampharos explained. “But… uh… he should probably be out right now.”
He turned his attention over to Calvin as he talked with the other trainers, probably something in Unovan human from how Marl barely recognized anything they were talking about. The Ampharos tugged at the shoulder of the young man with the unplaceable face and exchanged a couple words that Marl’s ears couldn’t pick up.
Her trainer looked over at her and had a worried expression come over his face. He hesitated briefly, before grabbing a Pokéball and sending out a flash of red light that materialized into a Blastoise’s form. Roy saw her, and she saw him. There was a moment’s silence and Roy hemmed and hawed briefly before finally speaking up.
“Hey, Marl. You look… er… well, terrible,” the Blastoise said. “Is there anything that we can do to try and cheer you up?”
“Roy, I want to go home.”
“As in back to our room at the Pokécenter, or…?”
She narrowed her eyes back, but didn’t say anything. The message got through well enough, as the Blastoise turned aside with a low sigh.
“... Right, home, home,” he sighed. “Though you’re sure you’ll be fine there just with Calvin’s parents?”
She wasn’t. But what on earth was she supposed to do? She’d be miserable and mostly alone back in the little house. She supposed that Calvin could send Rako back with her since he wasn’t in the tournament, but just what were the odds that he’d make her feel better?
She looked up at the sound of footsteps and saw her trainer stooping down to meet her gaze. He reached a hand out towards her and hesitated briefly before rubbing under her eyes. It occurred to her as he moved his fingers that her scales there were damp. Gods, she really must’ve looked pathetic earlier…
He patted along the top of her head when Roy nudged at him to stop. Marl hesitated a moment, before shaking her head in reply.
“Not really, but everyone keeps staring at me while I’m here,” she murmured. “And what on earth am I even supposed to do like this, Roy?”
A low growl filled the air and the others nearby traded startled looks. It occurred to Marl that her stomach was grumbling. Right, they hadn’t gotten a chance to eat before leaving for the stadium in the morning, and she’d been in such a terrible mood the entire time since then that she hadn’t even thought of asking for something to eat.
Roy looked down at her, and held a claw out in front of her.
“Well, how about we try and get you something to eat first?” Roy asked. “No sense in making a big decision on an empty stomach, right?”
The Blastoise paused briefly, before turning his head over to his Ampharos teammate.
“Aries, you didn’t happen to see any concession stands on the way over here, did you?”
The Ampharos put a paw to his mouth in thought, before he mused aloud to himself.
“Actually, I think Calvin and I passed a couple along the way.”
Calvin parted ways from the others afterwards, as he recalled Roy and Rako to their Pokéballs to leave just her and Aries as they made their way down a hallway running along the interior of the stands with rafters exposed to the open air. Partway over, Aries noticed how she kept stealing glances off in the direction of her wounded wing and made his way over to walk alongside her. She didn’t know whether or not he’d done it on purpose or if it was a happy accident, but she was quietly grateful that it was at least slightly harder for passersby to see her broken wing.
Not long afterwards, she began to smell cooking food in the air, like from the places she’d been to where humans had kitchens. Her mouth began to water as she looked up, and saw lines of humans with their Pokémon partner queued up in front of various counters with colorful signage. Almost like stalls at a summer festival, except they were made of concrete and metal.
“... What exactly is there to order here anyways, Aries?” she asked.
“Honestly, I kinda lost track since there was a whole lot,” the Ampharos replied. “There’s food meant for humans, food meant for Pokémon, sweets…”
Buuuuurp!
Marl blinked and turned her head as she saw a female trainer double-taking at a Typhlosion lowering a white-and-blue can of soda from his mouth with a cheeky grin. Marl heard laughter afterwards and turned to see a small party of other Pokémon alongside him: some of them like a Weavile and Floatzel were beside themselves with laughter, while others like a Heliolisk and Ledian were visibly unamused.
“Ew! Honma!” the Ledian protested. “What on earth was that for?!”
“What?” the Typhlosion replied. “That Soda Pop did its job, didn’t it?”
“There was no reason for you to-!”
Buuuuurp!
Another, much louder burp rang out as Marl saw an Aggron a little ways over lowering one of those big plastic bottles with the same labeling. The laughter broke out again, and she heard a parting “Nice one, Hino!” as she looked back at her Ampharos teammate, who was stealing an incredulous look back at the party.
“... And drinks, obviously. Even if I think I’d prefer to go for an Aprishake myself,” he remarked. “Though the point is that there’s a lot to choose from here. Is there anything in particular that you’d like?”
“Meat,” she said.
Aries briefly stiffened up and shot her a sideways look before shaking his head.
“Right, I suppose that your diet is a bit different, but I suppose that can be arranged if you’re not too picky about what sort of meat we get,” he said, raising a paw off at a stand up ahead.
It was some glorified hole in the wall with the smell of grilled and fried food wafting along in the air. She followed along with her trainer and teammate towards a queue separated by metal rails, passing a young blue-haired followed by a Feraligatr who was carrying a small tray of fried, battered balls, probably filled with seafood if it was like the others she’d encountered in the past.
She carried along until she felt something cold and hard brush up against her forelegs. She looked down and saw that it was the guardrails to the queue, with Calvin and Aries ahead of her… which was too narrow for her to fit in without squeezing herself through.
“Um… Aries.”
Aries turned back and looked at her, and then the guardrails. He paused briefly, before motioning off to the side with a sheepish expression.
“Just wait on the side?” the Ampharos suggested. “It shouldn’t take that long to get through the line after seeing what the newer teammates want. Though is there anything in particular you want?”
Marl turned her head just in time to catch a glimpse of a human walking by with a small box of breaded meat lumps piled on top of each other. There was a human name for it that was eluding her, but she knew from past experience that it tasted good.
“One of… whatever that was,” she said. “But are all of the portion sizes here really that small?”
“I think that’s more a matter of you growing since these are supposed to be snacks since they’re not cheap compared to outside,” the Ampharos said. “But I’ll try and pass things along to Calvin. It should be a pretty popular pick with the rest of the team.”
Marl backed away from the entrance to the queue towards a place with some fixed tables set up and watched as Calvin let out her other teammates on the opposite side of the guardrail… including that Gliscor. Aries and the others traded words back and forth as the line made its way down and towards the counter.
She looked on as they continued through the queue, when she suddenly felt a sharp pinch at the tip of her tail. Her eyes widened, and she sprang forward, pulling her tail in close to her and looking around wildly.
“Ow! What was-?!”
“Hah! Look at her jump!” a cawing voice sneered.
Marl whirled around and looked down to see a trio of Murkrow behind her visibly snickering. So Jaki did get those tendencies of his to be a pest from somewhere. She bared her fangs and snarled at the three, crouching for a lunge.
“Grr! Let’s see you try that again!”
She sprang forward as dragonfire sprouted on her claws, only to swing and hit empty air. She heard wingbeats and looked up to see the Murkrow had perched up on an overhead rafter and looked down at her. A sickening feeling came over her as she realized they were staring at her wing’s splint. They knew she wouldn’t be able to reach them right now, a point which the tail-tugger of the trio was all too keen to rub in.
“What’s the matter?” he taunted. “The big, bad dragon can’t keep up with a couple of little birds-?”
“Hey! Knock it off!”
A sharp bleat rang out, followed by a bolt of electricity that scattered the Murkrow from their perch and sent them flying off with startled squawks. Marl looked back to see other bystanders backing away as Aries stomped forward sparking and glaring after the fleeing birds, while Calvin hurried up behind him. Marl guessed that they hadn’t managed to get in their order before leaving the line.
Marl let her head hang as all the bad feelings came flooding back to her. Maybe she should just skip the food entirely and just go back into her Pokéball. It wasn’t like anything was going right today-
“Hey, don’t let them get you down. Those Murkrow pulled the same trick on me a bit earlier today, swiped a snack from right out under me.”
Marl blinked after hearing a low, rough voice from beside her and looked over to see the Feraligatr from earlier. She stiffened up and reflexively tried to back away, as the Water-type didn’t pick up on her mood and kept talking.
“My trainer calls me ‘Miloch’,” he said. “Though I take it that you’re also here for the tourna…”
The Feraligatr trailed off as he looked towards her left. Marl cringed and tried to turn to hide her broken wing, but it was too late. Just from the change in the Feraligatr’s expression, he’d obviously seen it as clear as day.
“Oh. What… happened to you?”
“I got hurt right before the tournament started,” she murmured. “There’s nothing for me here, so I was just going to get something to eat before going home.”
A human voice called out as Marl looked up and she saw it was the blue-haired trainer from earlier. He and her trainer traded glances with one another before drifting off into conversation with each other, one that she could follow since it was in normal human language.
She looked back at Miloch, who pawed at his shoulder and averted his gaze with a quiet murmur.
“I… suppose that I can’t really blame you for wanting to go home with a broken wing,” the Feraligatr said. “But if you’re really not going to come back after today, may I give a word of advice to try and end things on a high note with your friends?”
Marl blinked and held her head at a puzzled tilt.
“What’s that?”
“If you’ve got a sweet tooth, try the taiyaki here,” the Feraligatr suggested. “It’s a nice follow-up for something more savory beforehand, especially fish.”
The blue-haired trainer came over and tugged at the Feraligatr’s arm, as they drifted off down the walkway behind the stands. Marl looked after the pair briefly as they vanished into the crowd of other humans and Pokémon milling about.
She paused, before craning her head back towards her trainer and Aries.
“Aries? What’s taiyaki?”
“It’s a kind of dessert that usually gets served for festivals or street food,” the Ampharos explained. “Why?”
She turned her head back towards the stand as her mind turned back towards the Feraligatr and his parting recommendation.
She didn’t really know what she was getting herself into, but…
“Can we try some?”
“Hey, why does she get multiple servings?”
Five minutes later, Marl was standing at the long end of the table with her trainer and teammates… along with three servings of those fried meat lumps in front of her, snout-deep in one of the boxes. She looked up at Rako who was seated just off to her right and staring at her, before she hardened her eyes into a piercing glare.
“Because I’m big enough to eat you, Floatzel,” she harrumphed. “Unless you want to take the place of one of those servings, shut your trap and quit whining.”
That one shut up the Floatzel nice and good. His eyes briefly widened as he scooted away uneasily and turned to nervously pester Roy about whether or not she’d been joking. The food surely wasn’t all that healthy for her with how oily it was and how humans insisted too much of that sort of food wasn’t healthy in general, but it tasted well enough, and it took her mind off of the pain in her wing and how miserable she’d been earlier that day.
Maybe she should have asked to eat something earlier on today. It certainly felt a bit less lonely when there were others to eat alongside like this…
Marl heard a faint patter and looked off to her side to see what looked like some sort of breaded fish in front of her, except it didn’t smell like fish at all. She brought her snout down and sniffed at it, before looking up and over at Aries across the table.
“Wait, Aries, what’s this?”
“The taiyaki you asked to try?” the Ampharos replied. “It’s a baked pastry and looks like fish, thus the name.”
She brought her snout down before giving it a dubious nudge. She supposed that she’d eaten baked food in the past, but it was always a bit hit-or-miss as to whether or not she liked it. Especially since she couldn’t tell what was in the tricky-looking pastry. Did humans really like to be deceived by foods that looked like they were one thing that were in actuality something completely different?
Though… that Feraligatr had suggested trying it. Feraligatr were also hunters as Pokémon in nature, so it couldn’t be that bad, right?
She brought her mouth down and nibbled at it, wincing slightly after seeing some sort of ruddy paste inside that didn’t look remotely appetizing at all. She let the breaded part hit her tongue, still warm, when it rolled and she tasted something sweet.
She chewed the piece and gulped it down, before turning back to her unfinished pastry on the table. She gave another bite at it, when it dawned on her that that icky-looking paste inside was what had tasted so sweet. She all but inhaled the rest afterwards, greedily scarfing the rest of her pastry down as Roy glanced at her from further down the table with a small smile on his face.
“Well you sure went through that taiyaki fast, Marl. I take it that you liked it?”
“I did, yeah.”
It was a shame that she had to find out about this right before going home. If she’d had this ‘taiyaki’ earlier in the day, maybe it’d have lifted her mood a bit more.
Actually… did she have to go home?
It occurred to her that the best that she’d felt today had just been sitting her with her friends, with food in her belly and trying out something new. Something that would’ve never happened if she’d just spent the day cooped up in a room away from everyone else.
She wasn’t fully convinced it’d really make that much of a difference when her wing was still broken and aching and others still stared at it, but…
“Roy? You said that I could choose to go home whenever I wanted, right?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t… know if I’m really enjoying myself here or not, but I’d like to try coming back for another day.”
Bushel hesitated briefly while passing, but otherwise left her alone as she went down the steps and over to a waiting Geodude and Wooper.
“I hope she’ll be alright,” the Tropius said. “Poor thing.”
“Wasn’t Sessen going to take part of that Bug-Catching Contest partway through the tournament?” the Geodude asked. “We’re not supposed to just bring her along like this, are we?”
“Maybe if I made a bubble for her, she’d feel better?” the Wooper asked.
Marl wasn’t holding her breath, not that any of the bystanders, human or Pokémon alike, had really stopped to get close to her. She hadn’t been in the mood to talk much with the other Pokémon with her, but it was still. She supposed that that shouldn’t have been a surprise since she was still a Salamence, even if it was hard for her to imagine that she looked more fearsome than pathetic right now grounded and with her wing in that ugly splint for the world to see…
“¡Hey, ya llegamos!¹”
She heard Garrett’s Samurott call out in that strange language of his, and sure enough, the Samurott and his trainer were approaching. Calvin was there alongside Aries, who’d become a common partner for longer walks after Roy’s final evolution. The two trainers paused after they saw her, as the Ampharos pawed at his shoulder with an apologetic gaze.
“I take it that you didn’t have fun with the opening ceremony,” he said.
Marl lowered her head and turned away. The answer was obviously ‘no’, but even a Zubat could surely tell seeing her like this. The Ampharos went over a short ways to that Floatzel as he made his way up from the stands, before turning a sharp glare down.
“You and the others seriously just left her lying around like this the entire time?” he hissed.
“Look, getting mauled by a Salamence in a terrible mood’s not my idea of a good time, okay?” Rako huffed. “She said she wanted to be left alone. What on earth were we supposed to do?”
… Yes, Marl supposed that she had said that, even if a part of her hoped that at least one of the other Pokémon Alberi and Sessen were watching over would’ve ignored her. She supposed that it was just another mistake of hers, like how it was one to agree to come out here in the first place.
The other trainers and their Pokémon made their way up and gathered around, with Bushel trading glances between her and Aries with a puzzled tilt of her head.
“Doesn’t your trainer usually go around with that Blastoise teammate of yours?” the Tropius asked.
“He tends to skip out on longer walks ever since he evolved,” the Ampharos explained. “But… uh… he should probably be out right now.”
He turned his attention over to Calvin as he talked with the other trainers, probably something in Unovan human from how Marl barely recognized anything they were talking about. The Ampharos tugged at the shoulder of the young man with the unplaceable face and exchanged a couple words that Marl’s ears couldn’t pick up.
Her trainer looked over at her and had a worried expression come over his face. He hesitated briefly, before grabbing a Pokéball and sending out a flash of red light that materialized into a Blastoise’s form. Roy saw her, and she saw him. There was a moment’s silence and Roy hemmed and hawed briefly before finally speaking up.
“Hey, Marl. You look… er… well, terrible,” the Blastoise said. “Is there anything that we can do to try and cheer you up?”
“Roy, I want to go home.”
“As in back to our room at the Pokécenter, or…?”
She narrowed her eyes back, but didn’t say anything. The message got through well enough, as the Blastoise turned aside with a low sigh.
“... Right, home, home,” he sighed. “Though you’re sure you’ll be fine there just with Calvin’s parents?”
She wasn’t. But what on earth was she supposed to do? She’d be miserable and mostly alone back in the little house. She supposed that Calvin could send Rako back with her since he wasn’t in the tournament, but just what were the odds that he’d make her feel better?
She looked up at the sound of footsteps and saw her trainer stooping down to meet her gaze. He reached a hand out towards her and hesitated briefly before rubbing under her eyes. It occurred to her as he moved his fingers that her scales there were damp. Gods, she really must’ve looked pathetic earlier…
He patted along the top of her head when Roy nudged at him to stop. Marl hesitated a moment, before shaking her head in reply.
“Not really, but everyone keeps staring at me while I’m here,” she murmured. “And what on earth am I even supposed to do like this, Roy?”
A low growl filled the air and the others nearby traded startled looks. It occurred to Marl that her stomach was grumbling. Right, they hadn’t gotten a chance to eat before leaving for the stadium in the morning, and she’d been in such a terrible mood the entire time since then that she hadn’t even thought of asking for something to eat.
Roy looked down at her, and held a claw out in front of her.
“Well, how about we try and get you something to eat first?” Roy asked. “No sense in making a big decision on an empty stomach, right?”
The Blastoise paused briefly, before turning his head over to his Ampharos teammate.
“Aries, you didn’t happen to see any concession stands on the way over here, did you?”
The Ampharos put a paw to his mouth in thought, before he mused aloud to himself.
“Actually, I think Calvin and I passed a couple along the way.”
Calvin parted ways from the others afterwards, as he recalled Roy and Rako to their Pokéballs to leave just her and Aries as they made their way down a hallway running along the interior of the stands with rafters exposed to the open air. Partway over, Aries noticed how she kept stealing glances off in the direction of her wounded wing and made his way over to walk alongside her. She didn’t know whether or not he’d done it on purpose or if it was a happy accident, but she was quietly grateful that it was at least slightly harder for passersby to see her broken wing.
Not long afterwards, she began to smell cooking food in the air, like from the places she’d been to where humans had kitchens. Her mouth began to water as she looked up, and saw lines of humans with their Pokémon partner queued up in front of various counters with colorful signage. Almost like stalls at a summer festival, except they were made of concrete and metal.
“... What exactly is there to order here anyways, Aries?” she asked.
“Honestly, I kinda lost track since there was a whole lot,” the Ampharos replied. “There’s food meant for humans, food meant for Pokémon, sweets…”
Buuuuurp!
Marl blinked and turned her head as she saw a female trainer double-taking at a Typhlosion lowering a white-and-blue can of soda from his mouth with a cheeky grin. Marl heard laughter afterwards and turned to see a small party of other Pokémon alongside him: some of them like a Weavile and Floatzel were beside themselves with laughter, while others like a Heliolisk and Ledian were visibly unamused.
“Ew! Honma!” the Ledian protested. “What on earth was that for?!”
“What?” the Typhlosion replied. “That Soda Pop did its job, didn’t it?”
“There was no reason for you to-!”
Buuuuurp!
Another, much louder burp rang out as Marl saw an Aggron a little ways over lowering one of those big plastic bottles with the same labeling. The laughter broke out again, and she heard a parting “Nice one, Hino!” as she looked back at her Ampharos teammate, who was stealing an incredulous look back at the party.
“... And drinks, obviously. Even if I think I’d prefer to go for an Aprishake myself,” he remarked. “Though the point is that there’s a lot to choose from here. Is there anything in particular that you’d like?”
“Meat,” she said.
Aries briefly stiffened up and shot her a sideways look before shaking his head.
“Right, I suppose that your diet is a bit different, but I suppose that can be arranged if you’re not too picky about what sort of meat we get,” he said, raising a paw off at a stand up ahead.
It was some glorified hole in the wall with the smell of grilled and fried food wafting along in the air. She followed along with her trainer and teammate towards a queue separated by metal rails, passing a young blue-haired followed by a Feraligatr who was carrying a small tray of fried, battered balls, probably filled with seafood if it was like the others she’d encountered in the past.
She carried along until she felt something cold and hard brush up against her forelegs. She looked down and saw that it was the guardrails to the queue, with Calvin and Aries ahead of her… which was too narrow for her to fit in without squeezing herself through.
“Um… Aries.”
Aries turned back and looked at her, and then the guardrails. He paused briefly, before motioning off to the side with a sheepish expression.
“Just wait on the side?” the Ampharos suggested. “It shouldn’t take that long to get through the line after seeing what the newer teammates want. Though is there anything in particular you want?”
Marl turned her head just in time to catch a glimpse of a human walking by with a small box of breaded meat lumps piled on top of each other. There was a human name for it that was eluding her, but she knew from past experience that it tasted good.
“One of… whatever that was,” she said. “But are all of the portion sizes here really that small?”
“I think that’s more a matter of you growing since these are supposed to be snacks since they’re not cheap compared to outside,” the Ampharos said. “But I’ll try and pass things along to Calvin. It should be a pretty popular pick with the rest of the team.”
Marl backed away from the entrance to the queue towards a place with some fixed tables set up and watched as Calvin let out her other teammates on the opposite side of the guardrail… including that Gliscor. Aries and the others traded words back and forth as the line made its way down and towards the counter.
She looked on as they continued through the queue, when she suddenly felt a sharp pinch at the tip of her tail. Her eyes widened, and she sprang forward, pulling her tail in close to her and looking around wildly.
“Ow! What was-?!”
“Hah! Look at her jump!” a cawing voice sneered.
Marl whirled around and looked down to see a trio of Murkrow behind her visibly snickering. So Jaki did get those tendencies of his to be a pest from somewhere. She bared her fangs and snarled at the three, crouching for a lunge.
“Grr! Let’s see you try that again!”
She sprang forward as dragonfire sprouted on her claws, only to swing and hit empty air. She heard wingbeats and looked up to see the Murkrow had perched up on an overhead rafter and looked down at her. A sickening feeling came over her as she realized they were staring at her wing’s splint. They knew she wouldn’t be able to reach them right now, a point which the tail-tugger of the trio was all too keen to rub in.
“What’s the matter?” he taunted. “The big, bad dragon can’t keep up with a couple of little birds-?”
“Hey! Knock it off!”
A sharp bleat rang out, followed by a bolt of electricity that scattered the Murkrow from their perch and sent them flying off with startled squawks. Marl looked back to see other bystanders backing away as Aries stomped forward sparking and glaring after the fleeing birds, while Calvin hurried up behind him. Marl guessed that they hadn’t managed to get in their order before leaving the line.
Marl let her head hang as all the bad feelings came flooding back to her. Maybe she should just skip the food entirely and just go back into her Pokéball. It wasn’t like anything was going right today-
“Hey, don’t let them get you down. Those Murkrow pulled the same trick on me a bit earlier today, swiped a snack from right out under me.”
Marl blinked after hearing a low, rough voice from beside her and looked over to see the Feraligatr from earlier. She stiffened up and reflexively tried to back away, as the Water-type didn’t pick up on her mood and kept talking.
“My trainer calls me ‘Miloch’,” he said. “Though I take it that you’re also here for the tourna…”
The Feraligatr trailed off as he looked towards her left. Marl cringed and tried to turn to hide her broken wing, but it was too late. Just from the change in the Feraligatr’s expression, he’d obviously seen it as clear as day.
“Oh. What… happened to you?”
“I got hurt right before the tournament started,” she murmured. “There’s nothing for me here, so I was just going to get something to eat before going home.”
A human voice called out as Marl looked up and she saw it was the blue-haired trainer from earlier. He and her trainer traded glances with one another before drifting off into conversation with each other, one that she could follow since it was in normal human language.
She looked back at Miloch, who pawed at his shoulder and averted his gaze with a quiet murmur.
“I… suppose that I can’t really blame you for wanting to go home with a broken wing,” the Feraligatr said. “But if you’re really not going to come back after today, may I give a word of advice to try and end things on a high note with your friends?”
Marl blinked and held her head at a puzzled tilt.
“What’s that?”
“If you’ve got a sweet tooth, try the taiyaki here,” the Feraligatr suggested. “It’s a nice follow-up for something more savory beforehand, especially fish.”
The blue-haired trainer came over and tugged at the Feraligatr’s arm, as they drifted off down the walkway behind the stands. Marl looked after the pair briefly as they vanished into the crowd of other humans and Pokémon milling about.
She paused, before craning her head back towards her trainer and Aries.
“Aries? What’s taiyaki?”
“It’s a kind of dessert that usually gets served for festivals or street food,” the Ampharos explained. “Why?”
She turned her head back towards the stand as her mind turned back towards the Feraligatr and his parting recommendation.
She didn’t really know what she was getting herself into, but…
“Can we try some?”
“Hey, why does she get multiple servings?”
Five minutes later, Marl was standing at the long end of the table with her trainer and teammates… along with three servings of those fried meat lumps in front of her, snout-deep in one of the boxes. She looked up at Rako who was seated just off to her right and staring at her, before she hardened her eyes into a piercing glare.
“Because I’m big enough to eat you, Floatzel,” she harrumphed. “Unless you want to take the place of one of those servings, shut your trap and quit whining.”
That one shut up the Floatzel nice and good. His eyes briefly widened as he scooted away uneasily and turned to nervously pester Roy about whether or not she’d been joking. The food surely wasn’t all that healthy for her with how oily it was and how humans insisted too much of that sort of food wasn’t healthy in general, but it tasted well enough, and it took her mind off of the pain in her wing and how miserable she’d been earlier that day.
Maybe she should have asked to eat something earlier on today. It certainly felt a bit less lonely when there were others to eat alongside like this…
Marl heard a faint patter and looked off to her side to see what looked like some sort of breaded fish in front of her, except it didn’t smell like fish at all. She brought her snout down and sniffed at it, before looking up and over at Aries across the table.
“Wait, Aries, what’s this?”
“The taiyaki you asked to try?” the Ampharos replied. “It’s a baked pastry and looks like fish, thus the name.”
She brought her snout down before giving it a dubious nudge. She supposed that she’d eaten baked food in the past, but it was always a bit hit-or-miss as to whether or not she liked it. Especially since she couldn’t tell what was in the tricky-looking pastry. Did humans really like to be deceived by foods that looked like they were one thing that were in actuality something completely different?
Though… that Feraligatr had suggested trying it. Feraligatr were also hunters as Pokémon in nature, so it couldn’t be that bad, right?
She brought her mouth down and nibbled at it, wincing slightly after seeing some sort of ruddy paste inside that didn’t look remotely appetizing at all. She let the breaded part hit her tongue, still warm, when it rolled and she tasted something sweet.
She chewed the piece and gulped it down, before turning back to her unfinished pastry on the table. She gave another bite at it, when it dawned on her that that icky-looking paste inside was what had tasted so sweet. She all but inhaled the rest afterwards, greedily scarfing the rest of her pastry down as Roy glanced at her from further down the table with a small smile on his face.
“Well you sure went through that taiyaki fast, Marl. I take it that you liked it?”
“I did, yeah.”
It was a shame that she had to find out about this right before going home. If she’d had this ‘taiyaki’ earlier in the day, maybe it’d have lifted her mood a bit more.
Actually… did she have to go home?
It occurred to her that the best that she’d felt today had just been sitting her with her friends, with food in her belly and trying out something new. Something that would’ve never happened if she’d just spent the day cooped up in a room away from everyone else.
She wasn’t fully convinced it’d really make that much of a difference when her wing was still broken and aching and others still stared at it, but…
“Roy? You said that I could choose to go home whenever I wanted, right?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t… know if I’m really enjoying myself here or not, but I’d like to try coming back for another day.”
1. "Hey, we're here!"
The trip to the stadium went a bit better today. Marl still had to go through getting the morning Potion applied to her broken wing and she was still blacked out during the bus ride over, but after getting let out, she discovered much to her surprise that she was much less alone than expected. The rest of her teammates were out alongside her and Roy or Aries must’ve let the others know about her wing, since Calvin and one of her taller teammates made a point of walking alongside her broken wing as they continued out and about killing time on their way up to Sessen and Alberi’s place in the stands.
There were other things that still marred the experience. The pain in her wing would come back whenever Marl moved it too much. There were the matches where Garrett was there to sit in alongside them with Numa… and no one else from his team, Marl wasn’t sure whether or not she preferred it that way or not.
And then it came time for her trainer’s match in the round. It was a tougher-fought battle than she’d expected, and things came down to the wire with an Exploud who much to her astonishment had apparently been taught to use Ice Beam of all things by her trainer.
That wasn’t what bothered her…
“Yah!”
What was was that it was that Rental Pokémon who was out there as the last Pokémon standing from Calvin’s team. The Gliscor weaved around an icy beam as it sailed up towards the stands that Marl was overlooking—a sudden flash of light and barrier forming abruptly stopping it and leaving some clumped-up ice to fall to the ground. A Protect cast by Pokémon somewhere down there on the sidelines, if this stadium’s tournament was anything like the ones the battling clubs in Calvin’s college had. The Gliscor zipped past the Exploud so effortlessly, like he was at one with the air. A shout she didn’t quite make out rang out, as the Gliscor dropped down and hit the ground driving his claws into the battlefield.
Marl felt the tremor even from up in the stands as the Exploud lost her footing and didn’t get up.
And then the stands all around her broke into roaring cheers. Even the others with her were getting in on it, both the humans, and even Pokémon like that Rako Floatzel.
She briefly saw the Gliscor pop up into the air and wheel around before deciding that she’d seen enough. She lowered herself against the ground and turned her head aside with a sour huff.
“That should’ve been me out there…” she muttered.
She looked away, before hearing leafy wingbeats and turning up to see Sessen’s Tropius looking down at her… ‘Bushel’, she’d introduced herself.
“Look on the bright side, at least your team’s doing well, right?” the Tropius insisted. “If your trainer’s made it through the first round it means he’s made it past half of the other trainers that entered, right?”
That didn’t make her feel better. Marl opted to hold her tongue and not say it outright, but judging from the Tropius’ hesitation, she supposed she got the message across well enough.
“Are you feeling well enough to walk, Marl?”
“Yeah? Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Your trainer should be coming off the field right about now,” the Tropius explained. “Did you want to go and congratulate him?”
She supposed that she ought to, and a part of her was happy that Calvin had ultimately pulled through in the end, even if she wished that literally anyone other than that ‘Mathias’ Gliscor had clinched the win. Sure it was petty and jealous of her, but he wasn’t the one who was forced to just watch as a stranger swooped in and suddenly took his place on a team of friends…
Marl got up with a low sigh as Rako walked past following after Sessen after he’d recalled his other Pokémon along with Garrett and Numa. She turned and looked back at the stands, and noticed that weirdly enough, that Alberi human and his Nidorino were nowhere to be seen.
“Isn’t Alberi coming along for this?” the Salamence asked. “He was here with us just a couple matches ago.”
“He’s been busy trying to track down an observation subject of his,” Bushel explained. “He’ll probably catch up later after he finds him. Though did you want to go now?”
The Tropius looked at her expectantly. Marl hesitated, before letting out a low sigh and turning after the others already ahead of her.
“Fine, let’s just get this over with.”
It wasn’t long before they were all back in the waiting room of the stadium’s onsite Pokécenter, which Marl didn’t realize looked so much like the one of the Pokécenter in town that Calvin had booked their room in. As weird as it was, she supposed there was some logic to it: Pokécenters had similar duties for healing Pokémon that came to them, so it shouldn’t have been that surprising to run into ones with similar layouts, even if the lookalike receptionist behind the counter was downright eerie.
“Heh! I told you that I’d do well out there!”
They found Calvin almost immediately after entering the waiting room in front of the desk, with him patting the head of the rental Gliscor. Marl stiffened up and had to fight the urge to let out an angry bellow as her trainer turned her attention back to the receptionist behind the counter.
And then the Gliscor came up to them, happily waving a claw like him pushing her out was the most normal thing in the world.
“Hey, hope the show helped cheer you up!” the Gliscor said. “Your teammates are really strong!”
“Are you done?” the Salamence growled. “Or are you going to rub it in how you stealing my trainer from me some more?”
The waiting room abruptly fell quiet as Marl noticed that everyone was staring at her, including Calvin and the receptionist. She quietly set her teeth on edge and half-expected to black out after being recalled back to medical stasis in her Pokéball, only for everyone to turn their attention back to Calvin and the receptionist at the counter.
… Well, everyone except the Gliscor, anyways.
“H-Huh? But that’s not what I was trying to do at all!” the Gliscor insisted. “I’m a Rental Pokémon and part of my job’s supposed to try and make the teams I work with happy, and-”
“Hey, Mathias.”
Marl all but jumped after hearing a yipping voice from behind and whirled around to see a Sandslash beside her raising a set of claws in greeting. She traded looks between the pair and noticed that while the rental Gliscor looked befuddled much as she did, his eyes had a hint of recognition to them.
“Bic? Aren’t you supposed to be battling as part of a renter’s team right now?” the Gliscor asked.
“They flamed out in the first couple matches of this round,” the Sandslash explained. “The rest of the team’s currently in the backroom, so I’ve got some downtime before getting brought back to the grind.”
Marl blinked at the Sandslash’s reply. She supposed she ought to have been less surprised at there being other teams in the tournament that took in Rental Pokémon, but she couldn’t figure out for the life of her how this Pokémon had managed to get around so much without anybody noticing.
She briefly saw Mathias crane his head around, as if looking for someone else, before turning back to the Sandslash with a puzzled frown.
“Wait, where’s Bac?” the Gliscor asked. “I thought he was rented out to that foreign human with that Nidorino.”
… Oh. So that was who that ‘observation subject’ Alberi had was, even if it felt kinda silly to hire a Rental Pokémon just to take notes about them.
“I’m pretty sure that he snuck off earlier,” Marl sighed. “That’s why that Alberi human isn’t here right now.”
The two Rental Pokémon traded looks with one another, before Bic turned his attention back towards the entrance of the waiting room and took a step forward.
“Guess it’s my turn to go out and find him, huh?” the Sandslash asked. “Mathias, were you coming along for this?”
The Gliscor briefly snuck a look back at the counter. Marl didn’t follow his attention, but he seemed to be weighing things over briefly before turning back to his Sandslash companion.
“I mean, I don’t think it’d hurt if we were fast,” Mathias asked. “Though, Marl, right? Were you coming with us, too?”
Marl stared back at the Gliscor for a long moment, before letting her face fall down into a sharp frown.
“And why do I want to get involved in all of this again?”
“I mean, you seemed kinda upset earlier about me taking time away from your friends,” the Gliscor replied. “I know it’s not the same, but maybe I could make it up by showing you some of mine?”
Marl hesitated. She still wasn’t happy about everything, but it was still a surprise to hear that Mathias actually cared about making her feel bad. She turned over to Bic, who was stealing glances off at the others at the counter as Calvin was letting out other members of his team and checking up on them.
“I do also know my way around this place, so if you wanted a chance to get to see a different side of this stadium, I’m your ‘mon,” he said. “We do need to get going pretty quick if we want to leave without being noticed, though.”
A part of Marl thought that this was the stupidest thing that she’d ever heard of. But she supposed that it would take a bit before the others were in a mood to go out and about in the stadium since even if treated, their wounds were surely still tender, so…
“Fine. I guess it’s better than just sitting here and staring at my wing the entire time.”
Marl quickly discovered that Bic was a Pokémon full of surprises, not least of all because the Sandslash seemed to have a knack for finding all sorts of shortcuts throughout the stadium. It took all of about five minutes for Marl to find herself following the pair past a nondescript door and down a set of stairs to underground tunnels with plain white walls and little more than the occasional door. A “shortcut across the stadium”, as the Sandslash had described it.
From the dull roar overhead as they went along, Marl had no reason to disbelieve him. The bigger surprise was the few humans and Pokémon ran into stared at her, but otherwise grew indifferent after seeing the Sandslash leading the way. She turned her head off at the rental Gliscor and cocked a brow with a disbelieving murmur.
“Does he come through here often?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t know the half of it,” the Gliscor chuckled. “Back when Bic was a Sandshrew like Bac, they’d make contests over getting to whatever places around the stadium the other hadn’t found yet.”
She supposed that was one way to tell that this ‘Bic’ wasn’t idly boasting about being able to show off a different side to the stadium, since she had no idea that any of this was down here. The Sandslash slowed as he neared an intersecting hallway and sniffed at the air, before crouching and doing the same at the floor. He paused and flicked his ears briefly, before rearing back up onto his hindlegs.
“Yeah, I figured that Bac would come through here,” he said. “Come on, he went down the left hall. Probably somewhere around the gift shop considering where this passage goes.”
Marl was pretty sure that they weren’t supposed to be here, though from how nonchalantly her guides were going around, anyone who cared must’ve given up on trying to stop them a long time ago. She continued on a little ways when she noticed the Rental Gliscor was walking alongside her next to her broken wing, much like her teammates had been doing earlier in the day to make it harder for others to see.
What was that all about? Didn’t the Gliscor just bounce from one team to the next? What made him care so much?
“You’re ‘Mathias’, right? what’s it like? Being a Rental Pokémon?” she asked.
The Gliscor remained quiet for a moment as the pair continued following after Bic down the hall. Mathias gave an idle click of his claws, before raising his voice in reply.
“I mean, wait for the next human to rent me as a battler, practice a bit beforehand so the human knows what I can do and I know what the human calls the different attacks, and just follow orders, I guess,” he replied. “Once their rental is up, I go back and wait to be rented out to the next team.”
Well, that much was obvious, but was that really all? Mathias had to have some consistent companions he went back to when he wasn’t doing work as a Rental Pokémon, didn’t he?
“Don’t you have a trainer of your own? How on earth does that work?”
“I mean, I’ve got caretakers, who I guess are my trainers?” he asked. “I don’t really see them much outside the off-season, and they have a lot of other Pokémon like me that they need to look after.”
Marl shifted her good wing and shot an askew glance at Mathias. That honestly seemed really lonely, getting shuffled from trainer to trainer with constantly changing teammates. Why it almost sounded like what she’d heard about how humans from the likes of Team Aqua or Magma would deal with the Pokémon who were with them, where the Pokémon were less companions for their trainers and just there to follow the orders they were given.
She noticed Bic heading up a set of stairs and propping a door open. Mathias made his way up as Marl followed along, carefully squeezing past corners to avoid brushing her broken wing as she called out after the Gliscor ahead of her. They ducked out into a passage of the stadium on the ground floor where humans and the occasional Pokémon were going about and all just kinda blurred together for Marl.
Not least of all since Mathias’ reply had stuck with her.
“It doesn’t really sound like you’re able to get close to other humans like that.”
“Well, no, not in the same way like you. That’s why I try to be friendly to the teams that I’m rented out to,” Mathias explained. “Since I only get a short time for others to see me and get to know each other… I’d like them to remember that I made them happy and did my best to help them win. … Isn’t that what you do with your trainer, too?”
Marl paused and fell silent. She supposed that she had lots of fond memories of times when she’d made Calvin and her other teammates happy… along with other memories where she or they had made each other upset. But even during those times when she was sad or angry, she always took it for granted that they’d be able to work things out eventually. She didn’t know how on earth she’d manage if those years of growing up alongside her friends were cut down into little slices of just a few days at a time.
… Perhaps she’d been a bit harsh on Mathias for accusing him of trying to steal her trainer. If she only had a few days to make others remember her, maybe her own response wouldn’t have been all that different.
“Oh hey!”
Marl perked up after seeing Bic turn his head leftwards, and then Mathias did much the same and his jaw dropped. She turned her gaze along with them to see what was going on, and saw that gift shop further down the hall. Marl started to head off towards it when she realized that the pair’s attention was focused closer by. It was off at a pink machine with plexiglass panels, one of those crane games that humans sometimes wasted money on.
She went up alongside the two Rental Pokémon and noticed that the crane machine was filled with dolls shaped like various Pokémon… along with a Sandshrew that was very much alive poking his head up with upraised paw among the various dolls much to everyone’s blinking surprise.
Their Sandslash guide raised a brow, before going up to the machine and tilting his head at the Sandshrew through the glass.
“Bac, how on earth did you get in there?” Bic asked.
“I saw that this machine was full of plushies and saw a door at the bottom, so I went to get a better look,” the Sandshrew explained. “You should try it since they’re really soft!”
She traded looks with Bic and Mathias, but neither of them seemed to have an explanation. Bic climbed down and seemed to size the bottom door and shrugged in reply, while Mathias gave a sheepish paw at the back of his head.
“I guess Bac’s still fond of finding new places to sneak off to…”
“Alberi, aquí está.¹”
It was that strange language again, but the tone of voice wasn’t any of Garrett’s Pokémon. Marl turned around and saw Rinaldo motioning off at the crane machine with his horn, while his trainer hurried up to it. The human said something in Unovan that she didn’t catch and gave an incredulous tap at the glass. From the side, the Nidorino shook his head, and fanned out his barbs with a sharp huff.
“Que conste, te dije que deberíamos haber ido a una de las rutas locales para atrapar un compañero temporal si querías tomar datos, Alberi. Pero nooooo, ¡teníamos que trenzarnos con esta bola de arena que se las arregla para desvanecerse apenas le quitas un ojo de encima!²”
Alberi briefly looked back at the Nidorino before saying something impatient-sounding through the glass. The was a moment of befuddled silence, before Bic went up and tapped at the glass just in front of the prize chute.
“Er… yeah, you should probably get out of the crane machine now, Bac,” Bic said.
“Aw… can I at least bring my friend with me?”
… A ‘friend’? Was this ‘Bac’ not the only Pokémon stuck in that crane machine right now?
“... Sure?” the Sandslash replied. “I don’t think it can hurt, anyways.”
The Sandshrew fidgeted among the dolls and tugged at a blue and red lump that he pushed down the prize chute. Bic went over and pushed the door open and pulled it out, only to pause and curl his mouth down into a quiet frown.
“Yeeeeah, I don’t think this one should go back into the machine.”
Marl went over and craned her head to get a better view, when she noticed that the Sandslash was holding a blue and red doll with a gray underbelly and jaw. Just from a casual glance, it was obvious that this was…
“A Salamence doll?” she murmured.
Yes, a Salamence doll. The head was disproportionately large relative to the rest of the body, but she supposed that humans must’ve found it cuter-looking that way. It had a pair of red felt wings, except the right one was hanging at a strange angle. There was a tear in the fabric, which based off how it looked damp around it…
“Why does it have bite marks?” she asked.
“I mean, it’s not exactly uncommon for littler Pokémon to nibble at things when curious, right?” Mathias replied. “Bac’s… just been a bit slow to outgrow things.”
Marl furrowed her brow subconsciously pulled her good wing in tight towards her body. She supposed that even some of her own teammates had done similar things when they were younger and less evolved, but did that Sandshrew really need to chew on the doll there of all places?
A thump from the prize chute followed as Alberi stooped and pulled Bac from it still curled up in a ball. Bac uncurled on the ground and got up, when the foreign Nidorino cut in and jabbed his horn at the Sandshrew’s belly.
“Tú. Te desapareces así de nuevo hoy, y te quedas encerrado en tu bola hasta que volvamos al alojamiento. ¿Me captas?³”
The Sandshrew let out an audible squeak before retreating behind Alberi’s legs. After a moment, he peeked out, pinning his ears back before looking up at Bic and Mathias.
“I… uh… think that means no more adventuring for today.”
“Looks like it, though I should be getting back myself, actually,” Bic replied. “Shouldn’t keep my renter looking around too long for me.”
The Sandslash turned and crouched, before shooting an aside glance back at Marl. She tilted her head, as a small smile came over his face.
“Though if you need someone to show you around the stadium, Salamence, stop by the Rental Agency sometime,” he said. “If I’m not out and about, I’ll probably be hanging around there.”
Bic curled up in a ball and rolled forward through the crowd afterwards, much to Marl and her companions’ befuddled surprise, along with a good dozen passersby along the Sandslash’s way. After a moment staring off at the Sandslash, Marl heard Alberi call out to her and saw him stoop down to tuck the damaged Salamence doll under his arm as his Nidorino partner pushed Bac along. Mathias traded a glance with her, before shaking his head and starting afterwards.
“I guess that’s our sign we should get going, too. I hope that we weren’t gone for too long.”
“La la la la~”
Marl quickly gathered that Bac was a bit of a handful while following after Alberi and Rinaldo for the stadium Pokécenter with Mathias walking alongside her to the left. The Sandshrew all but skipped along, humming ditties to himself and even in spite of his insistence that he wasn’t wandering off, it didn’t stop Bac from constantly slowing down and gawking at every little curiosity along the way, much to Rinaldo’s grumbling displeasure.
“Ugh, ¿son todos los Pokémon de Arriendo de esta región así?⁴”
She wasn’t sure what the Nidorino was saying, but it sure sounded annoyed. The entire time, she found herself not really paying attention to her surroundings as her attention kept drifting back to the Salamence doll with the chewed wing.
What on earth was Alberi planning on doing with it anyways? She understood that most humans probably wouldn’t want it since it was broken now, but he wouldn’t have brought it along if he didn’t plan on doing something with it, right?
Alberi turned his attention rightward and called out to his Pokémon. They stopped as he began to walk along through the crowds towards a cylinder with a round hole in it. It dawned on Marl as he raised the Salamence doll that it was a trash can, and before she knew it, she found herself hurrying over to the human and nudging at his arm with her snout.
“Wait.”
Alberi turned and jolted up with a stifled yelp, stumbling back from the trash can. The Salamence quietly chewed the inside of her cheek as she noticed Rinaldo scowling at her with his horn lowered. Right, she supposed she should be more mindful of how getting snuck up on by a Salamence would feel for most others.
She lowered her head and pulled her good wing in to try and make herself smaller as she looked up with a pleading gaze.
“Don’t just throw him away, please?” she insisted. “It’s just a bad wing. The rest of the doll’s still good, isn’t it?”
… ‘Him’? She supposed that males of her species were generally smaller than females like her, but it still surprised her a bit to hear her say that about a chewed-up doll. Alberi hesitated a moment and glanced down at the doll and then at her.
And then, much to her surprise, he warbled something in soft foreign tongue, reached over and set the doll on her back before pulling his arm away.
“Hey wait, that’s not what I-!”
It was no use, her words weren’t getting through to him. Maybe it was because she was speaking a different language than what Alberi was used to for Pokémon from his region… or maybe not, since there were no shortage of humans that didn’t understand Pokémon all that well closer to home.
While she had been musing, Alberi and the Nidorino had walked off, the human looking more relaxed. She sighed and continued on after the pair, but otherwise didn’t do anything to the doll on her back. Even if it was broken, she just couldn’t find it in her to just shrug it off and abandon it.
… Maybe it was because he had a broken wing like her, and was all alone now that he was no longer in his box. Except, unlike her, the doll couldn’t fly, and its wing wouldn’t eventually heal on its own…
“Are you going to keep it?”
She turned her head and saw Mathias glancing at her with a curious tilt of his head.
“Keep what?” she asked.
“The doll,” the Gliscor replied. “You seemed like you really didn’t want to see it get thrown away.”
She didn’t have an answer to that. On the one hand, it didn’t really make sense to hold the doll in its present state. Not unless if it was going to be used as a chew toy, but…
“I mean, it doesn’t make sense to just keep it like this since it’d just get worse,” she said. “I just felt bad to get rid of it when everything else about the doll is fine.”
On second thought, she probably wouldn’t have felt good about the doll becoming a chew toy either, but opted to keep it to herself. She worried briefly that Mathias would think that she looked silly or childish, but the Gliscor didn’t seem to pay it any mind.
“I see,” he said. “I suppose it would be nice for the doll to make someone happy instead of just being thrown away…”
She let her gaze linger on the Gliscor as they continued on, as her thoughts turned back to the talk they had on the way over to the crane machine. About how Mathias’ life as a Rental Pokémon worked.
He’d been so worried about making others happy this entire time, but…
“Are… Are you really happy like this, Mathias?”
“Huh?”
“Just going around from trainer and trainer and team to team,” Marl said. “You ever wish that you could hang around with one trainer and team for longer?”
The Gliscor averted his gaze and fell silent as they continued on through the passersby drifting along. He hesitated, before speaking up again.
“I mean, I sometimes wish that I could. But I’m sure that it’ll happen soon enough,” he said. “Most Pokémon at the Rental Agency retire after a few years and get paired off with trainers to stay. I… honestly don’t know what that’s going to be like.”
He trailed off briefly, before shaking his head with a small smile.
“But it’ll still be several years before I’ll need to start thinking about that,” the Gliscor continued. “Until then, I’d just like to make the teams I join up with happy by sharing the journey we have together. Even if it’s not for very long, it makes me happy doing that.”
Marl studied the Gliscor’s reaction briefly. She wasn’t exactly an expert at reading the mood of a giant bug, but Mathias’ answer at least sounded earnest enough. Even if he had Bic and Bac as friends from that Rental Agency , a part of her couldn’t help but feel bad for him.
Hopefully whenever that ‘retirement’ came along, he’d get along well with whatever team he stuck around with…
“Oh hey!”
Marl looked up and saw Alberi and his Pokémon had stopped up ahead. The reason quickly became apparent, as a Feraligatr shuffled up through the crowd with a wave.
“So you did come back!” the Feraligatr chortled. “That taiyaki must’ve been quite something to get you to stay for another day, huh?”
Wait, this was that Feraligatr from yesterday. ‘Miloch’, she was pretty sure was his name. The blue-haired man with him followed along afterwards and there was a brief attempt at a conversation between the two that led to a pair of awkward smiles afterwards. Marl supposed that was one way to tell that there was a language barrier between the two.
She opted to leave the two to figure things out before turning her attention back to the Feraligatr.
“I mean, it wasn’t bad,” she said. “But I mostly stuck around since it’d be lonelier to go home since all my normal teammates are taking part in the tournament.”
Miloch’s smile faltered, as he set his teeth on edge and looked away with a paw at his shoulder.
“Oh… I guess that explains that doll with you, huh?”
Marl stiffened up and her eyes widened at the Feraligatr’s question.
“H-Huh? He isn’t mine!” Marl insisted. “I just found him like this and he’s broken, and-”
“I mean, you’re sure talking like it’s your doll,” Miloch replied. “Though let me have a look…”
Marl felt her cheeks burn and averted her gaze as Miloch took the Salamence doll off her back and looked it over. At once, his attention fell on its right wing, as he held his head at a tilt.
“Are those bite marks?” he murmured.
“It was chewy! And happy!”
The two of them looked down, where there was Bac walking up and doing that thing with his paw he and Bic did when saying hi. There was a moment of blinking silence, when the Feraligatr let out a knowing hum.
“Ah… well if it’s any consolation you should see what I did to the dolls Don gave me back when I was a Totodile,” he said. “Though this doesn’t look all that hard to fix, why if your trainer knows how to sew, a couple of stitches would probably fix it up good as new!”
The Feraligatr caught himself briefly, before waving his claws back in reply.
“Though don’t feel like you have to if you don’t want to,” Miloch insisted. “It’s just that he seemed like he was a good fit for you.”
Miloch set the doll back down on her back as she glanced at it from the corner of her eye. So she wasn’t the only one who saw a resemblance between herself and the doll. The blue-haired man went up and tugged at the Feraligatr with a few words beckoning him to come along. The Feraligatr looked between the two, before giving a sheepish smile back.
“Oh, er… sorry. I should get going now,” he said. “Don wanted me and the rest of the team to get in some practice before our match later today… though I didn’t get your name last time.”
Wait, had she really not introduced herself at all the last time they met?
“Oh. Er… it’s ‘Marl’.”
“Right, I’ll remember that one if we run into each other again,” the Feraligatr said. “Though take care of yourself while you’re here at the tournament, okay?”
The pair headed off as she watched them slip out into the crowd. She looked on for a moment, when she felt a poke at her right foreleg, and saw Rinaldo looking up at her with an impish smirk.
“... ¿Así que ustedes dos se gustan, no?⁵”
Marl could already tell that she was glad that she didn’t understand that. She frowned back in reply but opted to not pry deeper, when further down the hall, a Blastoise’s voice cried out over the crowd.
“There you two are!”
And back in Alberi’s direction, she could see Roy lumbering up alongside Calvin. There was a moment silence, before the Blastoise turned to her with his brow furrowed in befuddled surprise.
“How on earth did you all just sneak off like that?”
“Er… I ran into a friend of mine who’s kinda talented at that?” Mathias offered.
Alberi and Calvin pulled each other aside and talked in that strange human tongue, occasionally looking and pointing down at Bac. Maybe there would’ve been something there worth following, but Marl’s attention drifted over the doll on her back and then to her Blastoise teammate.
“Roy, it’s a bit of a random question, but…”
She shook the doll off, before nudging him forward along the ground with a foreleg. It was probably a stupid idea, but…
“Does… Calvin know anything about sewing?”
There were other things that still marred the experience. The pain in her wing would come back whenever Marl moved it too much. There were the matches where Garrett was there to sit in alongside them with Numa… and no one else from his team, Marl wasn’t sure whether or not she preferred it that way or not.
And then it came time for her trainer’s match in the round. It was a tougher-fought battle than she’d expected, and things came down to the wire with an Exploud who much to her astonishment had apparently been taught to use Ice Beam of all things by her trainer.
That wasn’t what bothered her…
“Yah!”
What was was that it was that Rental Pokémon who was out there as the last Pokémon standing from Calvin’s team. The Gliscor weaved around an icy beam as it sailed up towards the stands that Marl was overlooking—a sudden flash of light and barrier forming abruptly stopping it and leaving some clumped-up ice to fall to the ground. A Protect cast by Pokémon somewhere down there on the sidelines, if this stadium’s tournament was anything like the ones the battling clubs in Calvin’s college had. The Gliscor zipped past the Exploud so effortlessly, like he was at one with the air. A shout she didn’t quite make out rang out, as the Gliscor dropped down and hit the ground driving his claws into the battlefield.
Marl felt the tremor even from up in the stands as the Exploud lost her footing and didn’t get up.
And then the stands all around her broke into roaring cheers. Even the others with her were getting in on it, both the humans, and even Pokémon like that Rako Floatzel.
She briefly saw the Gliscor pop up into the air and wheel around before deciding that she’d seen enough. She lowered herself against the ground and turned her head aside with a sour huff.
“That should’ve been me out there…” she muttered.
She looked away, before hearing leafy wingbeats and turning up to see Sessen’s Tropius looking down at her… ‘Bushel’, she’d introduced herself.
“Look on the bright side, at least your team’s doing well, right?” the Tropius insisted. “If your trainer’s made it through the first round it means he’s made it past half of the other trainers that entered, right?”
That didn’t make her feel better. Marl opted to hold her tongue and not say it outright, but judging from the Tropius’ hesitation, she supposed she got the message across well enough.
“Are you feeling well enough to walk, Marl?”
“Yeah? Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Your trainer should be coming off the field right about now,” the Tropius explained. “Did you want to go and congratulate him?”
She supposed that she ought to, and a part of her was happy that Calvin had ultimately pulled through in the end, even if she wished that literally anyone other than that ‘Mathias’ Gliscor had clinched the win. Sure it was petty and jealous of her, but he wasn’t the one who was forced to just watch as a stranger swooped in and suddenly took his place on a team of friends…
Marl got up with a low sigh as Rako walked past following after Sessen after he’d recalled his other Pokémon along with Garrett and Numa. She turned and looked back at the stands, and noticed that weirdly enough, that Alberi human and his Nidorino were nowhere to be seen.
“Isn’t Alberi coming along for this?” the Salamence asked. “He was here with us just a couple matches ago.”
“He’s been busy trying to track down an observation subject of his,” Bushel explained. “He’ll probably catch up later after he finds him. Though did you want to go now?”
The Tropius looked at her expectantly. Marl hesitated, before letting out a low sigh and turning after the others already ahead of her.
“Fine, let’s just get this over with.”
It wasn’t long before they were all back in the waiting room of the stadium’s onsite Pokécenter, which Marl didn’t realize looked so much like the one of the Pokécenter in town that Calvin had booked their room in. As weird as it was, she supposed there was some logic to it: Pokécenters had similar duties for healing Pokémon that came to them, so it shouldn’t have been that surprising to run into ones with similar layouts, even if the lookalike receptionist behind the counter was downright eerie.
“Heh! I told you that I’d do well out there!”
They found Calvin almost immediately after entering the waiting room in front of the desk, with him patting the head of the rental Gliscor. Marl stiffened up and had to fight the urge to let out an angry bellow as her trainer turned her attention back to the receptionist behind the counter.
And then the Gliscor came up to them, happily waving a claw like him pushing her out was the most normal thing in the world.
“Hey, hope the show helped cheer you up!” the Gliscor said. “Your teammates are really strong!”
“Are you done?” the Salamence growled. “Or are you going to rub it in how you stealing my trainer from me some more?”
The waiting room abruptly fell quiet as Marl noticed that everyone was staring at her, including Calvin and the receptionist. She quietly set her teeth on edge and half-expected to black out after being recalled back to medical stasis in her Pokéball, only for everyone to turn their attention back to Calvin and the receptionist at the counter.
… Well, everyone except the Gliscor, anyways.
“H-Huh? But that’s not what I was trying to do at all!” the Gliscor insisted. “I’m a Rental Pokémon and part of my job’s supposed to try and make the teams I work with happy, and-”
“Hey, Mathias.”
Marl all but jumped after hearing a yipping voice from behind and whirled around to see a Sandslash beside her raising a set of claws in greeting. She traded looks between the pair and noticed that while the rental Gliscor looked befuddled much as she did, his eyes had a hint of recognition to them.
“Bic? Aren’t you supposed to be battling as part of a renter’s team right now?” the Gliscor asked.
“They flamed out in the first couple matches of this round,” the Sandslash explained. “The rest of the team’s currently in the backroom, so I’ve got some downtime before getting brought back to the grind.”
Marl blinked at the Sandslash’s reply. She supposed she ought to have been less surprised at there being other teams in the tournament that took in Rental Pokémon, but she couldn’t figure out for the life of her how this Pokémon had managed to get around so much without anybody noticing.
She briefly saw Mathias crane his head around, as if looking for someone else, before turning back to the Sandslash with a puzzled frown.
“Wait, where’s Bac?” the Gliscor asked. “I thought he was rented out to that foreign human with that Nidorino.”
… Oh. So that was who that ‘observation subject’ Alberi had was, even if it felt kinda silly to hire a Rental Pokémon just to take notes about them.
“I’m pretty sure that he snuck off earlier,” Marl sighed. “That’s why that Alberi human isn’t here right now.”
The two Rental Pokémon traded looks with one another, before Bic turned his attention back towards the entrance of the waiting room and took a step forward.
“Guess it’s my turn to go out and find him, huh?” the Sandslash asked. “Mathias, were you coming along for this?”
The Gliscor briefly snuck a look back at the counter. Marl didn’t follow his attention, but he seemed to be weighing things over briefly before turning back to his Sandslash companion.
“I mean, I don’t think it’d hurt if we were fast,” Mathias asked. “Though, Marl, right? Were you coming with us, too?”
Marl stared back at the Gliscor for a long moment, before letting her face fall down into a sharp frown.
“And why do I want to get involved in all of this again?”
“I mean, you seemed kinda upset earlier about me taking time away from your friends,” the Gliscor replied. “I know it’s not the same, but maybe I could make it up by showing you some of mine?”
Marl hesitated. She still wasn’t happy about everything, but it was still a surprise to hear that Mathias actually cared about making her feel bad. She turned over to Bic, who was stealing glances off at the others at the counter as Calvin was letting out other members of his team and checking up on them.
“I do also know my way around this place, so if you wanted a chance to get to see a different side of this stadium, I’m your ‘mon,” he said. “We do need to get going pretty quick if we want to leave without being noticed, though.”
A part of Marl thought that this was the stupidest thing that she’d ever heard of. But she supposed that it would take a bit before the others were in a mood to go out and about in the stadium since even if treated, their wounds were surely still tender, so…
“Fine. I guess it’s better than just sitting here and staring at my wing the entire time.”
Marl quickly discovered that Bic was a Pokémon full of surprises, not least of all because the Sandslash seemed to have a knack for finding all sorts of shortcuts throughout the stadium. It took all of about five minutes for Marl to find herself following the pair past a nondescript door and down a set of stairs to underground tunnels with plain white walls and little more than the occasional door. A “shortcut across the stadium”, as the Sandslash had described it.
From the dull roar overhead as they went along, Marl had no reason to disbelieve him. The bigger surprise was the few humans and Pokémon ran into stared at her, but otherwise grew indifferent after seeing the Sandslash leading the way. She turned her head off at the rental Gliscor and cocked a brow with a disbelieving murmur.
“Does he come through here often?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t know the half of it,” the Gliscor chuckled. “Back when Bic was a Sandshrew like Bac, they’d make contests over getting to whatever places around the stadium the other hadn’t found yet.”
She supposed that was one way to tell that this ‘Bic’ wasn’t idly boasting about being able to show off a different side to the stadium, since she had no idea that any of this was down here. The Sandslash slowed as he neared an intersecting hallway and sniffed at the air, before crouching and doing the same at the floor. He paused and flicked his ears briefly, before rearing back up onto his hindlegs.
“Yeah, I figured that Bac would come through here,” he said. “Come on, he went down the left hall. Probably somewhere around the gift shop considering where this passage goes.”
Marl was pretty sure that they weren’t supposed to be here, though from how nonchalantly her guides were going around, anyone who cared must’ve given up on trying to stop them a long time ago. She continued on a little ways when she noticed the Rental Gliscor was walking alongside her next to her broken wing, much like her teammates had been doing earlier in the day to make it harder for others to see.
What was that all about? Didn’t the Gliscor just bounce from one team to the next? What made him care so much?
“You’re ‘Mathias’, right? what’s it like? Being a Rental Pokémon?” she asked.
The Gliscor remained quiet for a moment as the pair continued following after Bic down the hall. Mathias gave an idle click of his claws, before raising his voice in reply.
“I mean, wait for the next human to rent me as a battler, practice a bit beforehand so the human knows what I can do and I know what the human calls the different attacks, and just follow orders, I guess,” he replied. “Once their rental is up, I go back and wait to be rented out to the next team.”
Well, that much was obvious, but was that really all? Mathias had to have some consistent companions he went back to when he wasn’t doing work as a Rental Pokémon, didn’t he?
“Don’t you have a trainer of your own? How on earth does that work?”
“I mean, I’ve got caretakers, who I guess are my trainers?” he asked. “I don’t really see them much outside the off-season, and they have a lot of other Pokémon like me that they need to look after.”
Marl shifted her good wing and shot an askew glance at Mathias. That honestly seemed really lonely, getting shuffled from trainer to trainer with constantly changing teammates. Why it almost sounded like what she’d heard about how humans from the likes of Team Aqua or Magma would deal with the Pokémon who were with them, where the Pokémon were less companions for their trainers and just there to follow the orders they were given.
She noticed Bic heading up a set of stairs and propping a door open. Mathias made his way up as Marl followed along, carefully squeezing past corners to avoid brushing her broken wing as she called out after the Gliscor ahead of her. They ducked out into a passage of the stadium on the ground floor where humans and the occasional Pokémon were going about and all just kinda blurred together for Marl.
Not least of all since Mathias’ reply had stuck with her.
“It doesn’t really sound like you’re able to get close to other humans like that.”
“Well, no, not in the same way like you. That’s why I try to be friendly to the teams that I’m rented out to,” Mathias explained. “Since I only get a short time for others to see me and get to know each other… I’d like them to remember that I made them happy and did my best to help them win. … Isn’t that what you do with your trainer, too?”
Marl paused and fell silent. She supposed that she had lots of fond memories of times when she’d made Calvin and her other teammates happy… along with other memories where she or they had made each other upset. But even during those times when she was sad or angry, she always took it for granted that they’d be able to work things out eventually. She didn’t know how on earth she’d manage if those years of growing up alongside her friends were cut down into little slices of just a few days at a time.
… Perhaps she’d been a bit harsh on Mathias for accusing him of trying to steal her trainer. If she only had a few days to make others remember her, maybe her own response wouldn’t have been all that different.
“Oh hey!”
Marl perked up after seeing Bic turn his head leftwards, and then Mathias did much the same and his jaw dropped. She turned her gaze along with them to see what was going on, and saw that gift shop further down the hall. Marl started to head off towards it when she realized that the pair’s attention was focused closer by. It was off at a pink machine with plexiglass panels, one of those crane games that humans sometimes wasted money on.
She went up alongside the two Rental Pokémon and noticed that the crane machine was filled with dolls shaped like various Pokémon… along with a Sandshrew that was very much alive poking his head up with upraised paw among the various dolls much to everyone’s blinking surprise.
Their Sandslash guide raised a brow, before going up to the machine and tilting his head at the Sandshrew through the glass.
“Bac, how on earth did you get in there?” Bic asked.
“I saw that this machine was full of plushies and saw a door at the bottom, so I went to get a better look,” the Sandshrew explained. “You should try it since they’re really soft!”
She traded looks with Bic and Mathias, but neither of them seemed to have an explanation. Bic climbed down and seemed to size the bottom door and shrugged in reply, while Mathias gave a sheepish paw at the back of his head.
“I guess Bac’s still fond of finding new places to sneak off to…”
“Alberi, aquí está.¹”
It was that strange language again, but the tone of voice wasn’t any of Garrett’s Pokémon. Marl turned around and saw Rinaldo motioning off at the crane machine with his horn, while his trainer hurried up to it. The human said something in Unovan that she didn’t catch and gave an incredulous tap at the glass. From the side, the Nidorino shook his head, and fanned out his barbs with a sharp huff.
“Que conste, te dije que deberíamos haber ido a una de las rutas locales para atrapar un compañero temporal si querías tomar datos, Alberi. Pero nooooo, ¡teníamos que trenzarnos con esta bola de arena que se las arregla para desvanecerse apenas le quitas un ojo de encima!²”
Alberi briefly looked back at the Nidorino before saying something impatient-sounding through the glass. The was a moment of befuddled silence, before Bic went up and tapped at the glass just in front of the prize chute.
“Er… yeah, you should probably get out of the crane machine now, Bac,” Bic said.
“Aw… can I at least bring my friend with me?”
… A ‘friend’? Was this ‘Bac’ not the only Pokémon stuck in that crane machine right now?
“... Sure?” the Sandslash replied. “I don’t think it can hurt, anyways.”
The Sandshrew fidgeted among the dolls and tugged at a blue and red lump that he pushed down the prize chute. Bic went over and pushed the door open and pulled it out, only to pause and curl his mouth down into a quiet frown.
“Yeeeeah, I don’t think this one should go back into the machine.”
Marl went over and craned her head to get a better view, when she noticed that the Sandslash was holding a blue and red doll with a gray underbelly and jaw. Just from a casual glance, it was obvious that this was…
“A Salamence doll?” she murmured.
Yes, a Salamence doll. The head was disproportionately large relative to the rest of the body, but she supposed that humans must’ve found it cuter-looking that way. It had a pair of red felt wings, except the right one was hanging at a strange angle. There was a tear in the fabric, which based off how it looked damp around it…
“Why does it have bite marks?” she asked.
“I mean, it’s not exactly uncommon for littler Pokémon to nibble at things when curious, right?” Mathias replied. “Bac’s… just been a bit slow to outgrow things.”
Marl furrowed her brow subconsciously pulled her good wing in tight towards her body. She supposed that even some of her own teammates had done similar things when they were younger and less evolved, but did that Sandshrew really need to chew on the doll there of all places?
A thump from the prize chute followed as Alberi stooped and pulled Bac from it still curled up in a ball. Bac uncurled on the ground and got up, when the foreign Nidorino cut in and jabbed his horn at the Sandshrew’s belly.
“Tú. Te desapareces así de nuevo hoy, y te quedas encerrado en tu bola hasta que volvamos al alojamiento. ¿Me captas?³”
The Sandshrew let out an audible squeak before retreating behind Alberi’s legs. After a moment, he peeked out, pinning his ears back before looking up at Bic and Mathias.
“I… uh… think that means no more adventuring for today.”
“Looks like it, though I should be getting back myself, actually,” Bic replied. “Shouldn’t keep my renter looking around too long for me.”
The Sandslash turned and crouched, before shooting an aside glance back at Marl. She tilted her head, as a small smile came over his face.
“Though if you need someone to show you around the stadium, Salamence, stop by the Rental Agency sometime,” he said. “If I’m not out and about, I’ll probably be hanging around there.”
Bic curled up in a ball and rolled forward through the crowd afterwards, much to Marl and her companions’ befuddled surprise, along with a good dozen passersby along the Sandslash’s way. After a moment staring off at the Sandslash, Marl heard Alberi call out to her and saw him stoop down to tuck the damaged Salamence doll under his arm as his Nidorino partner pushed Bac along. Mathias traded a glance with her, before shaking his head and starting afterwards.
“I guess that’s our sign we should get going, too. I hope that we weren’t gone for too long.”
“La la la la~”
Marl quickly gathered that Bac was a bit of a handful while following after Alberi and Rinaldo for the stadium Pokécenter with Mathias walking alongside her to the left. The Sandshrew all but skipped along, humming ditties to himself and even in spite of his insistence that he wasn’t wandering off, it didn’t stop Bac from constantly slowing down and gawking at every little curiosity along the way, much to Rinaldo’s grumbling displeasure.
“Ugh, ¿son todos los Pokémon de Arriendo de esta región así?⁴”
She wasn’t sure what the Nidorino was saying, but it sure sounded annoyed. The entire time, she found herself not really paying attention to her surroundings as her attention kept drifting back to the Salamence doll with the chewed wing.
What on earth was Alberi planning on doing with it anyways? She understood that most humans probably wouldn’t want it since it was broken now, but he wouldn’t have brought it along if he didn’t plan on doing something with it, right?
Alberi turned his attention rightward and called out to his Pokémon. They stopped as he began to walk along through the crowds towards a cylinder with a round hole in it. It dawned on Marl as he raised the Salamence doll that it was a trash can, and before she knew it, she found herself hurrying over to the human and nudging at his arm with her snout.
“Wait.”
Alberi turned and jolted up with a stifled yelp, stumbling back from the trash can. The Salamence quietly chewed the inside of her cheek as she noticed Rinaldo scowling at her with his horn lowered. Right, she supposed she should be more mindful of how getting snuck up on by a Salamence would feel for most others.
She lowered her head and pulled her good wing in to try and make herself smaller as she looked up with a pleading gaze.
“Don’t just throw him away, please?” she insisted. “It’s just a bad wing. The rest of the doll’s still good, isn’t it?”
… ‘Him’? She supposed that males of her species were generally smaller than females like her, but it still surprised her a bit to hear her say that about a chewed-up doll. Alberi hesitated a moment and glanced down at the doll and then at her.
And then, much to her surprise, he warbled something in soft foreign tongue, reached over and set the doll on her back before pulling his arm away.
“Hey wait, that’s not what I-!”
It was no use, her words weren’t getting through to him. Maybe it was because she was speaking a different language than what Alberi was used to for Pokémon from his region… or maybe not, since there were no shortage of humans that didn’t understand Pokémon all that well closer to home.
While she had been musing, Alberi and the Nidorino had walked off, the human looking more relaxed. She sighed and continued on after the pair, but otherwise didn’t do anything to the doll on her back. Even if it was broken, she just couldn’t find it in her to just shrug it off and abandon it.
… Maybe it was because he had a broken wing like her, and was all alone now that he was no longer in his box. Except, unlike her, the doll couldn’t fly, and its wing wouldn’t eventually heal on its own…
“Are you going to keep it?”
She turned her head and saw Mathias glancing at her with a curious tilt of his head.
“Keep what?” she asked.
“The doll,” the Gliscor replied. “You seemed like you really didn’t want to see it get thrown away.”
She didn’t have an answer to that. On the one hand, it didn’t really make sense to hold the doll in its present state. Not unless if it was going to be used as a chew toy, but…
“I mean, it doesn’t make sense to just keep it like this since it’d just get worse,” she said. “I just felt bad to get rid of it when everything else about the doll is fine.”
On second thought, she probably wouldn’t have felt good about the doll becoming a chew toy either, but opted to keep it to herself. She worried briefly that Mathias would think that she looked silly or childish, but the Gliscor didn’t seem to pay it any mind.
“I see,” he said. “I suppose it would be nice for the doll to make someone happy instead of just being thrown away…”
She let her gaze linger on the Gliscor as they continued on, as her thoughts turned back to the talk they had on the way over to the crane machine. About how Mathias’ life as a Rental Pokémon worked.
He’d been so worried about making others happy this entire time, but…
“Are… Are you really happy like this, Mathias?”
“Huh?”
“Just going around from trainer and trainer and team to team,” Marl said. “You ever wish that you could hang around with one trainer and team for longer?”
The Gliscor averted his gaze and fell silent as they continued on through the passersby drifting along. He hesitated, before speaking up again.
“I mean, I sometimes wish that I could. But I’m sure that it’ll happen soon enough,” he said. “Most Pokémon at the Rental Agency retire after a few years and get paired off with trainers to stay. I… honestly don’t know what that’s going to be like.”
He trailed off briefly, before shaking his head with a small smile.
“But it’ll still be several years before I’ll need to start thinking about that,” the Gliscor continued. “Until then, I’d just like to make the teams I join up with happy by sharing the journey we have together. Even if it’s not for very long, it makes me happy doing that.”
Marl studied the Gliscor’s reaction briefly. She wasn’t exactly an expert at reading the mood of a giant bug, but Mathias’ answer at least sounded earnest enough. Even if he had Bic and Bac as friends from that Rental Agency , a part of her couldn’t help but feel bad for him.
Hopefully whenever that ‘retirement’ came along, he’d get along well with whatever team he stuck around with…
“Oh hey!”
Marl looked up and saw Alberi and his Pokémon had stopped up ahead. The reason quickly became apparent, as a Feraligatr shuffled up through the crowd with a wave.
“So you did come back!” the Feraligatr chortled. “That taiyaki must’ve been quite something to get you to stay for another day, huh?”
Wait, this was that Feraligatr from yesterday. ‘Miloch’, she was pretty sure was his name. The blue-haired man with him followed along afterwards and there was a brief attempt at a conversation between the two that led to a pair of awkward smiles afterwards. Marl supposed that was one way to tell that there was a language barrier between the two.
She opted to leave the two to figure things out before turning her attention back to the Feraligatr.
“I mean, it wasn’t bad,” she said. “But I mostly stuck around since it’d be lonelier to go home since all my normal teammates are taking part in the tournament.”
Miloch’s smile faltered, as he set his teeth on edge and looked away with a paw at his shoulder.
“Oh… I guess that explains that doll with you, huh?”
Marl stiffened up and her eyes widened at the Feraligatr’s question.
“H-Huh? He isn’t mine!” Marl insisted. “I just found him like this and he’s broken, and-”
“I mean, you’re sure talking like it’s your doll,” Miloch replied. “Though let me have a look…”
Marl felt her cheeks burn and averted her gaze as Miloch took the Salamence doll off her back and looked it over. At once, his attention fell on its right wing, as he held his head at a tilt.
“Are those bite marks?” he murmured.
“It was chewy! And happy!”
The two of them looked down, where there was Bac walking up and doing that thing with his paw he and Bic did when saying hi. There was a moment of blinking silence, when the Feraligatr let out a knowing hum.
“Ah… well if it’s any consolation you should see what I did to the dolls Don gave me back when I was a Totodile,” he said. “Though this doesn’t look all that hard to fix, why if your trainer knows how to sew, a couple of stitches would probably fix it up good as new!”
The Feraligatr caught himself briefly, before waving his claws back in reply.
“Though don’t feel like you have to if you don’t want to,” Miloch insisted. “It’s just that he seemed like he was a good fit for you.”
Miloch set the doll back down on her back as she glanced at it from the corner of her eye. So she wasn’t the only one who saw a resemblance between herself and the doll. The blue-haired man went up and tugged at the Feraligatr with a few words beckoning him to come along. The Feraligatr looked between the two, before giving a sheepish smile back.
“Oh, er… sorry. I should get going now,” he said. “Don wanted me and the rest of the team to get in some practice before our match later today… though I didn’t get your name last time.”
Wait, had she really not introduced herself at all the last time they met?
“Oh. Er… it’s ‘Marl’.”
“Right, I’ll remember that one if we run into each other again,” the Feraligatr said. “Though take care of yourself while you’re here at the tournament, okay?”
The pair headed off as she watched them slip out into the crowd. She looked on for a moment, when she felt a poke at her right foreleg, and saw Rinaldo looking up at her with an impish smirk.
“... ¿Así que ustedes dos se gustan, no?⁵”
Marl could already tell that she was glad that she didn’t understand that. She frowned back in reply but opted to not pry deeper, when further down the hall, a Blastoise’s voice cried out over the crowd.
“There you two are!”
And back in Alberi’s direction, she could see Roy lumbering up alongside Calvin. There was a moment silence, before the Blastoise turned to her with his brow furrowed in befuddled surprise.
“How on earth did you all just sneak off like that?”
“Er… I ran into a friend of mine who’s kinda talented at that?” Mathias offered.
Alberi and Calvin pulled each other aside and talked in that strange human tongue, occasionally looking and pointing down at Bac. Maybe there would’ve been something there worth following, but Marl’s attention drifted over the doll on her back and then to her Blastoise teammate.
“Roy, it’s a bit of a random question, but…”
She shook the doll off, before nudging him forward along the ground with a foreleg. It was probably a stupid idea, but…
“Does… Calvin know anything about sewing?”
1. "Alberi, he’s here."
2. "Take note, I told you to have us go to the local routes and catch a temporary ('mon) there for your data collection, Alberi. But noooo, we had to get tangled with this sand ball that manages to vanish in thin air the moment you take an eye off him!"
3. "You. Vanish like that again today, and you're staying in your ball until we're back at our lodging. Catch my drift?"
4. "Ugh, are all the Rental Pokémon in this region like this?"
5. “So (then) you two like each other, don't you?”
2. "Take note, I told you to have us go to the local routes and catch a temporary ('mon) there for your data collection, Alberi. But noooo, we had to get tangled with this sand ball that manages to vanish in thin air the moment you take an eye off him!"
3. "You. Vanish like that again today, and you're staying in your ball until we're back at our lodging. Catch my drift?"
4. "Ugh, are all the Rental Pokémon in this region like this?"
5. “So (then) you two like each other, don't you?”
Things had been almost starting to settle into a routine over the past few days for Marl. Get up, get her wing checked before leaving the Pokécenter, black out from stasis on the bus ride over to the stadium, and then spend time with her teammates between matches exploring the stadium, or else looking for Jaki who’d been dipping out increasingly frequently for some reason. She supposed some things had changed: she’d been noticing the pain in her wing less lately, and while Calvin didn’t know how to sew, he’d at least learned enough from an online video to attach a patch to the chewed wing of the doll Bac took from the crane machine—Kiba, as she’d taken to calling him.
She’d started taking him along when she went out and about, and whenever she was lonely, it was nice to at least have him for company. Marl even spoke to him a few times when nobody was looking… or at least she hoped no one was looking when she did that.
Though some things had changed less. Calvin and his team were down to the wire again today as one of the last matches of the round, with Roy being the last Pokémon standing this time… up against some sort of weird Golem with what looked like metal shavings attached to it. Roy had been putting up a good fight, but much to everyone’s surprise the Golem somehow knew Electric attacks.
“Agh!”
Much like the thick bolt that was presently sending him skidding back along the ground. Roy lost his footing partway over and toppled onto his back, spinning on his shell until he came to a crashing stop against the retaining wall as she and Rako winced at the sight.
“Ouch, that one is gonna leave a mark,” the Floatzel said.
Roy laid there unmoving there for one second… two seconds…
The buzzer sounded as a screen on the other end of the arena lit up with the face of Calvin’s challenger, some girl with darker skin from a region called ‘Lola’ or something like that. The stands erupted in cheers, as their Pokémon and humans closer to them let out disappointed groans.
“Oh no! The tank turtle lost!” Bac cried.
“Cielos. Es casi tan desastroso como los Pokémon perdedores que tratan de enfrentar a mamá cuando está enojada. Casi.¹”
Marl sighed as Roy’s body vanished into red light and back into a Pokéball. There was a moment where Calvin and his challenger shook hands, before he headed off to the entrance on his side of the field, leaving his challenger and her Golem to soak up the attention as her nearby companions looked after him.
“Aw,” Bushel said. “For a second, it looked like they were actually going to pull it off.”
Marl briefly wondered if things would’ve gone any different if she were down there on the battlefield fighting with her team. She saw Sessen and Alberi get up and herd their teams along, before Sessen stopped by to pick up Kiba called for her and Rako to follow along.
“Right, I guess that this is it for now,” she said. “We should go and see how everyone’s doing.”
“Hey, watch it! Some of us are still tender from getting thrown around earlier!”
The waiting room to the stadium Pokécenter was on the crowded side once Calvin got the rest of his teammates back from treatment, with Eira flinching and waving her bone indignantly after Calvin inadvertently brushed up a patch of missing scales on her shoulder. Most of the others similarly sported little nicks and bruises that would need to be slept off, with others like Jaki sporting more obvious wounds to their pride.
“I still say those rules against outside help were bogus,” Jaki fumed. “I spent the last three rounds recruiting Murkrow around the rafters into a murder and suddenly I can’t call them to fight alongside me? How on earth is that not discrimination against Honchkrow? The match right before us had a ‘mon who used Beat Up!”
Everyone stopped and stared at the Honchkrow after his complaint. Guess that solved the mystery of why Jaki had been going off on his own lately, even if the idea of him having underlings to boss around struck Marl as about the last thing Jaki needed. She sighed and shook her head, when she scanned the crowd and noticed that she couldn’t see hide nor scale of the team’s second flier.
“... Wait, where’s Mathias?” Marl asked.
“Back at the Rental Agency,” Aoi explained. “The terms stipulated that the rental ended once Calvin got knocked out of the running, so he handed him off before leaving.”
Oh. Marl supposed it made sense given that Bic had mentioned similarly being off his renter’s team once they got knocked out of the tournament, but she still thought that Mathias would’ve been around the team for the whole tournament.
Maybe they’d still run into each other somehow, but it was a bit strange knowing that she felt disappointed at being without Mathias hanging around. Perhaps she should’ve put more stock in his comment about making a point of trying to make the teams he joined happy.
“Tch, well it’s a bit late for me to do anything to help your odds of winning…” Rako muttered. “Though what are we supposed to do now? Just sit around at the stadium?”
“That one’s Calvin’s call, really, Roy replied. “He did book a room for the full length of the tournament just in case we or Garrett somehow made it to the end, but…”
The Blastoise trailed off, before turning off and facing her.
“That was before Marl got injured.”
Marl hesitated and cast a glance off at her splinted wing. Ugh. Everything was just coming back to that, wasn’t it? She wasn’t exactly eager to be cooped up in the house again or in Calvin’s cramped dorm at college, but with everyone knocked out of the tournament, she supposed there was no reason why her teammates wouldn’t potentially be there with her in those places now…
She felt scratching at her chin and looked down to see Calvin up beside her with Kiba tucked under his free arm. She still wasn’t sure whether or not she was ready to forgive him for not being there for her evolution, but he’d at least been making good on staying around her since then…
“What exactly does Calvin have in mind, Roy?” she asked. “He’s not going to buy another ferry ticket early, is he?”
“Well, he probably can’t on such short notice, but he can get around that for us with the PC network,” the Blastoise explained. “It might make sense for some of us to already head home. It’d give you a chance to recover in peace, and you’d be a bit less alone now that we don’t have to worry about matches anymore.”
She looked off at her left wing and wiggled it. It moved fine along its base, but when she tried to flex the upper joint, when a dull pain instantly shot through it. It wasn’t as bad as it’d been a couple days ago, but if it still hurt to shift it around like this, she wasn’t going to be getting out of that splint just yet.
“I mean my wing hurts less right now,” Marl said. “If all we’re mostly just going to sit around most of the time in the stands… it can’t be that bad for it, right?”
The Blastoise hesitated, briefly glimpsing at her wing and then back at her.
“Are you sure, Marl?” Roy asked. “Since you seemed kinda self-conscious about others staring at you with that wing.”
“I mean, it’s not like I don’t get stared at here either,” Marl murmured. “And if I’m going to be here in a whole different region, I’d at least like to do more than just be cooped up in a room where we can’t even all fit together watching matches in the stadium through one of those picture boxes…”
“Wait, so does this mean that we can still go to that barbecue-”
A loud smack followed as Marl turned and saw Rako pawing at his shoulder and trading glares with Aoi as the Lucario pulled a fist back. Those two must’ve had a history with each other, but she couldn’t help but be curious about that last word he mentioned…
“Wait, there’s a barbecue?”
“It’s apparently some sort of festival that’s been going on on the top floor of the stadium parking lot,” Aoi explained. “Garrett and the other humans have been going to a few when they haven’t been helping to watch over you between matches. There’s supposed to be another one held tomorrow on the top floor of the parking garage around lunchtime before the next round starts.”
Marl hesitated briefly. She didn’t know just how much fun anyone was supposed to have in a parking garage, but she didn’t even know that there was some sort of festival being held there. And Garrett and the others wouldn’t have gone there if they found them boring…
“I mean, I can walk. And if I’m not having fun, we can always leave, right?”
The evening came and went and before Marl knew it, she was on the top floor of the stadium’s parking garage just east of the arena following after her trainer with Roy blocking her injured wing and eyeing her surroundings incredulously. All around, humans and Pokémon milled about between various vehicles that had been parked with their rear hatches left open, with various tables and chairs set out as the smell of grilling food in the air.
“Heh, smells good, doesn’t it?” Roy said. “Though it makes me wonder why these aren’t more popular outside of regions like Unova.”
Was this what summer festivals in Unova were like? Marl had heard that cars and motor vehicles were more important in that region to the point of minor obsession, and the overall atmosphere didn’t feel all that different…
She turned her head to see a Pignite stoking a grill set up in front of a station wagon for a trainer who was turning skewers over it. Her mouth began to water, as she looked over at her Blastoise teammate and then at the grill as she sniffed and took a couple tentative steps forward.
“So… do we just go up and take food for ourselves, or…?”
“Not quite, these things are basically like a normal summer barbecue here,” the Blastoise explained. “Everyone here is hosting parties for friends. Garrett and Alberi are apparently hosting one out of a van they rented. They said to keep an eye out for a silver-”
They didn’t have to look that hard for them. Just up ahead, she could see that Samurott from Garrett’s team watching as his Lucario teammate pushed against a small van with rounded windows and its hatch open. He seemed to find it strange as he kept poking and shaking it.
“Eeeeh… ¿no es este tipo de coche un poco pequeño?²”
Just as soon as the Lucario had said that, the Volcarona from Garrett’s team approached and gave the vehicle a hearty bump much to the Samurott’s annoyance.
“¿Este compacto? Pues puede llevar dos equipos de Pokémon completos.³”
“Por supuesto que puede. ¡Veníamos en nuestras bolas!⁴”
Whatever the argument was about Marl couldn’t understand, but it was serious enough that she saw Numa pop out from around the side and shoot a sharp frown over.
“Fenris, Helio, dejen de zarandear el vehículo. Es un arriendo y lo van a dar vuelta así.⁵”
Marl didn’t know what that was all about, but it certainly got the Lucario and Volcarona to back off. The Samurott rolled his eyes as they walked up, before turning to the Lucario with a low scoff.
“Además, ¿desde cuándo te importa que los coches sean grandes, Fenris? Garrett ni siquiera tiene uno en Unova.⁶”
“Pues podría haber arrendado algo más grande que esto. ¿Cómo diantres caben él y Alberi dentro de esta cosa?⁷”
The Swampert thumped a foot for silence before pointing off in their direction. The Samurott called out something that Marl didn’t catch, as Garrett and Alberi rounded the corner with their Pokémon companions already out. Calvin drifted off to talk with them, as Numa walked up and gave a cheerful grin as he neared.
“Hey! Nice to see you two make it!” the Swampert said. “The rest of the team come along, too?”
“Yeah, they’re here. Just in Pokéballs. It can be a bit hard for humans to keep track of a team and a third in a crowd like this.”
“Hah! Don’t I know it! You should see what reunions between Garrett’s teams are like,” the Swampert chuckled, before motioning along. “Come on, the grill’s just on the other side of the…”
The Lucario’s feelers abruptly flared before he tugged at Numa’s shoulder. The Swampert peeked around the corner of the van and suddenly stiffened up, before turning back towards her and Roy with an awkward hem and haw.
“Um. Actually, I think the food needs a little more time to finish,” he said. “Maybe it’d make sense for you to see if Calvin will let you take Marl to see the sights a bit?”
Marl tilted her head in reply and gave a sour frown.
“Numa, we’re in a parking garage,” Marl harrumphed. “We came all this way to come to this barbecue. Why are you suddenly trying to shoo us off so fast-?”
“¡Mmmmm! ¡Esta barbacoa huele genial!⁸”
Marl stiffened up as she heard that rough, draconic voice, and briefly saw Garrett and the other humans look over in alarm. A dark shape flew in and settled near the van’s hatch, giving a tentative sniff at the air.
It was ‘Hydreigon’ again, since of all the places she’d be right now, of course she’d be here.
Their eyes met, when the Hydreigon’s eyes narrowed and she turned her heads aside with a sharp scoff.
“Oh, tú otra vez. En serio, ¿no deberías estar descansando donde sea que tu entrenador haya comprado en vez de andar por ahí con tu ala así de mal?⁹”
Marl felt fire burn in her belly and hot breath pass between her teeth with a seething growl. She didn’t speak any of this ‘Unovan’, but she knew enough just from the Hydreigon’s tone that that wasn’t an apology.
“Are you going to say anything to me?”
An awkward silence followed, as Roy and Numa stared tensely and the humans broke off their chatter to come closer to them. ‘Hydreigon’ looked around briefly, before giving a set of quizzical frowns at the Swampert.
“Numa, ¿de qué diablos va?¹⁰”
She- She was just acting like nothing had happened! Like it wasn’t because of her that her wing was broken and she was stuck walking around like she’d gone back to being a Shelgon! Calvin and Garrett were reaching for Pokéballs now, and Marl briefly saw Numa steal a glance at her, before pulling ‘Hydreigon’ aside and speaking up in hushed tones. The Hydreigon listened along, only for her heads to briefly perk, and her faces to curl down into a set of frowns.
“¿Numa? ¿Por qué rayos haría eso? Me insulta de frente y entonces en vez de disculparse viene en son de pelea. Juega juegos estúpidos, ¿y ahora se queja de ganar premios estúpidos?¹¹”
The Swampert threw a paw over his face, as Marl let out a sharp snarl and crouched for a lunge. She didn’t need to understand ‘Hydreigon’ in order to know what was going on.
“You’re not sorry at all, are you?! she snarled. Why, I oughta-!”
‘Hydreigon’ snarled back at her as they began to circle in on each other when Marl felt a weight tug at her right wing and pull her back. It was Roy, who was giving her a serious look and trying to tug her along.
“Alright, I think we should go on that walk, Marl.”
She wrenched herself free and bared her fangs in reply. Other trainers and Pokémon nearby were starting to stare, as a few nervously backed away.
“Stay out of this Roy!” she snapped. “This is a thing between her and me-!”
A red light suddenly overtook her. And the next thing Marl knew, everything suddenly went black again.
“How on earth is this fair?!”
When Marl came to, she was in an open area just outside of the parking garage’s ground floor. There were only two Pokéballs on Calvin’s holster, meaning that everyone else was up on the top level having fun together while she was somehow the one in trouble right now.
She stamped her feet and flared out her good wing with a sharp growl as Calvin and Roy looked up at her hesitantly. The young man with the unplaceable face motioned with his arms for calm, as her Blastoise teammate shook his head with a low sigh.
“Marl, considering how your last fight with her turned out, would you really have preferred us not stepping in?” Roy said. “While your wing’s still broken on top of everything?”
Marl remained quiet in response. Just because they were correct about her being at a worse disadvantage than when she’d first fought ‘Hydreigon’ didn’t mean that they were right. And it wasn’t as if being at a disadvantage instantly would’ve meant she’d have lost, right…?
“I-I could have thought of something,” she huffed.
“Yes, and you could’ve gotten into a fight in the middle of a crowded area and trashed someone’s car or gotten a bystander hurt,” the Blastoise finished. “Even if you did ‘think of something’, what good would it have done if it got Calvin into trouble with his trainer’s license because of it?”
She… hadn’t considered that at all. Marl set her teeth on edge and looked over at her trainer and saw that he looked worried. She hung her head, as a low murmur came from her throat.
“I… I just hate feeling like this. Like I can’t do anything. I waited my whole life to get to this point and then everything just keeps going wrong,” she said. “I can’t even do anything to fix things.”
“It’ll get better, Marl,” the Blastoise said. “Just hang in there a bit longer.”
Calvin went up and petted at her head, as she looked up as he spoke soothing words to her. He reached into his bag and pulled out Kiba before setting him by her leg as Roy listened in and then spoke up after him.
“Calvin says he understands if you’re not ready to let things go, but for now, it’s best to take a moment to calm down,” the Blastoise said. “When Hydreigon’s done eating, we’ll go over and rejoin the others, okay?”
“Alright…”
She fell silent, before glumly settling to the ground beside her doll, nudging at it. All she’d wanted was to have a fun time with her friends, not to get a humiliating wound reopened in public.
… Maybe they should have just gone home after all.
“Oh hey!”
Marl craned her head up and saw Miloch and his trainer making their way down a flight of stairs. A Dragonite and an Ampharos were following, as the Feraligatr waved and made his way over much to Roy and Calvin’s blinking surprise.
“Heh, I see that we’re not the only ones who got blindsided about that ‘party’ up here not being open to the public.”
Marl hesitated, before turning her gaze away.
“I… actually got into a fight.”
Miloch briefly grimaced, before stooping down and reaching out for her.
“Oh no, with your wing broken?” he asked. “You didn’t get hurt worse, did you-?”
Miloch briefly placed a claw on her shoulder, only to suddenly pull it back with a flustered hem and haw. His trainer and teammates caught up as the Ampharos and Dragonite shot curious glances.
“Wait, is this that Salamence that you said you ran into, Miloch?” the Dragonite asked.
“Got hurt worse?” the Ampharos added. “What on earth hurt her the first time?”
Oh gods, she wasn’t going to have to explain what happened to her wing to them, too, was she? As if today hadn’t already been humiliating enough-
“Marl, are these friends of yours?”
Thankfully, Roy interrupted the direction of the conversation as he approached and traded glances between her and the others with Don. Miloch and her trainer were chattering in the background, as Miloch raised a claw and pawed at the back of his head sheepishly.
“Kinda, I guess?” he replied. “I mean, we’ve mostly just been running into each other by chance. But…”
He trailed off and looked aside.
“I guess a part of me just wanted to make sure that Marl was doing okay,” he said. “Since she seemed downright miserable earlier in the tournament.”
Marl wasn’t sure what to make of that. On one level, it bothered her to know that she probably looked more pathetic than she realized during those first few days going around with her wing broken. On the other, it was honestly somewhat relieving to know that at least some of the others who’d stopped and stared at her over the past few days were doing it because they were worried for her.
The Dragonite cleared his throat, before turning over to Roy.
“I take it you came here for the tournament, too,” he said. “Is your team still in the running?”
“I wish, we got knocked out yesterday,” Roy replied. “We’re mostly here because we’ve got a friend who’s still working his way up the ladder.”
“Aw, shame. Though if you wanted to catch our matches, we’re scheduled for later this afternoon,” the Ampharos said. “We’ve even got our seats in the lower stands open while we’re on the field. I’m sure that Don wouldn’t mind letting a friend of Miloch’s use it for a bit.”
Marl pawed at the ground and hesitated, before going over to her trainer and nudging at his side. He looked down at her as she raised her head and gave what she hoped wasn’t too pleading of an expression.
“Can… we go and see them?”
Her trainer gave a puzzled murmur, as Roy came over and pulled him aside.
“I think we can work something out, Marl,” the Blastoise said. “Give me a little bit to try and pass the message along to him.”
She’d started taking him along when she went out and about, and whenever she was lonely, it was nice to at least have him for company. Marl even spoke to him a few times when nobody was looking… or at least she hoped no one was looking when she did that.
Though some things had changed less. Calvin and his team were down to the wire again today as one of the last matches of the round, with Roy being the last Pokémon standing this time… up against some sort of weird Golem with what looked like metal shavings attached to it. Roy had been putting up a good fight, but much to everyone’s surprise the Golem somehow knew Electric attacks.
“Agh!”
Much like the thick bolt that was presently sending him skidding back along the ground. Roy lost his footing partway over and toppled onto his back, spinning on his shell until he came to a crashing stop against the retaining wall as she and Rako winced at the sight.
“Ouch, that one is gonna leave a mark,” the Floatzel said.
Roy laid there unmoving there for one second… two seconds…
The buzzer sounded as a screen on the other end of the arena lit up with the face of Calvin’s challenger, some girl with darker skin from a region called ‘Lola’ or something like that. The stands erupted in cheers, as their Pokémon and humans closer to them let out disappointed groans.
“Oh no! The tank turtle lost!” Bac cried.
“Cielos. Es casi tan desastroso como los Pokémon perdedores que tratan de enfrentar a mamá cuando está enojada. Casi.¹”
Marl sighed as Roy’s body vanished into red light and back into a Pokéball. There was a moment where Calvin and his challenger shook hands, before he headed off to the entrance on his side of the field, leaving his challenger and her Golem to soak up the attention as her nearby companions looked after him.
“Aw,” Bushel said. “For a second, it looked like they were actually going to pull it off.”
Marl briefly wondered if things would’ve gone any different if she were down there on the battlefield fighting with her team. She saw Sessen and Alberi get up and herd their teams along, before Sessen stopped by to pick up Kiba called for her and Rako to follow along.
“Right, I guess that this is it for now,” she said. “We should go and see how everyone’s doing.”
“Hey, watch it! Some of us are still tender from getting thrown around earlier!”
The waiting room to the stadium Pokécenter was on the crowded side once Calvin got the rest of his teammates back from treatment, with Eira flinching and waving her bone indignantly after Calvin inadvertently brushed up a patch of missing scales on her shoulder. Most of the others similarly sported little nicks and bruises that would need to be slept off, with others like Jaki sporting more obvious wounds to their pride.
“I still say those rules against outside help were bogus,” Jaki fumed. “I spent the last three rounds recruiting Murkrow around the rafters into a murder and suddenly I can’t call them to fight alongside me? How on earth is that not discrimination against Honchkrow? The match right before us had a ‘mon who used Beat Up!”
Everyone stopped and stared at the Honchkrow after his complaint. Guess that solved the mystery of why Jaki had been going off on his own lately, even if the idea of him having underlings to boss around struck Marl as about the last thing Jaki needed. She sighed and shook her head, when she scanned the crowd and noticed that she couldn’t see hide nor scale of the team’s second flier.
“... Wait, where’s Mathias?” Marl asked.
“Back at the Rental Agency,” Aoi explained. “The terms stipulated that the rental ended once Calvin got knocked out of the running, so he handed him off before leaving.”
Oh. Marl supposed it made sense given that Bic had mentioned similarly being off his renter’s team once they got knocked out of the tournament, but she still thought that Mathias would’ve been around the team for the whole tournament.
Maybe they’d still run into each other somehow, but it was a bit strange knowing that she felt disappointed at being without Mathias hanging around. Perhaps she should’ve put more stock in his comment about making a point of trying to make the teams he joined happy.
“Tch, well it’s a bit late for me to do anything to help your odds of winning…” Rako muttered. “Though what are we supposed to do now? Just sit around at the stadium?”
“That one’s Calvin’s call, really, Roy replied. “He did book a room for the full length of the tournament just in case we or Garrett somehow made it to the end, but…”
The Blastoise trailed off, before turning off and facing her.
“That was before Marl got injured.”
Marl hesitated and cast a glance off at her splinted wing. Ugh. Everything was just coming back to that, wasn’t it? She wasn’t exactly eager to be cooped up in the house again or in Calvin’s cramped dorm at college, but with everyone knocked out of the tournament, she supposed there was no reason why her teammates wouldn’t potentially be there with her in those places now…
She felt scratching at her chin and looked down to see Calvin up beside her with Kiba tucked under his free arm. She still wasn’t sure whether or not she was ready to forgive him for not being there for her evolution, but he’d at least been making good on staying around her since then…
“What exactly does Calvin have in mind, Roy?” she asked. “He’s not going to buy another ferry ticket early, is he?”
“Well, he probably can’t on such short notice, but he can get around that for us with the PC network,” the Blastoise explained. “It might make sense for some of us to already head home. It’d give you a chance to recover in peace, and you’d be a bit less alone now that we don’t have to worry about matches anymore.”
She looked off at her left wing and wiggled it. It moved fine along its base, but when she tried to flex the upper joint, when a dull pain instantly shot through it. It wasn’t as bad as it’d been a couple days ago, but if it still hurt to shift it around like this, she wasn’t going to be getting out of that splint just yet.
“I mean my wing hurts less right now,” Marl said. “If all we’re mostly just going to sit around most of the time in the stands… it can’t be that bad for it, right?”
The Blastoise hesitated, briefly glimpsing at her wing and then back at her.
“Are you sure, Marl?” Roy asked. “Since you seemed kinda self-conscious about others staring at you with that wing.”
“I mean, it’s not like I don’t get stared at here either,” Marl murmured. “And if I’m going to be here in a whole different region, I’d at least like to do more than just be cooped up in a room where we can’t even all fit together watching matches in the stadium through one of those picture boxes…”
“Wait, so does this mean that we can still go to that barbecue-”
A loud smack followed as Marl turned and saw Rako pawing at his shoulder and trading glares with Aoi as the Lucario pulled a fist back. Those two must’ve had a history with each other, but she couldn’t help but be curious about that last word he mentioned…
“Wait, there’s a barbecue?”
“It’s apparently some sort of festival that’s been going on on the top floor of the stadium parking lot,” Aoi explained. “Garrett and the other humans have been going to a few when they haven’t been helping to watch over you between matches. There’s supposed to be another one held tomorrow on the top floor of the parking garage around lunchtime before the next round starts.”
Marl hesitated briefly. She didn’t know just how much fun anyone was supposed to have in a parking garage, but she didn’t even know that there was some sort of festival being held there. And Garrett and the others wouldn’t have gone there if they found them boring…
“I mean, I can walk. And if I’m not having fun, we can always leave, right?”
The evening came and went and before Marl knew it, she was on the top floor of the stadium’s parking garage just east of the arena following after her trainer with Roy blocking her injured wing and eyeing her surroundings incredulously. All around, humans and Pokémon milled about between various vehicles that had been parked with their rear hatches left open, with various tables and chairs set out as the smell of grilling food in the air.
“Heh, smells good, doesn’t it?” Roy said. “Though it makes me wonder why these aren’t more popular outside of regions like Unova.”
Was this what summer festivals in Unova were like? Marl had heard that cars and motor vehicles were more important in that region to the point of minor obsession, and the overall atmosphere didn’t feel all that different…
She turned her head to see a Pignite stoking a grill set up in front of a station wagon for a trainer who was turning skewers over it. Her mouth began to water, as she looked over at her Blastoise teammate and then at the grill as she sniffed and took a couple tentative steps forward.
“So… do we just go up and take food for ourselves, or…?”
“Not quite, these things are basically like a normal summer barbecue here,” the Blastoise explained. “Everyone here is hosting parties for friends. Garrett and Alberi are apparently hosting one out of a van they rented. They said to keep an eye out for a silver-”
They didn’t have to look that hard for them. Just up ahead, she could see that Samurott from Garrett’s team watching as his Lucario teammate pushed against a small van with rounded windows and its hatch open. He seemed to find it strange as he kept poking and shaking it.
“Eeeeh… ¿no es este tipo de coche un poco pequeño?²”
Just as soon as the Lucario had said that, the Volcarona from Garrett’s team approached and gave the vehicle a hearty bump much to the Samurott’s annoyance.
“¿Este compacto? Pues puede llevar dos equipos de Pokémon completos.³”
“Por supuesto que puede. ¡Veníamos en nuestras bolas!⁴”
Whatever the argument was about Marl couldn’t understand, but it was serious enough that she saw Numa pop out from around the side and shoot a sharp frown over.
“Fenris, Helio, dejen de zarandear el vehículo. Es un arriendo y lo van a dar vuelta así.⁵”
Marl didn’t know what that was all about, but it certainly got the Lucario and Volcarona to back off. The Samurott rolled his eyes as they walked up, before turning to the Lucario with a low scoff.
“Además, ¿desde cuándo te importa que los coches sean grandes, Fenris? Garrett ni siquiera tiene uno en Unova.⁶”
“Pues podría haber arrendado algo más grande que esto. ¿Cómo diantres caben él y Alberi dentro de esta cosa?⁷”
The Swampert thumped a foot for silence before pointing off in their direction. The Samurott called out something that Marl didn’t catch, as Garrett and Alberi rounded the corner with their Pokémon companions already out. Calvin drifted off to talk with them, as Numa walked up and gave a cheerful grin as he neared.
“Hey! Nice to see you two make it!” the Swampert said. “The rest of the team come along, too?”
“Yeah, they’re here. Just in Pokéballs. It can be a bit hard for humans to keep track of a team and a third in a crowd like this.”
“Hah! Don’t I know it! You should see what reunions between Garrett’s teams are like,” the Swampert chuckled, before motioning along. “Come on, the grill’s just on the other side of the…”
The Lucario’s feelers abruptly flared before he tugged at Numa’s shoulder. The Swampert peeked around the corner of the van and suddenly stiffened up, before turning back towards her and Roy with an awkward hem and haw.
“Um. Actually, I think the food needs a little more time to finish,” he said. “Maybe it’d make sense for you to see if Calvin will let you take Marl to see the sights a bit?”
Marl tilted her head in reply and gave a sour frown.
“Numa, we’re in a parking garage,” Marl harrumphed. “We came all this way to come to this barbecue. Why are you suddenly trying to shoo us off so fast-?”
“¡Mmmmm! ¡Esta barbacoa huele genial!⁸”
Marl stiffened up as she heard that rough, draconic voice, and briefly saw Garrett and the other humans look over in alarm. A dark shape flew in and settled near the van’s hatch, giving a tentative sniff at the air.
It was ‘Hydreigon’ again, since of all the places she’d be right now, of course she’d be here.
Their eyes met, when the Hydreigon’s eyes narrowed and she turned her heads aside with a sharp scoff.
“Oh, tú otra vez. En serio, ¿no deberías estar descansando donde sea que tu entrenador haya comprado en vez de andar por ahí con tu ala así de mal?⁹”
Marl felt fire burn in her belly and hot breath pass between her teeth with a seething growl. She didn’t speak any of this ‘Unovan’, but she knew enough just from the Hydreigon’s tone that that wasn’t an apology.
“Are you going to say anything to me?”
An awkward silence followed, as Roy and Numa stared tensely and the humans broke off their chatter to come closer to them. ‘Hydreigon’ looked around briefly, before giving a set of quizzical frowns at the Swampert.
“Numa, ¿de qué diablos va?¹⁰”
She- She was just acting like nothing had happened! Like it wasn’t because of her that her wing was broken and she was stuck walking around like she’d gone back to being a Shelgon! Calvin and Garrett were reaching for Pokéballs now, and Marl briefly saw Numa steal a glance at her, before pulling ‘Hydreigon’ aside and speaking up in hushed tones. The Hydreigon listened along, only for her heads to briefly perk, and her faces to curl down into a set of frowns.
“¿Numa? ¿Por qué rayos haría eso? Me insulta de frente y entonces en vez de disculparse viene en son de pelea. Juega juegos estúpidos, ¿y ahora se queja de ganar premios estúpidos?¹¹”
The Swampert threw a paw over his face, as Marl let out a sharp snarl and crouched for a lunge. She didn’t need to understand ‘Hydreigon’ in order to know what was going on.
“You’re not sorry at all, are you?! she snarled. Why, I oughta-!”
‘Hydreigon’ snarled back at her as they began to circle in on each other when Marl felt a weight tug at her right wing and pull her back. It was Roy, who was giving her a serious look and trying to tug her along.
“Alright, I think we should go on that walk, Marl.”
She wrenched herself free and bared her fangs in reply. Other trainers and Pokémon nearby were starting to stare, as a few nervously backed away.
“Stay out of this Roy!” she snapped. “This is a thing between her and me-!”
A red light suddenly overtook her. And the next thing Marl knew, everything suddenly went black again.
“How on earth is this fair?!”
When Marl came to, she was in an open area just outside of the parking garage’s ground floor. There were only two Pokéballs on Calvin’s holster, meaning that everyone else was up on the top level having fun together while she was somehow the one in trouble right now.
She stamped her feet and flared out her good wing with a sharp growl as Calvin and Roy looked up at her hesitantly. The young man with the unplaceable face motioned with his arms for calm, as her Blastoise teammate shook his head with a low sigh.
“Marl, considering how your last fight with her turned out, would you really have preferred us not stepping in?” Roy said. “While your wing’s still broken on top of everything?”
Marl remained quiet in response. Just because they were correct about her being at a worse disadvantage than when she’d first fought ‘Hydreigon’ didn’t mean that they were right. And it wasn’t as if being at a disadvantage instantly would’ve meant she’d have lost, right…?
“I-I could have thought of something,” she huffed.
“Yes, and you could’ve gotten into a fight in the middle of a crowded area and trashed someone’s car or gotten a bystander hurt,” the Blastoise finished. “Even if you did ‘think of something’, what good would it have done if it got Calvin into trouble with his trainer’s license because of it?”
She… hadn’t considered that at all. Marl set her teeth on edge and looked over at her trainer and saw that he looked worried. She hung her head, as a low murmur came from her throat.
“I… I just hate feeling like this. Like I can’t do anything. I waited my whole life to get to this point and then everything just keeps going wrong,” she said. “I can’t even do anything to fix things.”
“It’ll get better, Marl,” the Blastoise said. “Just hang in there a bit longer.”
Calvin went up and petted at her head, as she looked up as he spoke soothing words to her. He reached into his bag and pulled out Kiba before setting him by her leg as Roy listened in and then spoke up after him.
“Calvin says he understands if you’re not ready to let things go, but for now, it’s best to take a moment to calm down,” the Blastoise said. “When Hydreigon’s done eating, we’ll go over and rejoin the others, okay?”
“Alright…”
She fell silent, before glumly settling to the ground beside her doll, nudging at it. All she’d wanted was to have a fun time with her friends, not to get a humiliating wound reopened in public.
… Maybe they should have just gone home after all.
“Oh hey!”
Marl craned her head up and saw Miloch and his trainer making their way down a flight of stairs. A Dragonite and an Ampharos were following, as the Feraligatr waved and made his way over much to Roy and Calvin’s blinking surprise.
“Heh, I see that we’re not the only ones who got blindsided about that ‘party’ up here not being open to the public.”
Marl hesitated, before turning her gaze away.
“I… actually got into a fight.”
Miloch briefly grimaced, before stooping down and reaching out for her.
“Oh no, with your wing broken?” he asked. “You didn’t get hurt worse, did you-?”
Miloch briefly placed a claw on her shoulder, only to suddenly pull it back with a flustered hem and haw. His trainer and teammates caught up as the Ampharos and Dragonite shot curious glances.
“Wait, is this that Salamence that you said you ran into, Miloch?” the Dragonite asked.
“Got hurt worse?” the Ampharos added. “What on earth hurt her the first time?”
Oh gods, she wasn’t going to have to explain what happened to her wing to them, too, was she? As if today hadn’t already been humiliating enough-
“Marl, are these friends of yours?”
Thankfully, Roy interrupted the direction of the conversation as he approached and traded glances between her and the others with Don. Miloch and her trainer were chattering in the background, as Miloch raised a claw and pawed at the back of his head sheepishly.
“Kinda, I guess?” he replied. “I mean, we’ve mostly just been running into each other by chance. But…”
He trailed off and looked aside.
“I guess a part of me just wanted to make sure that Marl was doing okay,” he said. “Since she seemed downright miserable earlier in the tournament.”
Marl wasn’t sure what to make of that. On one level, it bothered her to know that she probably looked more pathetic than she realized during those first few days going around with her wing broken. On the other, it was honestly somewhat relieving to know that at least some of the others who’d stopped and stared at her over the past few days were doing it because they were worried for her.
The Dragonite cleared his throat, before turning over to Roy.
“I take it you came here for the tournament, too,” he said. “Is your team still in the running?”
“I wish, we got knocked out yesterday,” Roy replied. “We’re mostly here because we’ve got a friend who’s still working his way up the ladder.”
“Aw, shame. Though if you wanted to catch our matches, we’re scheduled for later this afternoon,” the Ampharos said. “We’ve even got our seats in the lower stands open while we’re on the field. I’m sure that Don wouldn’t mind letting a friend of Miloch’s use it for a bit.”
Marl pawed at the ground and hesitated, before going over to her trainer and nudging at his side. He looked down at her as she raised her head and gave what she hoped wasn’t too pleading of an expression.
“Can… we go and see them?”
Her trainer gave a puzzled murmur, as Roy came over and pulled him aside.
“I think we can work something out, Marl,” the Blastoise said. “Give me a little bit to try and pass the message along to him.”
1. "Darn, that's almost as devastating as when some loser Pokémon tries fighting mom when she's in a bad mood. Almost."
2. "Uh, isnt this rather small for this kind of car?"
3. "This little compact? It can fit two whole Pokémon teams."
4. "Of course it can. We were inside our balls!"
5. "Fenris, Helio, stop rocking the car. It's a rental and that will tip it over."
6. "Also, since when do you care about cars being big, Fenris? Garrett doesn't even have one in Unova."
7. "He could have rented something bigger than this. ¿How the heck do he and Alberi fit inside this thing?"
8. "Mmmmm! This barbecue smells great!”
9. "Oh, you again. Seriously, shouldn't you be staying back wherever your Trainer bought space instead of walking around with your wing this damaged?"
10. "Numa, what the heck is she going on about?"
11. "Numa? Why in heavens would I do that? She insults me to my face and then rather than apologizing, comes in to pick a fight. She played stupid games and now she cries she got stupid prizes?"
2. "Uh, isnt this rather small for this kind of car?"
3. "This little compact? It can fit two whole Pokémon teams."
4. "Of course it can. We were inside our balls!"
5. "Fenris, Helio, stop rocking the car. It's a rental and that will tip it over."
6. "Also, since when do you care about cars being big, Fenris? Garrett doesn't even have one in Unova."
7. "He could have rented something bigger than this. ¿How the heck do he and Alberi fit inside this thing?"
8. "Mmmmm! This barbecue smells great!”
9. "Oh, you again. Seriously, shouldn't you be staying back wherever your Trainer bought space instead of walking around with your wing this damaged?"
10. "Numa, what the heck is she going on about?"
11. "Numa? Why in heavens would I do that? She insults me to my face and then rather than apologizing, comes in to pick a fight. She played stupid games and now she cries she got stupid prizes?"
Miloch and Don’s seats really were a lot more exciting to be in with how close they were to the edge of the battlefield… even if she and her teammates usually only got to use them for at most a match or two at a time. They found themselves paying visits to Don and his Pokémon a bit more often as he worked his way up the ranks and even brought over their other friends a few times. She’d even gotten a little clip-on pouch that slipped around her neck to hold Kiba while going around from them.
Somehow, during one of those meetups, it came out that there was a shop that sold Air Balloons as items. Marl had had prior experience with using Air Balloons to ‘fly’ when she normally couldn’t, and somehow, Calvin had gotten the idea to try it out again this time thinking that it’d give her a chance to practice flying in the square west of the stadium while her wing was still healing…
“Calvin, I look ridiculous right now.”
Except thanks to being much bigger than the last time she’d worn an Air Balloon. She wound up needing more, enough so that she lost count after the dozenth red balloon was tied to her back. She floated just off the ground of the stadium as Calvin gave a sheepish smile, and her teammate out accompanying him today—Eira—shot a sidelong glance at her.
“I thought that you wanted to not be stuck on the ground, though,” the Marowak said. “And you had fun with that Air Balloon back when you were a Bagon.”
“Eira, that was one Air Balloon and not however many this is!” the Salamence protested. “I look like that one Flying Pikachu in the tournament! And I can’t move forward with only one wing!”
Marl frowned and bobbled in place just off the ground, turning her head aside. Her trainer paused and walked around her briefly, before studying her forelegs. He motioned ahead at a patch of empty pavement, before calling out to her in his tongue.
“‘Dive forward’? Calvin, what on earth is that supposed to-?”
Marl obliged and threw her weight forward, her body sailed ahead, gliding along when she felt her claws touch the ground. At once, her eyes lit up in realization.
“Oh!”
She dug her claws in against the pavement and pulled the rest of her body along, feeling her hind legs touch the ground. Then, as her forelimbs started getting pulled up again, she lunged and sailed up about a human’s height. She tilted her good wing and tentatively moved her tail as she entered a broad, rightward bank.
She came back to a drifting stop in front of Eira and their trainer, as she blinked in stunned awe.
“It- It actually worked!” she cried.
“I had a feeling that you’d like it. And it looks like you can move around on your own, after all,” the Marowak chuckled. “For a second, I was wondering how on earth we were going to be able to tow you around when you’re quite a bit bigger than you used to be as a Bagon.”
Marl tested the ground with her foreclaws before repeating her lunge and getting airborne. Then she did it again. And again. It didn’t give her the best of control and she couldn’t keep herself from drifting down again, but she could feel the wind against her scales all the same.
Even if it wasn’t really flying, a part of her was just happy to finally be in the sky again. Even if it was still tethered to the ground.
In the middle of one of her floating jumps, she noticed Calvin and Eira suddenly turn and look around in confusion. She banked around as her trainer called out for her. She made her way back, and saw that Calvin and Eira were staring off at the sky and getting ready to leave.
“Huh? What’s going on?” the Salamence asked.
“Ugh. It looks like Jaki flew off. Again,” the Marowak grumbled. “He’d been doing that on and off through the tournament, though it’s only gotten worse since we got knocked out of the tournament.”
Still? Marl knew that Jaki had mentioned getting together a ‘murder’ to try and get an edge in the tournament, but there wasn’t any reason for him to still be doing that, right? She looked at her trainer and teammate as Eira shook her head and slung her bone over her shoulder.
“Come on, he couldn’t have gotten far,” she said. “He was just here a moment ago.”
Marl waited for the pair to set off, before giving a flummoxed look at the ground. If she just pushed off a bit softer, she could keep herself from going too far or too high at once, right?
She put her theory to the test, and much to her surprise, it seemed to work, moving her forward about a body length at a time. She lingered a bit to give time between jumps since they still caught up quite a bit of ground, but it worked out well enough… until a ball suddenly came bouncing through, chased by an Electrike in her path.
“Ack!”
Marl sharply banked to avoid colliding with the Electrike, but still drew a startled shriek nonetheless. She flailed as she drifted and spun after not latching onto the ground properly, only to finally stabilize herself. She briefly saw the Electrike running off with his tail between his legs and frowned, only for her to realize that she saw other humans and Pokémon milling about, with no sign of Eira or her trainer.
“Calvin? Eira? Where did you two go?”
“Ohai!”
Marl blinked after hearing a familiar yipping voice and turned to see Bac greeting her with his nubby paw in the air like last time. Much to her surprise, Bic and Mathias of all Pokémon were there along with the Sandshrew. Marl gave an incredulous blink as she floated just off the ground from her Air Balloons, before dubiously raising her brow.
“Wait, aren’t you three not supposed to be wandering off on your own?”
The Sandslash of the three gave a shrug back in reply.
“Mathias and I had some downtime and wanted to explore the stadium together a bit. Bac was already going around, so we figured there wasn’t any harm,” Bic replied. “Though aren’t you supposed to be with your trainer right now?”
“That wasn’t on purpose! I’m trying to get back to him, but I just got separated mid-glide!” she harrumphed. “Before I lost track of him, we were trying to find Jaki, that Honchkrow on my team. He flew off sometime while everyone wasn’t looking.”
The Gliscor perked up and gave a curious tilt of his head.
“I didn’t realize that you could glide even with your wing broken, Marl,” he said. “I take it that it’s been healing a bit?”
“It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, so I guess…” Marl replied. “But I still can’t get off the ground on my own without these Air Balloons.”
Bic flicked his ears briefly before walking in a circle around her. Marl tried to crane her head to follow after the Sandslash, since he seemed to be weirdly deep in thought for some reason. He hummed under his breath, before pointing at her with a claw.
“Can you still jump like that?” the Sandslash asked.
“Of course,” Marl replied. “How else do you think that I’ve been able to glide?”
“How long does it take you to come back down to earth afterwards when you do that?”
She blinked in response and stared at the Sandslash. That was definitely a strange question. Just where was Bic going with this?
“A few seconds to float back down, though I hadn’t really been trying to jump up high,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“I know a place higher up where we can try and see if we can find your trainer and teammate,” the Sandslash explained. “If you’re able to get off the ground at all, it’ll make getting there a lot easier.”
It turned out that Marl could jump up pretty high if she planted her legs on the ground and angled up right, high enough to make it from ledge to ledge of the stadium’s outside levels. She supposed that she ought to have been less surprised since Ryuko would use that to kick off the climbing phase of whenever she used Fly in battle. From there, it was just a matter of hooking her foreclaws against the ledge and evening out before jumping up again, which the occasional startled bystander aside, went by surprisingly smoothly.
Before she knew it, she was at the top of the stands, where the unsold seats were most common—humans apparently couldn’t see as well from taller heights and farther distances, it’d been explained to her once. She looked around, but couldn’t see any sign of Bic or the other rental Pokémon nearby.
“Bic?” she called out. “Where are you? What are we doing here? Isn’t this the top of the stands?”
“No, this is.”
She turned her head and noticed a building with a fenced-off rooftop rising up from the stands off to the left. Much to her surprise, there at the top, was Bic waving down at her, with Bac and Mathias at his side giving quizzical stares down.
“Though if I knew you’d make it up here so quickly, I’d have just hitched a ride on your back.”
She made it up here so quickly? But Bic was the one who- … Nevermind that, she was sure she could ask him how on earth he’d gotten up so far himself sometime after getting a better idea of where Jaki had gone.
“Hrmph, don’t get ahead of yourself.”
She leapt up as her Air Balloons slowed her fall and pulled herself over the fence’s edge. She steadied herself as her body floated up about a claw’s length from the ground and settled into an equilibrium as she looked around and saw cables lying around, along with a set of empty tripods up at the edge… were those meant for cameras?
“What is this place, anyways?”
“This is the top of the Press Box, where all the humans on the TV go to see the matches and talk about them,” Bic explained. “We probably can’t afford to stay here for too long since the camera crews will be coming back to set up.”
Oh, so that’s where those humans from the TV show overlooking the stadium were. Or at least they were in the building underfoot. It was a bit strange, seeing one of the places where those pictures were made. It sure looked different from what she was expecting.
“I think we might have gone a bit too high, since I don’t see how we’re-”
Marl leaned forward and pulled her body ahead when she felt her foot brush against something soft. She looked down and saw that it was a black feather, with others lying scattered here and there on the roof. She blinked, before turning her attention back to the Rental Pokémon with her.
“Whuh? What’s with all these feathers-?”
“Hey! What on earth are you doing here?!”
Bac sharply yelped and hid behind Mathias as he and Bic sharply turned their heads up. When Marl followed their attention, she quickly saw why: at least half a dozen Murkrow were descending from the rafters overhead, with a Honchkrow at their head.
The same Honchkrow that she and the rest of her teammates had been looking around for all this time.
“Jaki? Where on earth have you been?”
“Gathering my murder,” the Honchkrow replied. “I didn’t turf out the last ‘krow to rule the roost just so that way you could wreck things!”
Marl let her jaw hang open in disbelief for a moment. Jaki was still going on about getting a murder together? Just what on earth was he hoping to get from any of this?
“Jaki. You’re a trained Pokémon. And we don’t even live in this region!” she harrumphed. “We’re going to be on a ferry back home in a few days!”
There was a brief moment where the Murkrow traded blinking stares with each other. Jaki briefly noticed it, before snapping the Murkrow to attention with a sharp caw and puffing his feathers out with a tip of his head feathers.
“... So I’ll need to look into absentee management,” the Honchkrow harrumphed. “The point is, whenever I’m here, I’m ruling this roost!”
Marl rolled her eyes in response. Even if they were smaller than her, Bic and Mathias didn’t look terribly impressed themselves, and even Bac gave a puzzled tilt of his head from safely behind Mathias’ wing membranes. Bic narrowed his eyes with an unamused frown, before starting forward and raising a claw out.
“Yeah, okay buddy,” Bic said. “Let’s get you back to your trainer.”
Jaki gave a sharp peck that made the Sandslash yank his arm back, probably decently forceful from the way Bic winced from it. The Honchkrow flew back and spread his wings, narrowing his eyes with a menacing glare.
“Hrmph, it’s not like Calvin’s doing anything better right now,” the Honchkrow said. “I’ll head back in a bit. Minions, show these four the eave.”
Gods, Jaki was really letting having these ‘minions’ go to his head. Marl stepped forward and bared her teeth with a low growl. It made Bic and the others shrink away by reflex. Jaki’s ‘murder’ did much the same as the Murkrow shrank back and stared at them, trading nervous caws and laughter with each other.
“Um… are you sure, boss?” one of the Murkrow asked. “Since they’re… uh… kinda big.”
“Yeah, and so are their teeth and claws!” a second squawked.
Except, much to her annoyance, beyond a brief moment tensing his wings, Jaki didn’t look fazed at all. For a moment, Marl thought he was probably counting on being able to just fly out of the way like that prankster Murkrow from the other day, but he seemed to be studying her weirdly closely.
He walked forward and shuffled his wings, as a small smirk came across his face.
“Maybe,” the Honchkrow said. “But big teeth and claws don’t mean much if the Pokémon doesn’t use them.”
Jaki suddenly lunged at her left as Marl reflexively jumped aside as she felt something briefly tug at her neck and heard one of the balloons attached to her pop. She spun and tried to stabilize herself, a few scales closer to the ground as her breaths came hot and angry.
Jaki had tried to go for her wing! Her broken one! Because of course he would try and pull a cheap move like that to win a fight!
“Jaki, you low-!”
The words died in her mouth as she saw the pouch that had been on her neck lying unbuckled on the roof of the press box. And there, further ahead were the Murkrow staring stunned as Jaki perched on the ground… with his right talons tightly curled around her Salamence doll.
“A-Aah! Kiba! Jaki, give him back! Right now!”
“Sure. And just how many pieces would you like me to return him in?”
Marl’s breath caught in her throat as the Honchkrow narrowed his eyes back at her.
“Since if you were hoping to get him back in one, I’d suggest changing that attitude you’re giving me real quick,” he said. “How about you take those stupid balloons of yours and float a bit out of my airspace?”
She wavered as her eyes turned back to the Honchkrow. Broken wing or not, she’d surely be able to roast Jaki without really trying, but doing so with him holding Kiba? He tightened his grip on the doll as she faltered and pushed herself back.
She hung her head as everyone stared at her, most of all the Murkrow around beside Jaki.
“Wait, she’s seriously backing down over that little doll?”
“Hah! To think that’s all it takes to get the big scary dragon in line!”
They had a few cawing laughs at her plight as suddenly, Bic and the others stepped forward with sharp glares. Mathias was particularly offended, as he raised a claw with a sharp hiss.
“What on earth is wrong with you?” Mathias snapped. “You’re her teammate! You of all Pokémon should know how much that doll means to her!”
“Tch, not my problem she gets attached to literal trash,” Jaki replied, before leveling a wing at her.
“Though here’s how things are going to go,” the Honchkrow said. “You’re going to go and tell Calvin that you saw me flying off back to the Pokécenter and I’ll hold onto your little buddy here until I’m done with my murder picking up a few souvenirs from around here.”
Bic and Bac traded glances with each other as Marl started to feel moisture at the corner of her eyes. She was supposed to be strong, and here she was, unable to protect one of her own treasures from being stolen from her.
She should’ve been brave and told Jaki that she’d break his wing so he could be stuck on the ground with her. But he already had Kiba a-and…
“O-Okay… just don’t hurt him.”
Every word felt like an Icicle Spear to say, and the snickers from those stupid Murkrow only made her feel smaller and more pathetic. More than she had for a long, long time. Jaki himself seemed to be surprised, and after a moment blinking, he turned his beak up as a devious glint came over his eye.
“Actually, now that I think about it… That’s letting you off a bit easy,” Jaki mused to himself. “Nothing says that a Salamence can’t be in a Honchkrow’s murder.”
Marl could only blink, nervously wondering what Jaki meant with that. It couldn’t be...
In the meantime, Bic and Bac were hushing to each other as they kept an eye on Jaki’s minions.
“¿Ves lo que yo veo?¹” asked the Sandslash with a serious tone.
“¿Yo veo lo que tu ves?²” replied Bac, pointing a paw at the Murkrow.
… Wait, those two could speak like Unovan Pokémon, too? Neither Jaki nor the Murkrow had been paying the two Rentals attention; the Honchkrow’s focus was exclusively, sadistically reserved for her.
“Well, Marl? Busted wing aside, your face just screams ‘minion’.”
Jaki wanted her to do more for him?! Marl briefly bared her fangs only to have her attention go back to Kiba in his talons. She squirmed and felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach:
She couldn’t tell him no. Not unless if she wanted to see Kiba ripped up in front of her.
“Um, boss?” one of the Murkrow cawed.
“Once you’re all out there, you can do some work finding baubles for me, too,” he added. “You dragons have an eye for them yourselves, and that way you can cover territory away from the stadium.”
“Boss?”
The Honchkrow suddenly lost his patience and whirled around to loom over a Murkrow to his left.
“What?!”
“Th-That Sandslash’s sneaking up on you.”
Marl hadn’t seen him herself, but Bic had somehow gotten to the other side from her and suddenly ran in with a lunging slash at Jaki’s right leg. The Honchkrow let out a pained caw and pulled up as he lost his grip on the Salamence plush, just as Bac hurriedly rolled in in a ball and snatched Kiba off the ground and immediately sprung back.
Everything seemed to blur together afterwards: the Murkrow diving at Bac. Then them hurriedly flying out of the way of Mathias lunging at them. Then Jaki knocking Bic back against the fence and turning his eyes back towards Kiba in Bac’s grasp.
Marl felt her blood boil, as a single thought came to her mind, and out from her throat in a bellowing roar.
“Get your filthy beak away from him, Jaki!”
Marl lunged ahead at the Honchkrow as green dragonfire erupted along her claws. She swung and hit empty air, when suddenly a weight pulled along her back, and she heard frantic wingbeats and squawks of protest.
“Gah! Let me go, you idiot!”
Marl looked over her shoulder and saw Jaki had gotten one of his legs tangled in her Air Balloons. She tried to jump and shake him loose as he pecked at the balloons and popped a couple while trying to break free. All the while, Marl didn’t realize how close she was to the railing, until she felt it brush up against her right foreclaw.
She looked out, where there below her were the stands, and the windows to the press box.
“Wh-Whoa!”
She drifted past the windows, frantically flailing as she felt herself dropping faster as Jaki kept flapping his wings and protesting. Her eyes widened as she felt her feet hit the ground, firmly enough to force her to run ahead and struggle not to trip forward.
She panted a moment and saw that she wasn’t floating anymore. A glance back revealed that a good half of her Air Balloons were popped… and that Jaki was turning and glaring at her.
Marl whirled around as she swore she saw red in her vision and her voice came out in an angry roar.
“Jaki, I’m going to kill you!”
All of a sudden, an arc of electricity came and Jaki froze up and fell out of the air. She didn’t question it and lunged forward, as she suddenly felt weight on her tail and fell onto her plastron with an audible clack.
“Ahem.”
Marl looked up and saw an Arcanine glaring down at her, along with an Electabuzz making his way over to Jaki on the ground. And then she saw their trainers: a pair of humans in peaked caps and police uniforms, with glares that looked as sharp as their partners.
It then dawned on her that the two of them were in trouble, as her words came out in a flustered stammer.
“Um… h-hi? There’s a perfectly good explanation for this, I swear.”
Marl didn’t know that stadiums also had those little box-like stations for the police that were sometimes around in more crowded neighborhoods, and it’d been the the time since that time she’d wandered off while following Calvin to the grocery store and gotten lost as a Bagon. It was definitely the first time she’d seen it wearing a restraint of some sort. After the police and their Pokémon had come upon them, she had her Air Balloons taken away when she and Jaki were both drug along with some sort of loop on a stick around their necks held by humans and then muzzled.
The loops thankfully came off after getting to the police box as the Arcanine stayed behind to keep a stern watch over them. She gave an emphatic single warning that if they attempted to struggle, they’d spend the rest of their time together either fainted or sedated from a faceful Sleep Powder since there were no holding cells beyond the backroom.
That had been about thirty minutes ago. Now, Calvin was at a counter filling out some paperwork with her unpopped Air Balloons trapped up against the ceiling. A police officer was unmuzzling Marl and Jaki under the Arcanine’s watchful gaze… along with Roy and Eira’s, who were staring at the two of them with visibly long faces.
“How on earth did you two even get into this situation anyways?”
… It was that tone of voice that Roy took when she was in trouble. Marl quietly set her teeth on edge, before looking away and pawing at the floor ahead of her.
“I was trying to find you and Jaki was there and then he snatched Kiba from me and… things just kinda… happened.”
“Hrmph, don’t make a habit of causing incidents like this, Salamence,” the Arcanine harrumphed. “Rack up too many demerits on your trainer’s license, and he won’t be training Pokémon anymore.”
Marl… didn’t realize that things were that serious. Calvin and the officer behind the desk stopped talking as the pair looked over at her. The Police Arcanine listened in briefly, before frowning at her and Jaki and motioning at the door.
“Looks like you two are your trainer’s problem now,” the dog barked. “Go on and get out of here, I’ve got better things to do than sit here in this police box all day.”
Marl lowered her head and reflexively started off for the door, only to see Calvin approaching with a sharp frown, Pokéball in hand. She quietly gulped as he walked up, only to look past her. She followed his gaze, and saw Jaki behind her, motioning at her with an outstretched wing.
“For the record, she started it,” the Honchkrow insisted. “If she hadn’t come along, I’d be commanding my minions-”
Calvin tapped the Pokéball as Jaki melted away into red light and vanished into it. He set it aside, before reaching for another that she recognized as her own. Marl lowered her head. She was in trouble, so even with her hurt wing, it was only natural that she’d be dealt with like Jaki was.
Except, before her trainer could return her. Roy suddenly reached over and tapped his arm.
“Calvin.”
The Blastoise motioned off at her splinted wing and for a moment, the man with the unplaceable face froze. He put the Pokéball away and sighed, before taking a moment to split the remaining balloons between her and Roy and giving a gruff grunt to come along. Marl hesitated briefly, but obliged as they slipped out of the police box and into the stadium’s hall.
She gave a puzzled tilt of her head at her Blastoise teammate. He and the others were obviously unhappy with her, so then why did they just leave her out like this?
“Consider yourself lucky that you need to stay out of your Pokéball as much as possible to help your wing heal faster,” Roy said. “You’d be taking a break inside like Jaki if you weren’t.”
Oh. She supposed that explained things. Even if it made her worried again. Just because she wasn’t being recalled didn’t mean that she wasn’t in trouble, and there was one punishment in particular that made her uneasy. One that would take her far, far away from this place and her teammates…
“Is… Is Calvin going to bench us?” Marl stammered.
“He probably rightfully ought to, but no. Or at least not this time,” Roy replied. “You’re definitely on thin ice though, since those fines you two racked up weren’t exactly cheap.”
“That might have something to do with the way we found you,” Eira chimed in. “You and Jaki might have already gotten punishment enough from all this.”
… ‘Punishment enough’?
“Wait, we did?”
Eira motioned up with a bone as Marl looked up at a television that had been held in place on a ceiling stand. There was a video of a pair of humans from that same program as that ‘pre-show’ a few days ago. And then there was her with all those red balloons tied to her, falling along with Jaki flailing and squawking all the while. The humans turned their attention and the camera moved along to show the two landing and then being apprehended by the police… which was somehow even less dignified than Marl had remembered.
Marl’s eyes suddenly widened. This was a TV, then… that video on the screen…
“H-How many people saw me like that?”
“You two made it onto the big screen, so at least an entire stadium’s worth.”
Marl’s jaw flopped open as she cringed and hung her head. She was never going to live this down, was she?
“Ohai!”
She looked up ahead and saw Bac approaching with his paw held up in greeting again, along with Alberi and Rinaldo running after him.
“¡Pero rayos! ¿Está yéndose de nuevo? ¿Qué diantres quiere ahora?³”
“It took us a little bit to find you, but you left your friend on top of the press box!”
Roy tilted his head at the remark and peered down with a quiet frown.
“Wait, her friend-?”
The Sandshrew went and tugged at his trainer’s pant leg, as Alberi came forward and spoke to Calvin briefly. Marl noticed that her pouch was in his hands… along with Kiba.
“Ah, you found him!”
She went over and nudged at her stuffed companion. Letting out a quiet rumble.
… Even if things hadn’t gone all that well today, Marl supposed she couldn’t complain too much about how they turned out in the end.
Somehow, during one of those meetups, it came out that there was a shop that sold Air Balloons as items. Marl had had prior experience with using Air Balloons to ‘fly’ when she normally couldn’t, and somehow, Calvin had gotten the idea to try it out again this time thinking that it’d give her a chance to practice flying in the square west of the stadium while her wing was still healing…
“Calvin, I look ridiculous right now.”
Except thanks to being much bigger than the last time she’d worn an Air Balloon. She wound up needing more, enough so that she lost count after the dozenth red balloon was tied to her back. She floated just off the ground of the stadium as Calvin gave a sheepish smile, and her teammate out accompanying him today—Eira—shot a sidelong glance at her.
“I thought that you wanted to not be stuck on the ground, though,” the Marowak said. “And you had fun with that Air Balloon back when you were a Bagon.”
“Eira, that was one Air Balloon and not however many this is!” the Salamence protested. “I look like that one Flying Pikachu in the tournament! And I can’t move forward with only one wing!”
Marl frowned and bobbled in place just off the ground, turning her head aside. Her trainer paused and walked around her briefly, before studying her forelegs. He motioned ahead at a patch of empty pavement, before calling out to her in his tongue.
“‘Dive forward’? Calvin, what on earth is that supposed to-?”
Marl obliged and threw her weight forward, her body sailed ahead, gliding along when she felt her claws touch the ground. At once, her eyes lit up in realization.
“Oh!”
She dug her claws in against the pavement and pulled the rest of her body along, feeling her hind legs touch the ground. Then, as her forelimbs started getting pulled up again, she lunged and sailed up about a human’s height. She tilted her good wing and tentatively moved her tail as she entered a broad, rightward bank.
She came back to a drifting stop in front of Eira and their trainer, as she blinked in stunned awe.
“It- It actually worked!” she cried.
“I had a feeling that you’d like it. And it looks like you can move around on your own, after all,” the Marowak chuckled. “For a second, I was wondering how on earth we were going to be able to tow you around when you’re quite a bit bigger than you used to be as a Bagon.”
Marl tested the ground with her foreclaws before repeating her lunge and getting airborne. Then she did it again. And again. It didn’t give her the best of control and she couldn’t keep herself from drifting down again, but she could feel the wind against her scales all the same.
Even if it wasn’t really flying, a part of her was just happy to finally be in the sky again. Even if it was still tethered to the ground.
In the middle of one of her floating jumps, she noticed Calvin and Eira suddenly turn and look around in confusion. She banked around as her trainer called out for her. She made her way back, and saw that Calvin and Eira were staring off at the sky and getting ready to leave.
“Huh? What’s going on?” the Salamence asked.
“Ugh. It looks like Jaki flew off. Again,” the Marowak grumbled. “He’d been doing that on and off through the tournament, though it’s only gotten worse since we got knocked out of the tournament.”
Still? Marl knew that Jaki had mentioned getting together a ‘murder’ to try and get an edge in the tournament, but there wasn’t any reason for him to still be doing that, right? She looked at her trainer and teammate as Eira shook her head and slung her bone over her shoulder.
“Come on, he couldn’t have gotten far,” she said. “He was just here a moment ago.”
Marl waited for the pair to set off, before giving a flummoxed look at the ground. If she just pushed off a bit softer, she could keep herself from going too far or too high at once, right?
She put her theory to the test, and much to her surprise, it seemed to work, moving her forward about a body length at a time. She lingered a bit to give time between jumps since they still caught up quite a bit of ground, but it worked out well enough… until a ball suddenly came bouncing through, chased by an Electrike in her path.
“Ack!”
Marl sharply banked to avoid colliding with the Electrike, but still drew a startled shriek nonetheless. She flailed as she drifted and spun after not latching onto the ground properly, only to finally stabilize herself. She briefly saw the Electrike running off with his tail between his legs and frowned, only for her to realize that she saw other humans and Pokémon milling about, with no sign of Eira or her trainer.
“Calvin? Eira? Where did you two go?”
“Ohai!”
Marl blinked after hearing a familiar yipping voice and turned to see Bac greeting her with his nubby paw in the air like last time. Much to her surprise, Bic and Mathias of all Pokémon were there along with the Sandshrew. Marl gave an incredulous blink as she floated just off the ground from her Air Balloons, before dubiously raising her brow.
“Wait, aren’t you three not supposed to be wandering off on your own?”
The Sandslash of the three gave a shrug back in reply.
“Mathias and I had some downtime and wanted to explore the stadium together a bit. Bac was already going around, so we figured there wasn’t any harm,” Bic replied. “Though aren’t you supposed to be with your trainer right now?”
“That wasn’t on purpose! I’m trying to get back to him, but I just got separated mid-glide!” she harrumphed. “Before I lost track of him, we were trying to find Jaki, that Honchkrow on my team. He flew off sometime while everyone wasn’t looking.”
The Gliscor perked up and gave a curious tilt of his head.
“I didn’t realize that you could glide even with your wing broken, Marl,” he said. “I take it that it’s been healing a bit?”
“It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, so I guess…” Marl replied. “But I still can’t get off the ground on my own without these Air Balloons.”
Bic flicked his ears briefly before walking in a circle around her. Marl tried to crane her head to follow after the Sandslash, since he seemed to be weirdly deep in thought for some reason. He hummed under his breath, before pointing at her with a claw.
“Can you still jump like that?” the Sandslash asked.
“Of course,” Marl replied. “How else do you think that I’ve been able to glide?”
“How long does it take you to come back down to earth afterwards when you do that?”
She blinked in response and stared at the Sandslash. That was definitely a strange question. Just where was Bic going with this?
“A few seconds to float back down, though I hadn’t really been trying to jump up high,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“I know a place higher up where we can try and see if we can find your trainer and teammate,” the Sandslash explained. “If you’re able to get off the ground at all, it’ll make getting there a lot easier.”
It turned out that Marl could jump up pretty high if she planted her legs on the ground and angled up right, high enough to make it from ledge to ledge of the stadium’s outside levels. She supposed that she ought to have been less surprised since Ryuko would use that to kick off the climbing phase of whenever she used Fly in battle. From there, it was just a matter of hooking her foreclaws against the ledge and evening out before jumping up again, which the occasional startled bystander aside, went by surprisingly smoothly.
Before she knew it, she was at the top of the stands, where the unsold seats were most common—humans apparently couldn’t see as well from taller heights and farther distances, it’d been explained to her once. She looked around, but couldn’t see any sign of Bic or the other rental Pokémon nearby.
“Bic?” she called out. “Where are you? What are we doing here? Isn’t this the top of the stands?”
“No, this is.”
She turned her head and noticed a building with a fenced-off rooftop rising up from the stands off to the left. Much to her surprise, there at the top, was Bic waving down at her, with Bac and Mathias at his side giving quizzical stares down.
“Though if I knew you’d make it up here so quickly, I’d have just hitched a ride on your back.”
She made it up here so quickly? But Bic was the one who- … Nevermind that, she was sure she could ask him how on earth he’d gotten up so far himself sometime after getting a better idea of where Jaki had gone.
“Hrmph, don’t get ahead of yourself.”
She leapt up as her Air Balloons slowed her fall and pulled herself over the fence’s edge. She steadied herself as her body floated up about a claw’s length from the ground and settled into an equilibrium as she looked around and saw cables lying around, along with a set of empty tripods up at the edge… were those meant for cameras?
“What is this place, anyways?”
“This is the top of the Press Box, where all the humans on the TV go to see the matches and talk about them,” Bic explained. “We probably can’t afford to stay here for too long since the camera crews will be coming back to set up.”
Oh, so that’s where those humans from the TV show overlooking the stadium were. Or at least they were in the building underfoot. It was a bit strange, seeing one of the places where those pictures were made. It sure looked different from what she was expecting.
“I think we might have gone a bit too high, since I don’t see how we’re-”
Marl leaned forward and pulled her body ahead when she felt her foot brush against something soft. She looked down and saw that it was a black feather, with others lying scattered here and there on the roof. She blinked, before turning her attention back to the Rental Pokémon with her.
“Whuh? What’s with all these feathers-?”
“Hey! What on earth are you doing here?!”
Bac sharply yelped and hid behind Mathias as he and Bic sharply turned their heads up. When Marl followed their attention, she quickly saw why: at least half a dozen Murkrow were descending from the rafters overhead, with a Honchkrow at their head.
The same Honchkrow that she and the rest of her teammates had been looking around for all this time.
“Jaki? Where on earth have you been?”
“Gathering my murder,” the Honchkrow replied. “I didn’t turf out the last ‘krow to rule the roost just so that way you could wreck things!”
Marl let her jaw hang open in disbelief for a moment. Jaki was still going on about getting a murder together? Just what on earth was he hoping to get from any of this?
“Jaki. You’re a trained Pokémon. And we don’t even live in this region!” she harrumphed. “We’re going to be on a ferry back home in a few days!”
There was a brief moment where the Murkrow traded blinking stares with each other. Jaki briefly noticed it, before snapping the Murkrow to attention with a sharp caw and puffing his feathers out with a tip of his head feathers.
“... So I’ll need to look into absentee management,” the Honchkrow harrumphed. “The point is, whenever I’m here, I’m ruling this roost!”
Marl rolled her eyes in response. Even if they were smaller than her, Bic and Mathias didn’t look terribly impressed themselves, and even Bac gave a puzzled tilt of his head from safely behind Mathias’ wing membranes. Bic narrowed his eyes with an unamused frown, before starting forward and raising a claw out.
“Yeah, okay buddy,” Bic said. “Let’s get you back to your trainer.”
Jaki gave a sharp peck that made the Sandslash yank his arm back, probably decently forceful from the way Bic winced from it. The Honchkrow flew back and spread his wings, narrowing his eyes with a menacing glare.
“Hrmph, it’s not like Calvin’s doing anything better right now,” the Honchkrow said. “I’ll head back in a bit. Minions, show these four the eave.”
Gods, Jaki was really letting having these ‘minions’ go to his head. Marl stepped forward and bared her teeth with a low growl. It made Bic and the others shrink away by reflex. Jaki’s ‘murder’ did much the same as the Murkrow shrank back and stared at them, trading nervous caws and laughter with each other.
“Um… are you sure, boss?” one of the Murkrow asked. “Since they’re… uh… kinda big.”
“Yeah, and so are their teeth and claws!” a second squawked.
Except, much to her annoyance, beyond a brief moment tensing his wings, Jaki didn’t look fazed at all. For a moment, Marl thought he was probably counting on being able to just fly out of the way like that prankster Murkrow from the other day, but he seemed to be studying her weirdly closely.
He walked forward and shuffled his wings, as a small smirk came across his face.
“Maybe,” the Honchkrow said. “But big teeth and claws don’t mean much if the Pokémon doesn’t use them.”
Jaki suddenly lunged at her left as Marl reflexively jumped aside as she felt something briefly tug at her neck and heard one of the balloons attached to her pop. She spun and tried to stabilize herself, a few scales closer to the ground as her breaths came hot and angry.
Jaki had tried to go for her wing! Her broken one! Because of course he would try and pull a cheap move like that to win a fight!
“Jaki, you low-!”
The words died in her mouth as she saw the pouch that had been on her neck lying unbuckled on the roof of the press box. And there, further ahead were the Murkrow staring stunned as Jaki perched on the ground… with his right talons tightly curled around her Salamence doll.
“A-Aah! Kiba! Jaki, give him back! Right now!”
“Sure. And just how many pieces would you like me to return him in?”
Marl’s breath caught in her throat as the Honchkrow narrowed his eyes back at her.
“Since if you were hoping to get him back in one, I’d suggest changing that attitude you’re giving me real quick,” he said. “How about you take those stupid balloons of yours and float a bit out of my airspace?”
She wavered as her eyes turned back to the Honchkrow. Broken wing or not, she’d surely be able to roast Jaki without really trying, but doing so with him holding Kiba? He tightened his grip on the doll as she faltered and pushed herself back.
She hung her head as everyone stared at her, most of all the Murkrow around beside Jaki.
“Wait, she’s seriously backing down over that little doll?”
“Hah! To think that’s all it takes to get the big scary dragon in line!”
They had a few cawing laughs at her plight as suddenly, Bic and the others stepped forward with sharp glares. Mathias was particularly offended, as he raised a claw with a sharp hiss.
“What on earth is wrong with you?” Mathias snapped. “You’re her teammate! You of all Pokémon should know how much that doll means to her!”
“Tch, not my problem she gets attached to literal trash,” Jaki replied, before leveling a wing at her.
“Though here’s how things are going to go,” the Honchkrow said. “You’re going to go and tell Calvin that you saw me flying off back to the Pokécenter and I’ll hold onto your little buddy here until I’m done with my murder picking up a few souvenirs from around here.”
Bic and Bac traded glances with each other as Marl started to feel moisture at the corner of her eyes. She was supposed to be strong, and here she was, unable to protect one of her own treasures from being stolen from her.
She should’ve been brave and told Jaki that she’d break his wing so he could be stuck on the ground with her. But he already had Kiba a-and…
“O-Okay… just don’t hurt him.”
Every word felt like an Icicle Spear to say, and the snickers from those stupid Murkrow only made her feel smaller and more pathetic. More than she had for a long, long time. Jaki himself seemed to be surprised, and after a moment blinking, he turned his beak up as a devious glint came over his eye.
“Actually, now that I think about it… That’s letting you off a bit easy,” Jaki mused to himself. “Nothing says that a Salamence can’t be in a Honchkrow’s murder.”
Marl could only blink, nervously wondering what Jaki meant with that. It couldn’t be...
In the meantime, Bic and Bac were hushing to each other as they kept an eye on Jaki’s minions.
“¿Ves lo que yo veo?¹” asked the Sandslash with a serious tone.
“¿Yo veo lo que tu ves?²” replied Bac, pointing a paw at the Murkrow.
… Wait, those two could speak like Unovan Pokémon, too? Neither Jaki nor the Murkrow had been paying the two Rentals attention; the Honchkrow’s focus was exclusively, sadistically reserved for her.
“Well, Marl? Busted wing aside, your face just screams ‘minion’.”
Jaki wanted her to do more for him?! Marl briefly bared her fangs only to have her attention go back to Kiba in his talons. She squirmed and felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach:
She couldn’t tell him no. Not unless if she wanted to see Kiba ripped up in front of her.
“Um, boss?” one of the Murkrow cawed.
“Once you’re all out there, you can do some work finding baubles for me, too,” he added. “You dragons have an eye for them yourselves, and that way you can cover territory away from the stadium.”
“Boss?”
The Honchkrow suddenly lost his patience and whirled around to loom over a Murkrow to his left.
“What?!”
“Th-That Sandslash’s sneaking up on you.”
Marl hadn’t seen him herself, but Bic had somehow gotten to the other side from her and suddenly ran in with a lunging slash at Jaki’s right leg. The Honchkrow let out a pained caw and pulled up as he lost his grip on the Salamence plush, just as Bac hurriedly rolled in in a ball and snatched Kiba off the ground and immediately sprung back.
Everything seemed to blur together afterwards: the Murkrow diving at Bac. Then them hurriedly flying out of the way of Mathias lunging at them. Then Jaki knocking Bic back against the fence and turning his eyes back towards Kiba in Bac’s grasp.
Marl felt her blood boil, as a single thought came to her mind, and out from her throat in a bellowing roar.
“Get your filthy beak away from him, Jaki!”
Marl lunged ahead at the Honchkrow as green dragonfire erupted along her claws. She swung and hit empty air, when suddenly a weight pulled along her back, and she heard frantic wingbeats and squawks of protest.
“Gah! Let me go, you idiot!”
Marl looked over her shoulder and saw Jaki had gotten one of his legs tangled in her Air Balloons. She tried to jump and shake him loose as he pecked at the balloons and popped a couple while trying to break free. All the while, Marl didn’t realize how close she was to the railing, until she felt it brush up against her right foreclaw.
She looked out, where there below her were the stands, and the windows to the press box.
“Wh-Whoa!”
She drifted past the windows, frantically flailing as she felt herself dropping faster as Jaki kept flapping his wings and protesting. Her eyes widened as she felt her feet hit the ground, firmly enough to force her to run ahead and struggle not to trip forward.
She panted a moment and saw that she wasn’t floating anymore. A glance back revealed that a good half of her Air Balloons were popped… and that Jaki was turning and glaring at her.
Marl whirled around as she swore she saw red in her vision and her voice came out in an angry roar.
“Jaki, I’m going to kill you!”
All of a sudden, an arc of electricity came and Jaki froze up and fell out of the air. She didn’t question it and lunged forward, as she suddenly felt weight on her tail and fell onto her plastron with an audible clack.
“Ahem.”
Marl looked up and saw an Arcanine glaring down at her, along with an Electabuzz making his way over to Jaki on the ground. And then she saw their trainers: a pair of humans in peaked caps and police uniforms, with glares that looked as sharp as their partners.
It then dawned on her that the two of them were in trouble, as her words came out in a flustered stammer.
“Um… h-hi? There’s a perfectly good explanation for this, I swear.”
Marl didn’t know that stadiums also had those little box-like stations for the police that were sometimes around in more crowded neighborhoods, and it’d been the the time since that time she’d wandered off while following Calvin to the grocery store and gotten lost as a Bagon. It was definitely the first time she’d seen it wearing a restraint of some sort. After the police and their Pokémon had come upon them, she had her Air Balloons taken away when she and Jaki were both drug along with some sort of loop on a stick around their necks held by humans and then muzzled.
The loops thankfully came off after getting to the police box as the Arcanine stayed behind to keep a stern watch over them. She gave an emphatic single warning that if they attempted to struggle, they’d spend the rest of their time together either fainted or sedated from a faceful Sleep Powder since there were no holding cells beyond the backroom.
That had been about thirty minutes ago. Now, Calvin was at a counter filling out some paperwork with her unpopped Air Balloons trapped up against the ceiling. A police officer was unmuzzling Marl and Jaki under the Arcanine’s watchful gaze… along with Roy and Eira’s, who were staring at the two of them with visibly long faces.
“How on earth did you two even get into this situation anyways?”
… It was that tone of voice that Roy took when she was in trouble. Marl quietly set her teeth on edge, before looking away and pawing at the floor ahead of her.
“I was trying to find you and Jaki was there and then he snatched Kiba from me and… things just kinda… happened.”
“Hrmph, don’t make a habit of causing incidents like this, Salamence,” the Arcanine harrumphed. “Rack up too many demerits on your trainer’s license, and he won’t be training Pokémon anymore.”
Marl… didn’t realize that things were that serious. Calvin and the officer behind the desk stopped talking as the pair looked over at her. The Police Arcanine listened in briefly, before frowning at her and Jaki and motioning at the door.
“Looks like you two are your trainer’s problem now,” the dog barked. “Go on and get out of here, I’ve got better things to do than sit here in this police box all day.”
Marl lowered her head and reflexively started off for the door, only to see Calvin approaching with a sharp frown, Pokéball in hand. She quietly gulped as he walked up, only to look past her. She followed his gaze, and saw Jaki behind her, motioning at her with an outstretched wing.
“For the record, she started it,” the Honchkrow insisted. “If she hadn’t come along, I’d be commanding my minions-”
Calvin tapped the Pokéball as Jaki melted away into red light and vanished into it. He set it aside, before reaching for another that she recognized as her own. Marl lowered her head. She was in trouble, so even with her hurt wing, it was only natural that she’d be dealt with like Jaki was.
Except, before her trainer could return her. Roy suddenly reached over and tapped his arm.
“Calvin.”
The Blastoise motioned off at her splinted wing and for a moment, the man with the unplaceable face froze. He put the Pokéball away and sighed, before taking a moment to split the remaining balloons between her and Roy and giving a gruff grunt to come along. Marl hesitated briefly, but obliged as they slipped out of the police box and into the stadium’s hall.
She gave a puzzled tilt of her head at her Blastoise teammate. He and the others were obviously unhappy with her, so then why did they just leave her out like this?
“Consider yourself lucky that you need to stay out of your Pokéball as much as possible to help your wing heal faster,” Roy said. “You’d be taking a break inside like Jaki if you weren’t.”
Oh. She supposed that explained things. Even if it made her worried again. Just because she wasn’t being recalled didn’t mean that she wasn’t in trouble, and there was one punishment in particular that made her uneasy. One that would take her far, far away from this place and her teammates…
“Is… Is Calvin going to bench us?” Marl stammered.
“He probably rightfully ought to, but no. Or at least not this time,” Roy replied. “You’re definitely on thin ice though, since those fines you two racked up weren’t exactly cheap.”
“That might have something to do with the way we found you,” Eira chimed in. “You and Jaki might have already gotten punishment enough from all this.”
… ‘Punishment enough’?
“Wait, we did?”
Eira motioned up with a bone as Marl looked up at a television that had been held in place on a ceiling stand. There was a video of a pair of humans from that same program as that ‘pre-show’ a few days ago. And then there was her with all those red balloons tied to her, falling along with Jaki flailing and squawking all the while. The humans turned their attention and the camera moved along to show the two landing and then being apprehended by the police… which was somehow even less dignified than Marl had remembered.
Marl’s eyes suddenly widened. This was a TV, then… that video on the screen…
“H-How many people saw me like that?”
“You two made it onto the big screen, so at least an entire stadium’s worth.”
Marl’s jaw flopped open as she cringed and hung her head. She was never going to live this down, was she?
“Ohai!”
She looked up ahead and saw Bac approaching with his paw held up in greeting again, along with Alberi and Rinaldo running after him.
“¡Pero rayos! ¿Está yéndose de nuevo? ¿Qué diantres quiere ahora?³”
“It took us a little bit to find you, but you left your friend on top of the press box!”
Roy tilted his head at the remark and peered down with a quiet frown.
“Wait, her friend-?”
The Sandshrew went and tugged at his trainer’s pant leg, as Alberi came forward and spoke to Calvin briefly. Marl noticed that her pouch was in his hands… along with Kiba.
“Ah, you found him!”
She went over and nudged at her stuffed companion. Letting out a quiet rumble.
… Even if things hadn’t gone all that well today, Marl supposed she couldn’t complain too much about how they turned out in the end.
1. "Do you see what I see?"
2. "Do I see what you see?"
3. "Oh for crying out loud! Wandering off again? What on earth does he want this time?"
2. "Do I see what you see?"
3. "Oh for crying out loud! Wandering off again? What on earth does he want this time?"
It was morning again, though this time, instead of blacking out, Marl could finally see the simulated mountains and crags in her Pokéball again… along with the fact that they hadn’t gone to the bus stop as normal but instead to some park. She wasn’t fully sure what was happening until she was let out and found herself in an open space.
And then, after prodding at her wing joint and discovering it didn’t hurt anymore, her trainer told the words she’d been waiting the entire tournament to hear:
That her splint was finally coming off.
She felt her trainer undo her splint little by little with her teammates all gathered together. Aoi and Rako were also there. Even Jaki was present, too, with his left leg tethered to one of Aries’ paws much to the latter’s grumbling displeasure.
“Do I really need to be here like this? This is demeaning-”
“Yes, now hush. And I will break out the Thunder Wave to keep you in line if I have to, Jaki.”
Marl couldn’t help but hide a smirk at Honchkrow’s grumbling. So there was a silver lining to all those trainers and Pokémon noticing her from the TV broadcast a couple days ago. The last of the splint came loose as Calvin pulled it away and Marl beat her wings, glancing at her left wing as it flexed back and forth properly, without it hurting.
She felt a pat at her neck and saw her trainer looking up at her, saying things in that tongue of his.
That he was sorry if he hadn’t been there for her enough lately, and that he was happy to see her well again.
She pulled her trainer in with the crick of her neck and her left wing, embracing him with a content growl. She… still wasn’t happy about the whole ordeal about her evolution, but now more than ever, she was convinced that he’d be there for her…
Well, barring a freak incident, but she would make sure to get Calvin in line to avoid that in the future. She let go, as her teammates traded murmurs with one another. Then Roy came up, grinning as Calvin said something that she missed and the Blastoise then pointed up with a claw.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Roy said. “Go ahead, spread your wings a bit, Marl.”
She beat her wings and jumped, her heart fluttering in her chest as she rose higher and higher. She made it to about the treetops and pushed herself forward, her eyes lighting up as at long last, she was flying again.
Marl suddenly felt an ache spread over her left wing’s joint. Her flight wobbled briefly, which made her hesitate before going higher. It wasn’t consistent, but the ache would come and go, and linger a bit longer as she kept beating it.
She came back down for a landing much to her teammates’ confusion and cast a worried glance at her wing. Eira stepped ahead, and gave a puzzled tilt of her head up at her.
“Back on the ground so soon, Marl?”
“It’s my left wing,” she said. “It feels stiff.”
She tried flexing it again, and the feeling came back. She set her teeth on edge with a quiet grimace, before hanging her head with a low murmur.
“I don’t get it, I thought that they said that my wing was all healed,” she said. “So why am I not flying like I did on the days right after I evolved?”
There was a moment of blinking silence, before Roy pawed at the back of his head with a quiet hem and haw.
“... Right, I suppose we should’ve seen this coming,” he said. “But remember what happened that time when you broke your leg and got unsplinted for the first time, Marl?”
Her mind turned back to the time when she’d jumped from the bedroom window and landed wrong on her leg. Even after her bones healed back then and the splint she wore then was taken off, she still hobbled along and struggled to keep up with her teammates for a few days.
Roy didn’t mean that she had to go through that again, did she?
“But this is a wing and not a leg,” she said.
“It’s the same idea,” the Blastoise explained. “It’s a limb you haven’t used in a while, so it needs to be put back through its paces a bit.”
Marl hung her head with a low whine. When she imagined evolving for the first time when she was younger, she thought that she’d be able to wheel about free with the wind. She’d already had a taste of that, so why couldn’t things just go back to that already?
She felt a paw at her neck and looked up to see Calvin and Roy had come up again. Her trainer said something about flying in a soothing-sounding tone that she didn’t quite catch, before
“Calvin says that we can spend some time working on your flight later today,” he said. “Though for now, we should be getting over to the stadium. The day’s matches should be posted right about now.”
The bus ride back to stadium came and went in a blur, even if it was a bit strange to Marl to finally be able to see the entire journey through the simulated sky again. Before she knew it, her neck pouch with Kiba was back on and she and her teammates were gathered in front of a bank of screens. Garrett, Sessen, and Alberi were there too, reviewing pictures of the trainers that would be facing off down each other, much-thinned from the numbers the tournament had started out with.
That didn’t surprise her or her teammates, what did was discovering who Garrett’s opponent just was.
“That’s going to be quite a battle for those new teammates of yours,” Roy murmured. “You’re sure they can handle it, Numa?”
“We’ll find out one way or another for sure,” Numa replied. “Though Garrett hadn’t exactly lost his edge after moving, so I’m sure they’ll do fine.”
It was Don, Miloch’s trainer. Marl quietly chewed the inside of her cheek and looked on blankly at the listing, all as her teammates went up to Garrett to cheer him on.
“Good luck out there,” Aries said. “I know that you’ll do well.”
“Yeah, knock ‘em dead!” Eira chuckled.
Marl fell quiet and looked away with a low hum. From the corner of her eyes, she briefly saw Aoi’s feelers on her head stand on end, as the Lucario went up and pawed at her shoulder.
“Is something wrong, Marl? You feel weirdly conflicted right now.”
Marl hesitated, and idly scratched a foreclaw against the ground. She supposed that Lucario really did have a thing for sensing emotions, even if she wasn’t sure how much she wanted Aoi to know about it.
“It’s just… I don’t want Garrett and his team to lose, but…”
Marl trailed off after hearing a cheer a little ways down. It was Don, with his team out… including Miloch. They didn’t seem to notice her, but maybe that was for the best.
She wasn’t sure what she’d say if she had to choose one or the other to cheer for on the spot.
Marl noticed orange and cream fur in her field of vision, as she saw Rako saunter past her and look back with a smarmy grin.
“Oh, so you like him-”
She threw a claw forward and stomped on his tails. Hard. The Floatzel yelped and hurriedly scurried off after she let go, as Aoi rolled her eyes with a muttering “What did you expect?” under her breath. Further off on the left side, Marl briefly saw Rinaldo and Numa glancing over, before the Nidorino gave a puzzled flick of his ears and poked at the Swampert.
“¿De qué fue todo eso?¹”
“Él le gusta en serio.²"
That one got a chuckle out of the Nidorino, who shook his head and gave that same impish smile he’d had on the day she found Kiba with Mathias.
“Ah sí, y ella a él también.³”
… She could already tell that she didn’t want to know what either of the two had been talking about. She turned back to Aoi, and gave an uneasy fidget of her wings as she tripped over the words in her mouth.
“It’s just, Don’s Miloch’s trainer, and he’s been nothing but nice to me while we were here this tournament, and…”
She trailed off and looked away, when she heard approaching footsteps and felt a pat at her wing’s shoulder. It was Calvin, and he sounded worried about her. Roy was close behind him and looked off briefly at Don in the background, and then back at her.
“It’s alright, Marl. Just treat it like a match between friends,” he insisted. “Win or lose, we can be happy for both of them.”
… Right, she supposed there was nothing keeping her from wishing both sides well. She watched as Don recalled the bulk of his team, leaving Miloch out to continue off with him deeper into the crowd, as she murmured quietly after them.
“Good luck out there, Miloch.”
After a day where it felt like she had Butterfree in her stomach, it finally came time for the match between Garrett and Dom. The battles had been one pitched fight after the next as the two sides wore each other down and thinned each other’s ranks.
“Yah!”
Marl snapped to attention as a watery tackle caught that Volcarona from Garrett’s team and sent him crashing to earth on the ground. Three uneasy seconds passed, before the stands got up in cheers and Garrett returned the Volcarona back to his Pokéball.
For a moment, she wasn’t sure if Miloch would’ve pulled through the battle. He was visibly fatigued, and there was a prominent burn running along his arm he’d picked up while making contact with one of the Volcarona’s wings, but he’d emerged victorious…
Except, as Garrett reaching for a Pokéball on his holster reminded, there was still one last Pokémon left: ‘Hydreigon’.
Tagg let her out of her Pokéball as lingering static danced on ‘Hydreigon’s plumes and hide. Even so, the dragon still put on a show of defiance, and while winded herself, bellowed out in challenge loud enough for some of the spectators with more sensitive hearing to flinch.
Since of all the Pokémon who would have to decide this match, it just had to be her.
“Wow, this one really is going to come down to the wire,” Aries said.
“One ‘mon’s burned while the other’s paralyzed,” Rako mused. “My money’s on the fast one there.”
“Don’t be so sure, Rako,” Aoi counter. “Don’t you remember how that Hydreigon tanked that Dragon Claw from Marl a few days ago?”
Marl frowned and shot a sidelong glance at Aoi. She really could’ve done without the reminder. A pair of battlecries turned her attention back on the field, where Miloch was already charging ‘Hydreigon’ as bluish dragonfire built in her mouths.
He jumped ahead, ice wreathing his fangs as he bit down on her shoulder of her central neck, drawing a pained bellow. For a second, the dragonfire in the Dragon-type’s mouths wavered, before she spat up a Dragon Pulse from her right head. It knocked Miloch off, as she followed with another gout of dragonfire from her left, and then finally one from her central head that sent him tumbling back.
Marl gasped and watched intently as Miloch rolled over and braced himself on his feet and claws, panting for air as she waited for him to get up. Except, he never did. His strength left him, as he slumped over onto his side.
The victory buzzer sounded and the stands broke into cheers as they always did, except Marl just couldn’t find it in her to be excited.
“Ugh, of course it’d end like this.”
She laid on the ground and lowered her head with a sullen mutter. The cheers continued on a bit as the stands started to thin out already, when she felt a nudge at her wing. It was her trainer stooped down beside her, while Roy looked down at her from the side with a small smile.
“Don’t be upset, Marl,” he said. “Both Garrett and Dom’s teams worked hard to get here and things just broke Garrett’s way at the end.”
“I guess, but I’d still have preferred Miloch to win over a loss like that”.
She felt her trainer’s fingers cup under her chin and scratch, as he spoke to her. She blinked a bit, before getting up with a puzzled tilt of her head.
“Huh? The Pokécenter here at the stadium? What are you getting at, Calvin?”
In hindsight, Marl probably should’ve seen it coming from Calvin’s mention of wanting to go to the on-site Pokécenter that he’d want to go and give congratulations to Garrett.
… And of course, as the last Pokémon still standing at the end of the match, that meant that ‘Hydreigon’ got the bulk of the attention while everyone was waiting on the rest of his team to be discharged from their post-treatment checkups.
“Hey, good work out there!” Rako cheered. “For a second, I thought that you were as good as lost at the very end.”
“Yeah, I’m honestly impressed by how much determination you had to just push through being paralyzed like that.”
Numa was there to translate things, which naturally made ‘Hydreigon’ have a swell of pride when the words reached her ears in ones she could understand. That was all fine and great aside from the fact that Marl didn’t want to be anywhere near her.
She sulked at the far end of the Pokécenter alongside Roy, looking on at the others from a distance with her head lying against the ground.
“Roy, did I really need to be out for this?”
“I mean, if you really don’t want to be, I suppose that there’s nothing keeping you from going back into your Pokéball,” he said, before trailing off and pointing ahead.
“But I don’t think that that’d be what would make you happiest in the end.”
Marl turned her head and saw a nurse and a blue-haired human emerging from the backroom… followed by a Feraligatr who was pawing at a still-tender patch of scales on his arm. Garrett noticed Dom as he walked past and went up to give a handshake, as all the while, Miloch looked aside with his head hung low in disappointment.
At once, Marl knew what Roy had meant. She got up, and made her way forward, giving a bashful paw at the ground as she neared.
“... Miloch?”
“Huh? Marl-?”
The Feraligatr turned towards her, only for him to all but jump in surprise upon seeing her.
“Oh, your wing! It’s all better!”
“Well, it’s still a bit stiff, but yeah. I just got the splint off earlier this morning,” She said.
She walked up and nudged at the Feraligatr, before looking up into his eyes.
“Don’t feel bad about losing that match back there,” she said. “That Hydreigon’s a lot tougher than she looks.”
“Yeah, I know,” Miloch sighed. “And we still did really good for an open tournament considering some of the other trainers that entered, but… I guess it just kinda stings that the reason why we’re not making it to the quarterfinals is because I couldn’t tough out that burn.”
Miloch looked so disappointed. She supposed that if he’d been working himself up in excitement, seeing one’s dreams slip past just outside his claws had to be hard to swallow. Kinda like what had happened to her after she’d gotten her wing broken.
She fell quiet and looked away. She had no idea whether or not her words would make Miloch feel any better, but…
“I get that, but sometimes things just don’t work out the way that we want them to,” she said. “And even if it hurts or is something that you don’t understand why it’s happening… sometimes good things can still come out of it.”
Marl turned back to the Feraligatr and saw that he had a puzzled look on his face. She supposed that at least she didn’t make him feel worse. But was there nothing that she could do to try and cheer him up?
She glanced at her wings briefly. At once, she knew what she wanted to say:
“That’s why I wanted to offer you a consolation prize… if your trainer is okay with it, at least,” she said. “Something to congratulate you for getting as far as you did… and to thank you for helping to lift my mood during the tournament.”
Miloch blinked and gave his head a quizzical tilt.
“Huh? Just what do you have in mind?”
“You’ll see,” she said. “Just meet me with your trainer out in the plaza outside the stadium after this.”
Ten minutes later, Marl was out in the plaza again with her teammates, flying in the sky much as she had in the park near the Pokécenter in the morning. It was a low and steady flight, but this time, it was more than her teammates watching on from the ground…
And it wasn’t her alone feeling the wind pass over her scales. Yes, Kiba was there in that pouch, but so was…
“Ha- Ha ha! You’re flying! You’re really flying!”
Miloch. Marl glanced up past her shoulder as the Feraligatr clung to her, looking down in wide-eyed awe as they passed their friends cheering them on. Don and the rest of his team were there. So were Alberi and Sessen with theirs. Even Garrett was there with his team, and while Marl still didn’t know how she felt about ‘Hydreigon’ also being there towards the back, she at least wasn’t ruining the moment.
A part of Marl thought that she ought to have been still upset. She still wasn’t flying as well as you could on your first day evolving. Getting her splint off didn’t change anything about the way her trainer missed her evolution or the week she spent afterwards just clawing back to the point of these low, still-unsteady flights.
But she still felt the wind under her wings all the same. She could look down on the world in a way that for most of her life was a rare treat.
And she was sharing that same joy she felt in the air with others.
It was everything that she’d dreamed of, and even if it wasn’t entirely what she expected, even if getting there had been unexpectedly painful, it was hers at last.
And then, after prodding at her wing joint and discovering it didn’t hurt anymore, her trainer told the words she’d been waiting the entire tournament to hear:
That her splint was finally coming off.
She felt her trainer undo her splint little by little with her teammates all gathered together. Aoi and Rako were also there. Even Jaki was present, too, with his left leg tethered to one of Aries’ paws much to the latter’s grumbling displeasure.
“Do I really need to be here like this? This is demeaning-”
“Yes, now hush. And I will break out the Thunder Wave to keep you in line if I have to, Jaki.”
Marl couldn’t help but hide a smirk at Honchkrow’s grumbling. So there was a silver lining to all those trainers and Pokémon noticing her from the TV broadcast a couple days ago. The last of the splint came loose as Calvin pulled it away and Marl beat her wings, glancing at her left wing as it flexed back and forth properly, without it hurting.
She felt a pat at her neck and saw her trainer looking up at her, saying things in that tongue of his.
That he was sorry if he hadn’t been there for her enough lately, and that he was happy to see her well again.
She pulled her trainer in with the crick of her neck and her left wing, embracing him with a content growl. She… still wasn’t happy about the whole ordeal about her evolution, but now more than ever, she was convinced that he’d be there for her…
Well, barring a freak incident, but she would make sure to get Calvin in line to avoid that in the future. She let go, as her teammates traded murmurs with one another. Then Roy came up, grinning as Calvin said something that she missed and the Blastoise then pointed up with a claw.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Roy said. “Go ahead, spread your wings a bit, Marl.”
She beat her wings and jumped, her heart fluttering in her chest as she rose higher and higher. She made it to about the treetops and pushed herself forward, her eyes lighting up as at long last, she was flying again.
Marl suddenly felt an ache spread over her left wing’s joint. Her flight wobbled briefly, which made her hesitate before going higher. It wasn’t consistent, but the ache would come and go, and linger a bit longer as she kept beating it.
She came back down for a landing much to her teammates’ confusion and cast a worried glance at her wing. Eira stepped ahead, and gave a puzzled tilt of her head up at her.
“Back on the ground so soon, Marl?”
“It’s my left wing,” she said. “It feels stiff.”
She tried flexing it again, and the feeling came back. She set her teeth on edge with a quiet grimace, before hanging her head with a low murmur.
“I don’t get it, I thought that they said that my wing was all healed,” she said. “So why am I not flying like I did on the days right after I evolved?”
There was a moment of blinking silence, before Roy pawed at the back of his head with a quiet hem and haw.
“... Right, I suppose we should’ve seen this coming,” he said. “But remember what happened that time when you broke your leg and got unsplinted for the first time, Marl?”
Her mind turned back to the time when she’d jumped from the bedroom window and landed wrong on her leg. Even after her bones healed back then and the splint she wore then was taken off, she still hobbled along and struggled to keep up with her teammates for a few days.
Roy didn’t mean that she had to go through that again, did she?
“But this is a wing and not a leg,” she said.
“It’s the same idea,” the Blastoise explained. “It’s a limb you haven’t used in a while, so it needs to be put back through its paces a bit.”
Marl hung her head with a low whine. When she imagined evolving for the first time when she was younger, she thought that she’d be able to wheel about free with the wind. She’d already had a taste of that, so why couldn’t things just go back to that already?
She felt a paw at her neck and looked up to see Calvin and Roy had come up again. Her trainer said something about flying in a soothing-sounding tone that she didn’t quite catch, before
“Calvin says that we can spend some time working on your flight later today,” he said. “Though for now, we should be getting over to the stadium. The day’s matches should be posted right about now.”
The bus ride back to stadium came and went in a blur, even if it was a bit strange to Marl to finally be able to see the entire journey through the simulated sky again. Before she knew it, her neck pouch with Kiba was back on and she and her teammates were gathered in front of a bank of screens. Garrett, Sessen, and Alberi were there too, reviewing pictures of the trainers that would be facing off down each other, much-thinned from the numbers the tournament had started out with.
That didn’t surprise her or her teammates, what did was discovering who Garrett’s opponent just was.
“That’s going to be quite a battle for those new teammates of yours,” Roy murmured. “You’re sure they can handle it, Numa?”
“We’ll find out one way or another for sure,” Numa replied. “Though Garrett hadn’t exactly lost his edge after moving, so I’m sure they’ll do fine.”
It was Don, Miloch’s trainer. Marl quietly chewed the inside of her cheek and looked on blankly at the listing, all as her teammates went up to Garrett to cheer him on.
“Good luck out there,” Aries said. “I know that you’ll do well.”
“Yeah, knock ‘em dead!” Eira chuckled.
Marl fell quiet and looked away with a low hum. From the corner of her eyes, she briefly saw Aoi’s feelers on her head stand on end, as the Lucario went up and pawed at her shoulder.
“Is something wrong, Marl? You feel weirdly conflicted right now.”
Marl hesitated, and idly scratched a foreclaw against the ground. She supposed that Lucario really did have a thing for sensing emotions, even if she wasn’t sure how much she wanted Aoi to know about it.
“It’s just… I don’t want Garrett and his team to lose, but…”
Marl trailed off after hearing a cheer a little ways down. It was Don, with his team out… including Miloch. They didn’t seem to notice her, but maybe that was for the best.
She wasn’t sure what she’d say if she had to choose one or the other to cheer for on the spot.
Marl noticed orange and cream fur in her field of vision, as she saw Rako saunter past her and look back with a smarmy grin.
“Oh, so you like him-”
She threw a claw forward and stomped on his tails. Hard. The Floatzel yelped and hurriedly scurried off after she let go, as Aoi rolled her eyes with a muttering “What did you expect?” under her breath. Further off on the left side, Marl briefly saw Rinaldo and Numa glancing over, before the Nidorino gave a puzzled flick of his ears and poked at the Swampert.
“¿De qué fue todo eso?¹”
“Él le gusta en serio.²"
That one got a chuckle out of the Nidorino, who shook his head and gave that same impish smile he’d had on the day she found Kiba with Mathias.
“Ah sí, y ella a él también.³”
… She could already tell that she didn’t want to know what either of the two had been talking about. She turned back to Aoi, and gave an uneasy fidget of her wings as she tripped over the words in her mouth.
“It’s just, Don’s Miloch’s trainer, and he’s been nothing but nice to me while we were here this tournament, and…”
She trailed off and looked away, when she heard approaching footsteps and felt a pat at her wing’s shoulder. It was Calvin, and he sounded worried about her. Roy was close behind him and looked off briefly at Don in the background, and then back at her.
“It’s alright, Marl. Just treat it like a match between friends,” he insisted. “Win or lose, we can be happy for both of them.”
… Right, she supposed there was nothing keeping her from wishing both sides well. She watched as Don recalled the bulk of his team, leaving Miloch out to continue off with him deeper into the crowd, as she murmured quietly after them.
“Good luck out there, Miloch.”
After a day where it felt like she had Butterfree in her stomach, it finally came time for the match between Garrett and Dom. The battles had been one pitched fight after the next as the two sides wore each other down and thinned each other’s ranks.
“Yah!”
Marl snapped to attention as a watery tackle caught that Volcarona from Garrett’s team and sent him crashing to earth on the ground. Three uneasy seconds passed, before the stands got up in cheers and Garrett returned the Volcarona back to his Pokéball.
For a moment, she wasn’t sure if Miloch would’ve pulled through the battle. He was visibly fatigued, and there was a prominent burn running along his arm he’d picked up while making contact with one of the Volcarona’s wings, but he’d emerged victorious…
Except, as Garrett reaching for a Pokéball on his holster reminded, there was still one last Pokémon left: ‘Hydreigon’.
Tagg let her out of her Pokéball as lingering static danced on ‘Hydreigon’s plumes and hide. Even so, the dragon still put on a show of defiance, and while winded herself, bellowed out in challenge loud enough for some of the spectators with more sensitive hearing to flinch.
Since of all the Pokémon who would have to decide this match, it just had to be her.
“Wow, this one really is going to come down to the wire,” Aries said.
“One ‘mon’s burned while the other’s paralyzed,” Rako mused. “My money’s on the fast one there.”
“Don’t be so sure, Rako,” Aoi counter. “Don’t you remember how that Hydreigon tanked that Dragon Claw from Marl a few days ago?”
Marl frowned and shot a sidelong glance at Aoi. She really could’ve done without the reminder. A pair of battlecries turned her attention back on the field, where Miloch was already charging ‘Hydreigon’ as bluish dragonfire built in her mouths.
He jumped ahead, ice wreathing his fangs as he bit down on her shoulder of her central neck, drawing a pained bellow. For a second, the dragonfire in the Dragon-type’s mouths wavered, before she spat up a Dragon Pulse from her right head. It knocked Miloch off, as she followed with another gout of dragonfire from her left, and then finally one from her central head that sent him tumbling back.
Marl gasped and watched intently as Miloch rolled over and braced himself on his feet and claws, panting for air as she waited for him to get up. Except, he never did. His strength left him, as he slumped over onto his side.
The victory buzzer sounded and the stands broke into cheers as they always did, except Marl just couldn’t find it in her to be excited.
“Ugh, of course it’d end like this.”
She laid on the ground and lowered her head with a sullen mutter. The cheers continued on a bit as the stands started to thin out already, when she felt a nudge at her wing. It was her trainer stooped down beside her, while Roy looked down at her from the side with a small smile.
“Don’t be upset, Marl,” he said. “Both Garrett and Dom’s teams worked hard to get here and things just broke Garrett’s way at the end.”
“I guess, but I’d still have preferred Miloch to win over a loss like that”.
She felt her trainer’s fingers cup under her chin and scratch, as he spoke to her. She blinked a bit, before getting up with a puzzled tilt of her head.
“Huh? The Pokécenter here at the stadium? What are you getting at, Calvin?”
In hindsight, Marl probably should’ve seen it coming from Calvin’s mention of wanting to go to the on-site Pokécenter that he’d want to go and give congratulations to Garrett.
… And of course, as the last Pokémon still standing at the end of the match, that meant that ‘Hydreigon’ got the bulk of the attention while everyone was waiting on the rest of his team to be discharged from their post-treatment checkups.
“Hey, good work out there!” Rako cheered. “For a second, I thought that you were as good as lost at the very end.”
“Yeah, I’m honestly impressed by how much determination you had to just push through being paralyzed like that.”
Numa was there to translate things, which naturally made ‘Hydreigon’ have a swell of pride when the words reached her ears in ones she could understand. That was all fine and great aside from the fact that Marl didn’t want to be anywhere near her.
She sulked at the far end of the Pokécenter alongside Roy, looking on at the others from a distance with her head lying against the ground.
“Roy, did I really need to be out for this?”
“I mean, if you really don’t want to be, I suppose that there’s nothing keeping you from going back into your Pokéball,” he said, before trailing off and pointing ahead.
“But I don’t think that that’d be what would make you happiest in the end.”
Marl turned her head and saw a nurse and a blue-haired human emerging from the backroom… followed by a Feraligatr who was pawing at a still-tender patch of scales on his arm. Garrett noticed Dom as he walked past and went up to give a handshake, as all the while, Miloch looked aside with his head hung low in disappointment.
At once, Marl knew what Roy had meant. She got up, and made her way forward, giving a bashful paw at the ground as she neared.
“... Miloch?”
“Huh? Marl-?”
The Feraligatr turned towards her, only for him to all but jump in surprise upon seeing her.
“Oh, your wing! It’s all better!”
“Well, it’s still a bit stiff, but yeah. I just got the splint off earlier this morning,” She said.
She walked up and nudged at the Feraligatr, before looking up into his eyes.
“Don’t feel bad about losing that match back there,” she said. “That Hydreigon’s a lot tougher than she looks.”
“Yeah, I know,” Miloch sighed. “And we still did really good for an open tournament considering some of the other trainers that entered, but… I guess it just kinda stings that the reason why we’re not making it to the quarterfinals is because I couldn’t tough out that burn.”
Miloch looked so disappointed. She supposed that if he’d been working himself up in excitement, seeing one’s dreams slip past just outside his claws had to be hard to swallow. Kinda like what had happened to her after she’d gotten her wing broken.
She fell quiet and looked away. She had no idea whether or not her words would make Miloch feel any better, but…
“I get that, but sometimes things just don’t work out the way that we want them to,” she said. “And even if it hurts or is something that you don’t understand why it’s happening… sometimes good things can still come out of it.”
Marl turned back to the Feraligatr and saw that he had a puzzled look on his face. She supposed that at least she didn’t make him feel worse. But was there nothing that she could do to try and cheer him up?
She glanced at her wings briefly. At once, she knew what she wanted to say:
“That’s why I wanted to offer you a consolation prize… if your trainer is okay with it, at least,” she said. “Something to congratulate you for getting as far as you did… and to thank you for helping to lift my mood during the tournament.”
Miloch blinked and gave his head a quizzical tilt.
“Huh? Just what do you have in mind?”
“You’ll see,” she said. “Just meet me with your trainer out in the plaza outside the stadium after this.”
Ten minutes later, Marl was out in the plaza again with her teammates, flying in the sky much as she had in the park near the Pokécenter in the morning. It was a low and steady flight, but this time, it was more than her teammates watching on from the ground…
And it wasn’t her alone feeling the wind pass over her scales. Yes, Kiba was there in that pouch, but so was…
“Ha- Ha ha! You’re flying! You’re really flying!”
Miloch. Marl glanced up past her shoulder as the Feraligatr clung to her, looking down in wide-eyed awe as they passed their friends cheering them on. Don and the rest of his team were there. So were Alberi and Sessen with theirs. Even Garrett was there with his team, and while Marl still didn’t know how she felt about ‘Hydreigon’ also being there towards the back, she at least wasn’t ruining the moment.
A part of Marl thought that she ought to have been still upset. She still wasn’t flying as well as you could on your first day evolving. Getting her splint off didn’t change anything about the way her trainer missed her evolution or the week she spent afterwards just clawing back to the point of these low, still-unsteady flights.
But she still felt the wind under her wings all the same. She could look down on the world in a way that for most of her life was a rare treat.
And she was sharing that same joy she felt in the air with others.
It was everything that she’d dreamed of, and even if it wasn’t entirely what she expected, even if getting there had been unexpectedly painful, it was hers at last.
1. "What was that about again?"
2. "She totally likes him."
3. "Ah yes, he likes her that way too."
2. "She totally likes him."
3. "Ah yes, he likes her that way too."
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