10: Away Game
The place where that Bug-Catching Contest Sessen wanted to go to was apparently only a short distance away from the National Park on foot, but for whatever reason, the wavy-haired trainer didn’t take the same bus as Calvin—something about grabbing supplies on the way over that required taking a different bus line. It only took a few minutes for the other bus to come after Calvin’s, but the wait somehow felt like a small eternity. Marl just stood there the entire time, her eyes drifting towards the ground as she tried to tell herself that things would work out and that if she stuck with Sessen now, she’d be there with Roy and the others when it counted the most today—when they were actually having their battles at the Tournament.
It didn’t really help her mood, nor did Sessen’s attempts to try to cheer her up by stroking her neck and saying reassuring-sounding words in human tongue. Things that
Calvin should’ve been doing right now and not some friend of his that she didn’t really know. The fact that she was going to be close enough to her trainer that she could’ve just gone and
flown over to fetch him if her wing wasn’t broken was just the frost on top of the Icicle Spear.
Eventually, she heard the rumble of the oncoming bus. The light of her Pokéball’s beam filled her vision afterwards and everything went black.
When she left stasis and started seeing things again, she was taken aback by how
bright everything was. From the blue sky overhead, it was later in the morning, and at first from the trees, she thought she was still at that little park by the bus stop. She quickly realized that she was standing in a space paved with bricks which was hemmed in by decorative fencing and tall trees. Every which way, there was the hum of human and Pokémon chatter in the background, along with a large red-roofed building behind her that just kept going on and on into the forest.
“Are you alright, Marl? You look a little disoriented.”
The Salamence turned around towards the building and saw that there at the entrance, there was Bushel along with the rest of the Tropius’ teammates… and Rako, too. Sessen was off to the side with a man in a red uniform and hat who was scrutinizing her with a frown that made her feel uncomfortable for reasons she couldn’t put her claw on...
“Where
are we right now, Bushel?” she asked.
“We’re at the National Park. It’s a place here in Johto where people and Pokémon go to relax in nature a bit,” the Tropius explained. “It’s actually just a relatively short walk away from the Pokéathlon Dome, so we should be able to return there easily when we’re done.”
Marl looked back at the treeline in the direction that the long hall stretched off towards, and sure enough, she
could see the three spires of the Pokéathlon Dome poking out over them in the distance. She didn’t know if it made her feel better or worse knowing that it was
that close by. Yes, she knew that her teammates were going to be busy practicing and there was only so much space around the fields available when they even had access to them to begin with… but did they not know this National Park was right at the proverbial mouth of the arena’s den? If so, couldn’t they have at least committed to come and see her sometime in between in that case?
The Salamence sighed with a low mutter, only to freeze after looking deeper into the square: everywhere she looked, there were humans and Pokémon gathered together and queued up, with a
lot of said humans dressed like those trainers obsessed with Bug-types that were back in Hoenn… “Bug Catchers”, she was pretty sure Roy called them, and the number of Bug-types going around sure
looked like they were Bug Catchers’ Pokémon…
Except they were all here, with her broken wing in plain view in front of them.
Marl cringed and shrank back, as she eyed her Pokéball in Sessen’s grasp. A part of her debated whether she should just go back in there and spare herself the humiliation of being seen like this. She briefly noticed that Rako himself looked puzzled, as the Floatzel blinked at the sight of the crowd before shooting Bushel back an askew glance.
“... This place is seriously supposed to be
relaxing compared to the Pokéathlon Dome?” he asked. “It looks as crowded as those registration booths were back at the tournament! And the only water around here’s that little fountain in the middle!”
“There’s a bigger one deeper in the park,” Bushel insisted. “And they
are hosting a Bug-Catching Contest here today, so the place is a bit busier than normal.”
Clearly this Bug-Catching Contest was a bigger deal here in Johto than Marl realized. But even so, why would all these trainers care so much about trying to catch Bug-type Pokémon
here? A sideways glance revealed that she surely wasn’t the only one who found the idea strange from the way Rako was pinching his brow at the moment.
She turned her head away from him and turned her snout up with low harrumph. Maybe she should try and get her mind on something else. It wasn’t as if she needed
more help with being in a crummy mood right now.
“So just what
is this ‘Bug-Catching Contest’ again?” she asked.
“You know, ‘twenty free Pokéballs, try to catch anything you can in twenty minutes’?” Rako replied. “If you weren’t busy constantly moping for the past few days, you’d have heard Sessen talk about it earlier.”
She felt a flash of anger come over her and spat blue dragonfire at the Floatzel’s feet. Not anything that’d
hurt him, but enough to make him jump back with a loud yelp and send him beelining behind Bushel. The Salamence’s moment of satisfaction lasted about as long as it took for her to turn her head, where many of the nearby humans and Pokémon were staring at her in alarm. Off by Bushel, Sessen was visibly grimacing in front of the human official in the red hat and jacket who was currently trading a withering frown between her and the wavy-haired man. The fire in Marl’s belly died down as her teeth settled into a sharp grimace.
“I… shouldn’t have done that, huh?”
“You definitely didn’t make it
easier for Sessen to convince the officials to let you stay out,” a gravelly voice sighed. A quick glance down revealed it to be Sessen’s Geodude, who came up walking—or at least Marl
thought it was walking—alongside that Wooper on his team.
“If you need help calming down, I could always try blowing you a bubble,” the Wooper offered. “Though you should really stop annoying her like that, Floatzel.”
Rako ran his mouth off with some yippy complaint afterwards about not being “the one who almost got burned” that grated her nerves like claws dragging against glass. She began to turn around when she suddenly felt patting at her neck, where there was Sessen, visibly flustered and uneasily saying something about her being a “nice dragon” in a voice that sounded much like a human hatchling’s. The Salamence noticed the official sizing her up and let out a tired sigh, before she looked back at Bushel and opted to try and get her mind on something else.
“Why does Sessen
need that many more Pokémon to join you guys? How on earth would he make time for everybody?”
“Well, it’s not quite as simple as your Floatzel friend made it sound,” the Tropius explained. “For starters, the Sport Balls they give out here are only as effective as a Great Ball and all the catching has to happen
here in this garden area with whatever Bug-type Pokémon come through from the forests.”
“Also every trainer is only allowed to have
one Pokémon that they entered for contest scoring join their team at the end no matter how many they caught,” the Geodude chimed in. “So at most, we’ll be getting one extra teammate out of things today.”
It made sense, she supposed. A few stray words between Sessen and the official caught Marl’s ear. She turned and saw Sessen giving a flustered paw at the back of his head, while the official’s frown hadn’t budged by so much as a scale the entire time.
Marl
already knew that wasn’t a good sign.
“I’m guessing that that look red-vest is giving me has something to do with another rule, doesn’t it?” she sighed.
“Er… well, yes,” Bushel replied. “See, in the Bug-Catching Contest, it’s the rule that
one Pokémon is supposed to help their trainer out during the actual event, while the others have to sit out from things.”
Marl felt her wings droop and subconsciously pulled her tail in close to her body. This shouldn’t have upset her so much, but at a moment when she was just useless and stuck on the ground, was she really just not going to be allowed to lay down in a glorified meadow like this?
“Wasn’t the entire
point of me coming here to
not be stuck in my Pokéball? Why am I even here if I’m just going to be sent back to my Pokéball and my wing will put me into stasis again?”
“Well, the rules didn’t say anything about Pokémon not being able to sit out from the Contest
outside their Pokéballs,” Bushel explained. “Sessen heard of other trainers doing the same in the past, and wanted to make sure he could do the same here with you.”
Marl stiffened up after feeling fingers cup and scratch under her chin, peering down to see Sessen scritching at her with his face fixed into a flustered smile back at the official. The man in the red hat scrutinized her a bit, before saying some very grouchy-sounding words. He turned and walked off afterwards, making his way over to a trainer with a Granbull off towards the long hall in the back.
Marl shuffled her wings uneasily and let her head droop towards the ground. She supposed that meant she wasn’t allowed to stay outside her Pokéball. So what was she supposed to do now? She
needed to be out of her Pokéball for her wing to properly heal and that was the most of the reason why she was sitting things out with her friends, but…
“That was an awful lot of words to say that Sessen’s not allowed to keep me out.”
“That’s… not what he said at all, really,” Rako said.
Marl craned her head with an incredulous blink as she looked over past Bushel where there was Rako, poking his head out from behind the Tropius. The Grass-type herself nodded along, and shuffled her wings before speaking up.
“The official actually said it was alright for you to sit on the sidelines,” Bushel said, before trailing off with an awkward hem and haw.
“It’s just… well… there’s some rules that you’ll need to keep in mind.”
Marl learned a few things while waiting with the others for Sessen’s turn in the contest to arrive. She finally learned the names of his other two Pokémon with him and what they were like. The Geodude was called ‘Kepa’, and was a bit of a storyteller who kept trying to command Sessen and his teammates’ attention—almost as if he was worried about being overlooked. The Wooper was ‘Daichi’, who much to Marl’s astonishment was almost
her age in spite of being about as childish as Bac, especially with that veritable fixation he had with blowing bubbles that stuck around in the air for surprisingly long.
She also learned about the rules for Pokémon being able to wait on the sidelines in this ‘Bug-Catching Contest’. They apparently weren’t all that different from the ones back in the tournament: she and the rest of Sessen’s Pokémon could stay out and on the sidelines as long as she didn’t interfere with anyone currently participating in the contest. When Sessen’s turn came, she’d be allowed to keep doing much the same, but he would have to stay close enough to be able to maintain a line of sight with her.
The rules were simple and easy to understand, as were the consequences for her breaking them: Sessen would be disqualified from the contest and if she started any fights, they’d be kicked from the National Park for the day. That didn’t phase Marl that much, since in the end, this place wasn’t
that different from those bleachers on the repurposed fields outside the Pokéthlon Dome where her teammates had been practicing for the past few days. Just softer, grassier, and with a lot more space. It was a bit of a relief to not have to constantly look ahead to make sure she’d fit through an oncoming passageway or see if there were others she needed to wait to let pass. Same for being able to take it for granted that she could settle down and stretch out when she wasn’t getting a Potion applied to her broken wing, like she was doing now.
What
was different from the tournament was the way the organizers insisted on keeping track of the Pokémon like her on the sidelines…
“Is this
really necessary? I’m
already orange!”
Which for some blasted reason, as Rako’s whining from beside her reminded, it meant wearing a rubbery band hiked up on her right foreleg that was in the most hideous shade of orange imaginable which looked and felt like it’d been cut from a traffic cone. There were human glyphs on it that apparently said ‘spectator’ on it, and from the way hers in particular chafed her scales on her leg, she suspected it had originally been sized in mind for a much smaller Pokémon. It would probably explain a thing or two about the way Kepa and Daichi were just completely unbothered by the bands
they had to wear.
“I’ll admit, they’re not exactly lookers, but these bands
do have an actual purpose, Floatzel,” Kepa explained. “They help the participants see that you’re not one of the wild Pokémon that come through here so that way they don’t accidentally throw a Pokéball at you.”
Marl’s face sagged as she briefly turned her snout down to nose at the band to try and loosen it as she glanced around her surroundings. There weren’t many other Pokémon waiting around as spectators like this, but every one she
could see wasn’t a Bug-type at all. Just what was there to be confused about?
“I’m sorry, but do any of us on the sidelines here look like Bug-types?” she huffed. “Just what sort of dense trainer would manage to confuse us for one?”
“Well, there’s Pokémon like that Crustle over there. That Swampert with Garrett said they’re apparently Bug-types.”
A stray bubble floating past Marl’s face turned her attention downwards. She briefly caught Daichi peeking up and pointing off with his tail further down the path before the Wooper took off chasing his bubble again.
When she looked back off where the Wooper had been pointing, she saw an orange crab thing with what looked like a giant stone block on its back that was flexing its claws…
also adorned with one of those band things. She held her mouth open with a disbelieving scowl and caught Rako doing much the same, when the Floatzel abruptly shook his head and pinched his brow.
“Just
how much longer are we supposed to sit and wait here again?”
“Floatzel, you said your trainer wanted you to keep an eye on your friend. Just what did you
think you were going to be doing during this contest?” Kepa harrumphed. “Each batch of contestants gets 20 minutes to work with and everyone has to wait until they’re called up. There was a
reason why Sessen was expecting to miss most of the matches in the tournament before your friends’ battle today.”
“Well gee, why don’t I just go back into my Pokéball and watch her from
there at this rate?!” he hissed.
Marl rolled her eyes and lowered her head with a sullen pout. She honestly wished that yippy sea weasel
would go back to his Pokéball. And if her wing wouldn’t have triggered medical stasis, she would’ve done the same herself right there and then. Marl knew that Calvin had her other teammates to juggle right now as well, and it wasn’t as if it’d be
more comfortable standing and waiting on the sidelines there…
But at least her friends would’ve been there and she could’ve egg them on. And her trainer would’ve been there to spend time with her.
Like he’d
said he would.
She heard a sharp yip and saw Bushel leaning in on Rako, her wings flared with a glare that had the Tropius had some fangs, wouldn’t have seemed too out of place from a
Salamence’s face. Sessen noticed the pair and stepped in, the wavy-haired man pulling Bushel aside and patting her, saying a few things that made Grass-type grudgingly ease up as Rako subconsciously inched away. Sessen moved onto her next, giving a tentative pat as he stooped and adjusted the band on her foreleg a bit. It felt a little looser against her scales afterwards, and the wavy-haired man followed it up with a few tentative pats along her neck.
It was mostly soothing. Mostly. Not for any fault of Sessen’s, but it was hard for Marl to fully push everything off her mind. The sudden shouts in the background from a battle somewhere in the tall grass weren’t helping either. The wavy-haired human’s charms had apparently worked well enough on Bushel as well, as she turned her attention back to Rako, her demeanor now noticeably more resigned and less testy.
“Rako, if you’re really struggling so much for things to do, just take some time to talk and shoot the breeze with the Pokémon around you a bit,” the Tropius insisted. “Marl’s supposed to have a chance to take things easy right now anyways. It’s just us, the sunshine and breeze, and-”
A sharp
thwip followed by a
pop cut through the air as Marl suddenly felt water land on her flank. She whirled around, where there was a wet ring on the ground, with a pointed barb lying in the middle as Daichi stared down at it, his little dark eyes now surprisingly wide.
“A-Aah! My bubble!”
Marl craned her head up after hearing cries in the distance, and caught a glimpse of a Weedle and a thing that looked like a short-limbed Linoone that Bushel had called a ‘Furret’ battling off in the tall grass. Sheesh, nobody here had even
thought to post a Pokémon with Protect to keep attacks from spilling over?
“My bubble- you killed my-”
She turned her head down where she noticed Daichi murmuring and visibly shaking. Both Bushel and Kepa looked visibly alarmed, as the Geodude shrank back with a grimacing stare.
“Oh no, not again…”
“YOU MONSTER! YOU KILLED MY BUBBLE!”
For such a little Pokémon, Daichi sure had a set of pipes… and surprisingly quick feet. He shot off for the tall grass, his eyes screwed up in an almost
draconic rage as he cried out loud enough that both the Weedle and Furret further off in the tall grass stopped and whirled around. Water swirled about his mouth kinda like did when Roy used a Water Gun when he was littler, when all of a sudden a red light shot out after the Wooper. It swallowed Daichi and he dissipated into an arcing red light, which shot off towards Marl’s left.
When she followed it with her eyes, she saw Sessen was up and grabbing a Pokéball, visibly fighting with it as it rocked in his grasp. Everyone else’s attention lingered on Daichi’s Pokéball for a moment, when Kepa let his arms droop with a tired sigh.
“Oh,
he’s going to be mad when he comes out again.”
Rako walked out from beside Bushel, looking off at the still-shaking Pokéball, and then back at Bushel with a disbelieving gape.
“What on earth was
that about?”
“Daichi’s still a bit of a child at heart and he… uh… can get quite worked up about things he cares,” the Tropius explained.
“He’s
also quite a bit tougher than he looks,” Kepa chimed in. “So don’t get any ideas of going and provoking him.”
Marl gave her head a frowning tilt. Something about the idea of Daichi being childish, getting angry for silly reasons, and deceptively strong felt like an uncomfortably familiar combination. She wasn’t sure why until she looked over at her left wing in its cast and it finally clicked:
Everything that Kepa had said about his teammate basically described ‘Hydreigon’, except the Hydreigon was less understandable. And bigger. And stronger.
Marl felt a tremor of her own come over her body and let out a sour grumble. Even while resting, she just wasn’t ever going to get away from that humiliating moment, was she? Things were just going to be like this until her wing healed, maybe for even longer afterwards.
A buzzer snapped her to attention as she saw Sessen fish out that weathered PokéGear of his and briefly check it before tucking it away, and then holstering Daichi’s Pokéball before grabbing another. The Salamence wasn’t sure what that was about at first, when Kepa briefly traded glances between his trainer and her.
“That’s Sessen’s cue right now. Are you sure you’re going to be alright following us from the side on your own, Marl?”
She wasn’t, but she didn’t say that. She hoped that Rako would say something given that he looked a bit annoyed himself and with how whiny he’d been in the past few days, surely
he wouldn’t take being benched to his Pokéball lying down, but he didn’t do much beyond turning aside and tilting his snout up.
“Tch, the organizers specifically said that Sessen had to remain close enough to keep an eye on her, and besides? Just how much trouble do you expect her to get into with
them around?”
The Salamence followed the Floatzel’s paw off down the path where there was a human in a peaked hat along with a Growlithe at his side who was yawning and shooting an unamused look of his own back with words she could just barely make out from their distance.
“I don’t believe this, Dirk. How on earth do you get us roped into babysitting contest attendees on
top of our night shift?”
She felt her face sag and looked away, feeling her tail sway back and forth with quick, tense movements as she felt heat swell inside her. Gods, she had half a mind to just set the tall grass in front of her on fire right then and there and get this contest over with. Sure, she’d likely get in trouble over it, but at least she wouldn’t be
stuck here, right?
“... Marl?”
She saw shade fall over her and saw Bushel making her way over alongside Sessen. A quick glance revealed that Kepa wasn’t there anymore, while the Tropius and her trainer looked visibly uneasy.
“Is there something that you wanted to talk about? You don’t look all that happy right now.”
She let out a low growl in reply. The Tropius briefly blanched, as Marl averted her gaze with a sullen rumble.
“This
wasn’t how I wanted to spend my day…”
There was a moment’s tension between them when she felt patting at her shoulder and heard the wavy-haired man speak up with calming-sounding words. The Salamence hesitated for a moment, before drooping her head forward with a defeated whine.
Great, now she was going to get Sessen and
his Pokémon mad at her too. It wasn’t
Sessen’s fault she was here and he and his teammates were at least
trying to make her feel like she belonged with them… but what was she supposed to do?
She didn’t
ask to be stuck on the ground useless like this, and now she couldn’t even sit on the sidelines from her proper friends as a consolation…
“Look, I know that you’re
trying and that everyone is busy today,” the Salamence murmured. “It’s just that I’d have felt better if I was with my friends right now…”
The Tropius visibly hesitated for a moment, before craning her head past her trainer as he fished through his bag—probably for something he needed for the contest. For a second Marl thought Bushel might have spotted a wild Pokémon sneaking out from the tall grass, when she noticed that the Tropius was looking over at Rako… and then motioning off at
her with her leafy wings.
“Rako, why don’t you stick with Marl’s until the round’s over?”
The Floatzel stiffened up and his air sac briefly puffed out in response. His reaction faded almost as quickly as it came, as he turned back to the Tropius with a loud splutter.
“Wh-What?! Why me?!”
“Because she mentioned wanting to be around her friends and
you’re one of them,” Bushel snapped. “
Read the room.”
Marl screwed her eyes shut and let her wings droop. She knew what Bushel
meant well, but shouldn’t she have seen enough over the past few days to know that she and Rako
weren’t particularly close to each other?
“Bushel, he’s not-”
The words died in her mouth as she saw Sessen’s hands leave his bag with that doll from the crane machine in tow. She stiffened up at attention, as Sessen brought him over to her back and just set him there, much to her flustered surprise.
“Hey, wait! What are you-?!”
“Sessen thought you needed a bit of extra companionship. And you
did seem to like your doll, so…”
“Well, yes, I do, but- wait, it’s not
my doll, and-!”
Marl fumbled over her words one after the other as she realized that everything she tried to say just made her look more and more silly. She gave up, her cheeks burning in embarrassment as a small electronic chime played, and she saw Sessen start to leave, with Bushel tagging along with her.
“Sorry to cut you short, but we really need to get going,” the Tropius said. “Though don’t worry, we’ll be back out of the tall grass and back at your side as soon as the round’s over.”
Bushel and Sessen started heading off as Marl briefly spluttered. S-She couldn’t just go around with that doll like that! She
already looked weak and pathetic right now with her wing in its cast, just how was going around with a doll like a little hatchling supposed to
help?
She turned her head back towards the doll on her back and gave a small, careful nip at the doll to try and give it back to Sessen, when just as she picked it up, she heard a rustling noise from the grass.
“Huh?”
She craned her head and thought she saw movement along the edges, but when she looked over, the grass was still and she couldn’t see anything. She gave a few wary paces over, when a sharp yip reached her ears from the side.
“Oi, are you coming or what? I thought we were sticking with Bushel and her trainer!”
Marl turned her head and saw Rako further down the path, tapping a foot impatiently, while Sessen and Bushel were further down, still heading off. A glance towards the other side revealed that officer and his Growlithe eying her closely, as the sighed and made her own way after the others.
She couldn’t help but glance back off at the grass every now and then, as she
swore that occasionally, she’d see something move and the shade of green in the grass change ever so slightly.
Each round of the Bug-Catching Contest was only supposed to last twenty minutes, but somehow, Sessen’s felt like his dragged on longer than all the other ones beforehand. Maybe lying down and staring at a bunch of tall grass the entire time had something to do with it, but it didn’t help that Sessen spent the bulk of his time pacing around in tight, repeating paths with Bushel. Marl was frankly surprised that he’d managed to catch a Caterpie and a Venonat so far, since it looked more like he was vibrating in the grass rather than getting anywhere fast at all.
“Oh yeah,
this was totally worth blowing off tournament matches today. Seriously, no one could ever find
that fun.”
And as the yippy voice off to the Salamence’s right reminded her, Rako was there too and enjoying things about as much as she was right now… if from a healthy berth away. She lowered her head and glanced at her feet at her
other companion: that doll with the sewed-up wing. She hadn’t been able to balance him properly on her back after settling down, and at least with him by her claws, she could tuck him behind her leg and hide him easily…
A sudden rustling noise caught her ears and she suddenly sat up alert. A little
too quickly from the shot of pain that ran under her cast. After a brief moment to let the feeling subside, she turned her attention out towards the grass. She thought it was just Sessen passing by, but no, he was far away enough that she couldn’t hear anything of his paces back and forth...
“... Must’ve just been the wind.”
The Salamence settled back down with a grumble and laid against the ground, letting the sun’s rays fall upon her. She turned her attention back to the doll by her feet and eyed him briefly, before nosing him out under the sun to let him bask, too. It was probably silly since dolls didn’t feel things… probably—she wasn’t fully sure how that worked with those creepy Banette back home. But somehow, this little lump of fluff in front of her really
did feel like her in miniature just then…
“I guess you’re probably lonely too right now, huh?” she sighed. “
Your wing’s also hurt and all of your friends are back in that crane machine…”
“Lonely? What are you talking about? You’re my best friend, and you’re right here with me!”
Marl sprang back all of a sudden and beat her wings out after hearing a higher-pitched and
growling voice coming from just ahead of her. She almost immediately regretted it from the wince-worthy sensation that followed in her left wing. She moved her attention back towards Rako’s position and she saw his muzzle briefly move and she put two and two together:
“
What are you doing?” she demanded.
The Floatzel went stiff as a board and his floatation sac visibly puffed up. He cringed and backpedaled briefly, staring up at her with a blank stammer.
“I- I- Uh…”
Marl turned to face him as Rako stumbled and pratfell. She leaned in on him, her eyes hardening into a sharp scowl as the Floatzel flinched and piped up with an audible squeak.
“L-Look, I thought it would help, okay?!”
She blinked for a moment, before pulling her head back with a puzzled tilt. She’d only been around Rako for a few days up to this point, but something about his reaction felt more genuine than she was expecting. Even if she didn’t really understand
why he’d done any of this...
“...
Help? How is making funny voices and tricking me like that supposed to help?”
Rako got up and quietly hemmed and hawed in response. For a moment, Marl thought that the Floatzel was just going to turn around and bolt, only for him to shake his head and give a paw at his shoulder.
“I wasn’t
trying to trick you, it’s just… well… when I was younger, there was this time when I got my paw messed up after getting it caught on a fishhook,” the Floatzel explained. “When I was recovering, there was this Buizel doll in the doctor’s office and the Chansey that worked with the humans on-staff would speak like that with it so I’d feel less alone without someone else like me to talk to.”
Marl felt the tension in her claws and wings ease up briefly. So then this had been an attempt to try and make her feel
better? This, from the Pokémon that never stopped whining and running his mouth off? Why did
he care?
… Maybe that wasn’t fully fair to him. After all, the others seemed to know him well, and he at least seemed friendly with that Lucario from the Field Biology course. Marl remembered how disappointed Rako was about being left out from the tournament when she first met her friends here in Johto. Sure he had been childish and obnoxious about it, but could it be that he wasn’t quite his normal self the past few days just like she hadn’t been?
“L-Look, it was a bad idea, I get it,” he began. “I just thought-”
“Are you able to do that voice
without sounding like you’ve got a squeaky toy stuck in your throat? I don’t
actually sound like that to you, do I?”
Rako blinked slowly for a moment before he came over. He stooped down and grasped the doll. Marl tensed up and reflexively moved her head to try and take the doll back, only for the Floatzel to hold it out and shake it a little as he spoke up out the side of his mouth in that growling voice he’d taken earlier.
“Um… well, I’m much smaller than you so I
do sound a bit different. But… that can always change if
you give me a voice!”
Marl let her jaw sag open. She almost spoke up and answered only to catch herself and furrow her brow. This was ridiculous. Like playing pretend was
really supposed to make her feel better right now…
“... Maybe another time.”
Marl moved her mouth forward to reclaim her doll, when just as she was about to nip at the back of it, she heard Rako speak up in that poor attempt of a dragon’s voice again.
“Are you still mad right now?”
She hesitated, as Rako still held onto the doll, subconsciously inching back from her. He looked a bit on-edge, and Marl wasn’t fully sure
how she felt about the question or if she should be annoyed about it. After a moment to think things over, she decided that most of all, she was confused about where the Floatzel was coming from with it.
“What do you mean by ‘mad’?” she pressed.
“Well, you’ve been upset for most of the time since you rejoined your trainer,” Rako continued in that silly voice of his. “You’re kinda scaring him and his friends. Like that charming and dashing Floatzel he trusts to look out for him.”
Marl rolled her eyes in response and didn’t even try to hide it. She supposed that was one way to tell that in the end, it was
Rako speaking for the doll, since she’d certainly have never made him say
that.
She thought she heard rustling grass and stiffened up, and saw Rako turn his head too. It came from the edge of the tall grass again, but when Marl looked over, she again couldn’t see anything there.
The Salamence turned her attention back to Rako and saw he was waiting for her to answer. She uneasily dug a foreclaw along the ground, before shifting her attention to the doll in the Floatzel’s paw.
“I guess… it’s just that it feels like everything’s been going wrong for me since evolving, and I just can’t get a break.”
She felt her head and wings droop, as she averted her gaze, looking off towards the fences and treeline at the end of the clearing. And then, before she could think things through, she spoke up and continued.
“First Calvin and everyone else misses my evolution.
Then I get my wing broken for no good reason. And now when I
want to be with everyone else, I’m stuck here away from everybody…”
She abruptly froze and screwed her eyes shut. Stupid. Stupid.
Stupid. Why on earth did she say all of that? Especially when Rako probably wanted nothing more than to just be away from her right now like he had every other day up to this point-
“... You’ve got me here, don’t you?”
That one caught Marl off-guard, not least of all since the Floatzel dropped the voice he’d been using for the Salamence doll. She looked back at the Floatzel as he too averted his gaze. He lowered the doll, rubbing his free paw against his arm’s fin with an uneasy murmur.
“I mean, I know that I haven’t really been doing a great job at it so far, and honestly you
still scare me with that way you just go from being seemingly calm to ready to smash and burn stuff around you in a flash,” he began. “But it
is my job to try and help others out, even if I’m more used to just swimming them around. I guess, just try and be more open about if you need someone to talk to? I don’t know if I can really help, but I’ll at least
try if you want me to...”
… Maybe she’d been a bit quicker to judge this Rako Floatzel than she’d ought to have been. Marl still thought he was yippy and annoying, but she supposed it helped a little knowing that he
tried to look out for others… in his own way. She certainly wouldn’t mind if he did this for her again in the future.
She suddenly caught herself, and set her teeth on edge after realizing that maybe there was something about Rako’s attempts to look out for others that she
didn’t want to happen in the future. Or at least not when it wasn’t just the two of them together.
“... You’re not going to do the whole ‘pretend to be the doll’ thing in front of Jaki, are you? I already know he’d never let me hear the end of it if he saw us right now.”
“What?” he asked. “No. I figured this was one of those things that you wanted to keep between the two of us.”
The Salamence quietly breathed out a sigh of relief. Yes, Rako surely thought she must’ve being silly from that askew glance he was giving her, but it was surely better to be safe than sorry…
“Probably for the best. Though did talking to that Buizel doll really help you when you were hurt? Since-”
The rustling noise suddenly came back from the grass as Marl turned her head and saw a shape move further within. This time she
knew that she saw something there. Whatever it was, it was green and blended in with the grass, with rigid-looking points which poked up here and there over the foliage. Rako clearly saw it too, as he took a couple paces forward and the grass shook again at his approach.
“Hey, what the-?”
All of a sudden, a green blur shot out of the grass and everything went by in a disconcerting blur. Rako crying out and falling over as the blur shot past. The doll falling to the ground. Marl darting forward by reflex as she heard Rako’s voice letting out a sharp yelp.
“Yeow! It cut me!”
She briefly looked back as Rako grabbed at his arm, where there was a thin, ruddy streak forming. It didn’t look
too serious, but had that been the work of a wild Pokémon? If so, where was-?
“Got you!”
She got her answer with a sharp buzz past her shoulder—maybe female, but Marl didn’t know if Bug-types here in Johto were like the ones in Hoenn. She whirled towards it and there, just in front of her, a green bug thing about Rako’s size with cream wings and blades for arms who swooped down and snatched up her doll off the ground by pressing him between the flats of her blades. It was obviously a Bug-type of some sort, but she’d never seen a Pokémon like before and didn’t know
what she was.
Just that she was stealing
her doll from her right now.
“
Hey! Give him back!”
The words came out in a roaring bellow as the Bug-type suddenly whirled around. She froze briefly and her eyes visibly shrank.
And then she screamed.
“
AAAAAAAAH!”
Very
loudly. Enough that Marl briefly recoiled from the racket.
When Marl opened her eyes, they shrank after seeing the bladed bug thing bolting for the tall grass. She felt heat at her throat and spewed out a stream of bluish dragonfire, but much to her alarm, it missed and carried on into the grass as the Bug-type kept running.
“No no no!
Get back here!”
She took off running and planted her feet for a jump, spreading her wings to take flight, only for the pain to come roaring back. She stumbled and fell forward with a yelp, hitting the ground as she heard shouts and felt her eyes growing bleary as it sank in on her that she was really going to lose her doll, her treasure, to this stupid little bug.
She stumbled up, where off in the distance, Sessen and Bushel suddenly whirled around. Marl couldn’t see what was going on from her angle, but she certainly
heard it, as she heard that strange bug’s voice buzzing out in a startled panic.
“H-Human! Tree thing!
H-Help me! There’s a scary one-winged lizard that’s-!”
All of a sudden, Sessen threw a Pokéball and there was a flash of red light. Marl reflexively ran forward through the grass only to stop after seeing Sessen stoop and pop back up. In his hand, there was a Pokéball… along with her doll, seemingly none the worse for wear.
It dawned on the Salamence that her heart was pounding. She breathed out and shook her head. She wasn’t fully sure what just happened, but-
“Oi! You two! Get off the grass!”
Marl froze as she craned her head back and saw that Growlithe with the police officer was there, scowling at her through a trail of crushed grass behind her.
Right. She wasn’t supposed to be here.
Marl retraced her steps, and as she emerged back from the grass, she saw Rako doing the same, looking visibly chastened and pawing at his nicked arm. The Growlithe and his human sized them up, as the sound of approaching wingbeats rang out.
It was Bushel, flying in with Sessen hitching a ride on her back. The wavy-haired man summarily dismounted as the officer pulled him aside. One of those red-vested humans came along as well, as Marl dug her claws into the ground with a sharp grimace as it dawned on her that she’d surely gotten Sessen into trouble.
“What on earth were you two
doing?”
She flinched and turned her head over to Bushel. The Tropius flared her wings out, her face marked with a quiet agitation that even without fangs, was unmissable.
“I thought you two were
staying on the sidelines.”
“We
were, and then that bug came out of nowhere and ambushed us,” Rako explained. “It doesn’t count as interference if the Pokémon from the
contest come to the sidelines, right?”
Marl saw Sessen talking with the two humans, when he lifted up the Salamence doll. Her eyes widened, as one thing led to another, and she darted up with a firm nudge at the wavy-haired human’s side.
“A-Ah! Wait! Be careful with him!”
He stumbled a bit, while the other humans visibly recoiled. There was a moment’s hesitation, before he set the doll back on her back and gave her a pat before drifting off a short ways.
Rako and Bushel caught up with her, when her attention fell on the Growlithe with the police officer who was trailing after him.
“Er… I didn’t get him in trouble, did I? I wasn’t
trying to break any rules…” she murmured.
The Growlithe turned back and stared at her and her companions. He pinned his ears and shook his head with a tired sigh.
“I… don’t think you did, actually. But why don’t you sit back with that doll of yours and let your trainer try and take a moment to sort this all out
outside the tall grass, huh?”
The blood came flushing into her cheeks as the Growlithe drifted off, but after a quick glance backwards at the doll, the feelings faded a bit.
She decided that she wouldn’t have wanted it anywhere else but right there with her just then.
