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Hi everybody, for those of you who happened to follow me a bit closely in the spring, you might have remembered that I ground out a set of “drabbles” in the course of like two weeks as part of the Fifth Anniversary Drabble Bingo in May 2024 in which I dipped my toes into the water with a hurt/comfort narrative with a recurring character that’s popped up in some of my other writings. Well, it’s here back in an expanded format where I actually bothered to do some quality control in a story that under current planning was slated to run for about a dozen updates.
For those who have been following me for the really long term, you will probably recognize the core of this story as being a retelling of a character arc from my time in the We Are All Pokémon Trainers RP circa around 2010-ish, which extends to the cast that includes cameos of characters played by @Venia Silente from here on Thousand Roads (who also was a beta reader for this story), Luke924 from FFN, along with Tangent128 and rmctagg09 from SerebiiForums. Well, sort of. The names of most of said characters were changed to ones thematically related to their original ones and some details regarding their characters were altered to fit a more grounded (har har) setting and chronology than the ones their original incarnations are from. As such, this story is dedicated to them and the others that I made fond memories with back then, and I hope that my writing did their efforts justice.
As is a bit of a tradition for stories outside of my primaryworks as a writer, this story updates on a schedule of “whenever I have the extra time, energy, and motivation for it”, though the Prologue and first chapter will be released roughly a week apart from each other. But if all goes well, this story should be done and dusted sometime by around this same time next year.
The original drabble versions are included in spoiler tags on the chapters they correspond to. They generally follow the same plot as the final versions, but if you’re curious as to what this story originally looked like and don’t feel like sifting through the Drabble Bingo thread, they’re here as an archival novelty.
Though that’s enough explaining for now, let’s get into the part that you’re all here for:
The Salamence watched as a flash of light melted away the simulated surroundings of her Pokéball, and the world outside filled in around her. She looked down at her feet, at her shelled underbelly and then over at the red wings that she’d known for all of two days. Two very long and upsetting days. Between the couches, the Pokéball design on the floor, and the counter with large machines behind it, it dawned on her that she was in the lobby of a Pokécenter. The color of the counter and the layout looked a bit different, but it wasn’t that different from the ones that she’d seen before.
“Welcome to Johto, Marl.”
Marl blinked and craned her head over towards the source of the voice. It was a Marowak, holding her bone and looking up at her. Eira, one of her teammates. She’d been there with her back at her trainer’s house, and she’d gotten used to looking down at her 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 Pokécenter 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—her trainer’s starter—was there too. He seemed much more tense than he normally was, and slowly lumbered up to her with a sheepish grin.
“Good to see you again, Marl. You’re… uh… bigger than when we last saw you.”
Marl felt her face curl into a frown and her fangs poke out of her mouth. No kidding she was bigger than the last time they met, and whose fault was that? Seriously, after everything that happened, Calvin seriously had the gall to send his other partners to meet 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.
The Salamence grit her teeth as she felt heat at the back of her throat. Her eyes narrowed, as the rest of the Pokécenter faded away from her mind and gave way to hot, smoldering anger.
“You!”
Marl bared her fangs and lunged at the man. She briefly saw him stumble back, when she felt claws dig into her shoulder and another clamp her mouth shut. It was Roy, holding her back with Aries and Eira joining in to do much the same. She didn’t realize the three were so heavy, since for all her growling and thrashing, she just couldn’t shake the three and pull herself ahead.
“Let go of me!” she snarled. “This doesn’t involve you!”
They clamored in overlapping voices as she saw the man with the unplaceable face freeze and stare from the ground.
“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 noticed that Lucario and Floatzel approaching from the side. She had no idea who those two were supposed to be, since her trainer didn’t train a Lucario or Floatzel as far as she knew, 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 the points of Roy’s claws jerk her back and turned to see the Blastoise staring at her with an expression that seemed to be both equally 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 batted her wings and tried to push her teammates off of her, her eyes focused on the young man who was nervously reaching for a Pokéball on the ground and getting onto his feet. Because of course he’d just try to avoid her more after just going and abandoning her during the most important day of her life! 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 he just left me at home for it! It’s been two days since then!”
Everything went silent afterwards aside from the sound of her angry breaths. Wingbeats followed, as her last missing teammate, Jaki flew up. The Honchkrow walked ahead between her and Calvin, traded glances, before rolling his eyes and turning over to the Marowak clinging to her foreleg with an unimpressed scoff.
“... Okay, bonehead. What happened here?”
Eira shook her head and let out a low sigh in reply.
“It’s a long story…”
Before everything happened, Marl thought her trainer was a kind human, if a bit spacey and sometimes prone to getting distracted. He’d moved to some ‘dorm’ thing in a ‘college’ in Lilycove City a couple years ago, which was cramped to the point that he’d normally had 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 and the rest of her teammates had learned that she was close to evolving. She remembered being ecstatic once Roy translated things over for her, with the day when she’d finally leave her cumbersome form as a Shelgon behind and take to the air finally almost in her claws. That day was the most important day for every Salamence. She thought Calvin knew that and that he was looking forward to seeing it alongside her.
Except, a couple weeks ago, he sent her back to his family’s home along with Eira as part of a normal rotation. Marl remembered being nervous when she was told about it, but her teammates assured her that with the way that ‘PC Network’ humans had worked these days, that near or far, it wouldn’t take long to reunite when it came time for her evolution.
Yet she was not at all prepared for what happened. That moment came unexpectedly while on a walk around the neighborhood with Eira and Calvin’s parents two days ago. Marl remembered being beside herself in awe and wonder and just let the surge of energy overtake her as her body disappeared in warm light for the second time in her life. When she emerged, she was no longer the slow, cumbersome block she’d been for almost five years, but 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. She thought it’d be the happiest day of her life, and for those first few moments, it was. Sure, the rest of her team couldn’t be there for this exact moment, but it would be a short trip through the PC Network for everyone to be reunited.
So they went back to the house, and it was all suddenly a lot smaller-feeling, to the point where Marl couldn’t go through the hallways normally on her own. Calvin’s parents recalled her into her Pokéball to pass the time for what she thought would 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 Pokéball vanished entirely. She grew worried by that point, and at night, Calvin’s parents finally let her out in the small house’s small yard for Eira to try and break the news on their behalf:
That Calvin’s parents had been calling that PokéNav thing of his all evening and hadn’t been able to get any response. That from how late it had gotten, that the two doubted the Salamence would be able to rejoin her friends until the morning.
The words hit her like a Blizzard, and she spent the night in a depressed stupor, worrying whether or not something had happened to her trainer and the rest of her friends.
The next morning, Calvin still wasn’t picking up, and his parents started to call around to others that Calvin knew. Marl tried to lift her mood and push her growing worries aside by taking to the air and flying around when the elder couple had time to watch over her outside, 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 ‘Goldenrod Open’, but they still couldn’t get ahold of him.
That was when Marl realized that her trainer had decided to leave her behind. On the day she’d been looking forward to the most in her life.
She remembered crying after that, a lot. The afternoon came and went in a teary blur as she 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 why everything happened:
“You just ignored me so that way you could go and have fun by yourself!” she roared. “How could you do that to me?!”
Marl bared her fangs through claws desperately trying to hold them closed, glaring daggers down at her trainer. She noticed that Roy had an askew expression, while her other teammates traded looks with one another. The Blastoise moved his body forward for his eyes to meet hers from the side, before he shook his head with a tired sigh
“That… wasn’t what Calvin was doing at all, Marl,” the Blastoise said. “Rako, Aoi, go and get Calvin’s bag. Show Marl what we were going to give her before we found out she’d already evolved.”
The Lucario and Floatzel 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 for Calvin to put you over the edge of evolution here after you reunited with your friends so that way he could enter you alongside us into the tournament as a Salamence,” the Lucario said. “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 you’re about to get your trainer into trouble.”
Marl noticed a police officer coming up, accompanied by a Growlithe with his tail and ears pinned back who cast anxious glances over at her who visibly gulped. Not long after, the officer and Calvin traded words that she didn’t pick up on other than that it seemed to quickly turn into a rather awkward-sounding conversation.
Marl looked back at the blue cubes in the Lucario’s grasp. The Salamence’s 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 because of 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!
“D-Don’t try and weasel him out of this!” the Salamence snarled. “Calvin could’ve called home, and-!”
“Unfortunately, he couldn’t,” a bleating voice said. “That one’s kinda my fault.”
Roy and the others let go of her, if still with a close eye, as Aries went over to the bag and rummaged through it himself. After a few clumsy pokes and prods, the Ampharos pulled out a PokéNav… which had been visibly blackened with portions of melted plastic.
Marl stared at the ruined device, looking back at the sheep as he flusteredly hemmed and hawed to himself.
“It’s a bit of a long story, but 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 even if your sheep buddy didn’t fry that PokéNav,” 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 slowly made his way 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 beforehand and let us know, 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?” the Honchkrow harrumphed. “If evolving again was such a big deal for you, why didn’t you just suppress it and wait a couple days?”
The Salamence froze and began to tear up as a sinking realization came over her: Jaki was right. She’d been so swept up in the moment and excited at finally being able to fly that it hadn’t even occurred to her to try and put it off.
“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 hung her head afterwards as her voice hitched and she began to cry bitter tears. The surrounding Pokécenter just seemed to fade out, which was just as well since she didn’t want to think about how pathetic she looked in front of everyone right now.
“... Marl?”
Marl felt a pat against her scales and sniffled briefly. She looked up and saw Roy pawing at her neck just past her head. Behind him was their trainer, standing at arm’s length from her with a worried-looking stare that the Blastoise briefly acknowledged before looking back at her.
“I know that this wasn’t how you wanted your life as a Salamence to start,” 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 have fun with 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 their teammates who didn’t understand human speech as well.
“Calvin says he’d 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, Calvin missing her final evolution entirely wasn’t all his fault, she didn’t have any idea how Calvin was supposed to even begin making up for a moment like that. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to think about that right now, or anytime soon for that matter.
But he was there and still looking worriedly at her. And at that moment, she just felt too defeated to protest anymore and hung her head with a low mutter.
“O… Okay.”
It was better than nothing, she supposed.
Original Drabble:
Concession Stand
Tailgating/Picnicking
In the locker room
The Big Match
A brawl battle between fans.
In the commentator's booth.
Memorabilia
Registration Booth
Pre-Game Pokemon Show
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.
The Pokécenter room that Calvin booked was too small for everyone to rest in outside their Pokéballs, and it was cramped even before he hooked up that dogeared silver cube he played video games on to the boxy TV wedged in its corner. Not that Marl was particularly motivated to share the room to begin with. She recalled herself to her Pokéball shortly after leaving the Pokécenter lobby and didn’t feel like coming back out for most of the evening afterwards. When she finally did, she made a point of ignoring her trainer and keeping to herself.
Yes, it was petty, but it was still better than what Calvin deserved. She’d heard the explanations and excuses that everyone gave for how he managed to miss her evolution, but surely he could’ve done more to try and not miss the most important day in the world for her.
He could’ve called home sooner. Or paid for that phone service during the ferry ride. Or something.
When Marl roused from her sleep the following morning, she woke up to the simulated mountains that had been inside her Pokéball since she was a little Bagon. She stretched and groggily brushed her face against a wing, when she noticed dark shapes in her Pokéball’s simulated sky:
Of people and Pokémon all around in some sort of line outside. It went ahead a little ways before clearing out for some sort of platform that she couldn’t get a good view of. There was a translucent outline of a red flash and then Roy materializing with his shell blocking out the view of the outside world. Marl wasn’t sure what the occasion was since the already muted noise from outside the Pokéball was muddled with overlapping chatter, when she noticed the Blastoise lumbering off outside her field of view and then another red flash following afterwards.
This time, it was Aries, with the Ampharos’ body filling her Pokéball’s field of view before he too went along. Then the same thing happened with Eira, and then Jaki, as like her teammates before, the Marowak and Honchkrow headed off to somewhere she couldn’t see.
“... What on earth are they doing out there?”
Marl finally saw her trainer’s hand come down and grasp the top of her Pokéball, when her surroundings melted away in a flash of light. She blinked and was about to recall herself back to it, only to notice that there were a lot of voices all around her. Human and Pokémon alike. The Salamence hesitated and let her eyes adjust as she saw she was in some sort of space covered by a concrete awning that had colorful banners on its side.
Right, those were probably for that tournament they were all supposed to join.
“Next!”
Marl turned her head rightwards and saw something that looked like a low-slung stage with a lined background. In front of it, there were some of those human ‘computers’ set up on a folding table, where a Farfetch’d stood alongside a human in a sporting uniform and looked up at her as his trainer fiddled around with a handheld device. She felt a prod at her wing and saw Calvin, with his strangely hard-to-place face, motioning forward and saying something. She traded confused glances for a moment, but it finally dawned on her that he wanted her on that stage.
She frowned and at first thought of just going back into her Pokéball to fly around in its simulated sky, but everyone else was already on the other side of the stage and Calvin already handed off her Pokéball to one of the humans at the desk. She supposed that was a sign that she wasn’t getting out of this one. Marl grumbled a little under her breath and made her way forward, pacing onto the stage when the human motioned for a stop and the Farfetch’d suddenly piped up.
“That’s far enough,” the Farfetch’d said. “Just stay there and stand as upright as you normally would for a moment.”
What on earth was this, a yearly checkup at a Pokécenter? Marl stopped and waited as the Farfetch’d’s trainer went about her with the handheld device that scanned a strobing light whenever he clicked it. All the while, the humans at the computers punched a few keys and looked down at cube-like monitors whose images she couldn’t see at her present angle. After a moment, they motioned back at the Farfetch’d and her trainer as the pair went up and circled around. They seemed to linger a bit and 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!”
… A scale? Like that little pad thing that Calvin’s parents kept back home in their house? Was this really a checkup after all? Marl made her way off the platform and down a small ramp on the opposite side of the platform, stealing curious glances back the entire time when she felt a hand brushing at her shoulder. It was Calvin, tugging at her to come along. She brushed her trainer away and let out a sour huff, before heading towards her teammates.
He got the message and backed off, which was fine by her. She still wasn’t happy over him missing her evolution, even if she was more curious about what on earth he’d put them up to.
“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,” a yipping voice said from behind. “You know, to make sure that you’re not secretly hiding anything that would give you an unfair advantage in battle.”
Marl craned her head back to the scale and the lined background with the man in the sporting gear and the Farfetch’d. It suddenly occurred to her that the background must’ve been a height chart. That Lucario she’d briefly seen in the Pokécenter the other day stepped up, and the pair began to do their checkup or whatever it was they put her through. ‘Aoi’, she was pretty sure she heard the others call her. Marl didn’t remember Calvin having any additional Pokémon join his team lately, much less something as uncommon as a Lucario. After the officials dismissed the Lucario from the stage, curiosity got the better of her, as the Salamence gave her head a puzzled tilt at the approaching stranger.
“... Who are you anyways?”
“What, my species? I’m a Lucario,” Aoi replied. “I get that we’re not exactly common encounters in the wild in regions like Hoenn anymore, but-”
“No, no, I know that part, but who are you?” Marl replied. “Since Calvin never trained a Lucario, and I’d think I’d have noticed if he started with how long I’ve been with him.”
… Would she have noticed, though? After all, she didn’t expect that Calvin would just miss out on the most important day of her life. What if there were other things she didn’t know about him, too?
Marl turned her head after some chatter from the computers and realized that from her present angle, she could briefly see some text and images flickering on the screens. It was now the Lucario’s turn to give a puzzled expression back, as the Fighting-type twitched her feelers and folded her arms in reply.
“The ‘Field Biology’ course your trainer’s in? Ring any bells?”
Marl supposed that it did. ‘Field Biology’ was one of the courses that Calvin took in college. Marl had always found it the most interesting of them since it was the only course that got him out of the building and into nature. And the only one that she or her teammates could reliably join in on things.
Though they really just had Pokémon to spare in that class for students to partner with? She knew that Calvin had apparently started to help teach it as some sort of ‘student instructor’, but she could’ve sworn that it wasn’t supposed to be as serious of a course as the others he took…
“I was there on and off,” the Salamence 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.”
There was a moment’s blinking pause, before the Lucario sighed and pawed at the back of her head.
“... Guess we haven’t met all that much, but the point is that I basically got assigned to tag along with your trainer whenever he goes out in the wilds to study the behavior of Pokémon. It’s apparently part of some initiative to help set up some new ‘Safari Zone’ in the south of this region based on the one back in Hoenn.”
Well, 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?”
“You’d have to ask the sponsors for his course, since he talked them into letting me come along. Something about it helping for gathering data about other Pokémon like me,” Aoi said, giving a bemused smile back in reply. “Though I’m not complaining. Calvin needed a sixth Pokémon for this tournament and I wanted a chance to get to throw down with someone other than wilds in the tall grass for once. So it wound up working out for everyone involved.”
Marl cocked a brow as the Lucario walked past her with some sort of excited tinge in the air that all but rolled off the Fighting-type. Was all of that normal for human college classes? Or was this the sort of thing that only student-led classes did? 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 hang around your team for a while,” the Lucario said. “It’s not that uncommon for Pokémon from my program to wind up sticking around with a trainer as part of long-term research.”
Marl blinked for a moment as the rest of her teammates joined along, with Aries hailing the Lucario as she approached. So Aoi was basically a Rental Pokémon, if one that had more steps involved. It was a bit weird sharing a team with someone that she didn’t really know, especially one that others on her team already seemed familiar with.
She shook her head and brushed those thoughts aside. If this tournament expected teams of six, they would be at a disadvantage showing up without someone filling the last slot. And she supposed that everyone else she knew had gone through the experience of having to get used to a new stranger 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 up 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 from the direction of the Lucario that briefly caught the Farfetch’d’s attention.
First her excitedness and now this; so, weren’t Lucario supposed to be able to share feelings with others through some ‘aura’ thing? Was that Aoi’s annoyance she was feeling?
“Rako, this tournament is for teams of six.”
“Yeah, and?” the Floatzel replied. “There’s nothing keeping entering trainers from having extra teammates, right?”
Wait, why was the Floatzel here anyways? If Calvin only needed six Pokémon for this tournament, why did he bring along a seventh? Though from the unamused expressions Roy and a couple of her other teammates had, Marl guessed that there was a story behind this...
“Rako, you’re a field service ‘mon!” the Lucario snapped. “Half the Pokémon joining this tournament would probably be able to eat you for lunch!”
The Floatzel flinched briefly, before shooting an annoyed scowl back.
“Look, I’m not a pushover, alright? I can fight just fine!” he insisted, before trailing off. “Though that ‘eat me’ part was just figurative, right?”
“I’m sorry, he’s a what now?” Marl asked.
A loud sigh turned Marl’s attention off toward her other teammates, as Roy shook his head and raised a claw towards his brow.
“He’s another Pokémon from the same program as Aoi. His job is to help 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 tournament setting 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 on our way back home,” 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… flailing and getting dragged by his head crest towards them by Aoi. Marl fidgeted her wings and shot an askew glance back at her Blastoise teammate.
“These two bicker like this a lot, don’t they?” she asked.
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” 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 sure hope those other friends your trainer has aren’t a bunch of pills like you!” the Floatzel piped.
A flash of red light followed as the Floatzel was recalled into his Pokéball, and then another did the same to the Lucario that dragged him over. Calvin started to work through the other Pokémon on the team, as something about the Floatzel’s whining lingered in Marl’s mind.
… ‘Other friends’?
“Wait, Roy? What friends was he talking about? Ones from college?”
“Not quite,” Roy replied. “You remember Garrett? That Unovan exchange student from back in middle school?”
Marl blinked as her mouth briefly fell open in reply. ‘Garrett’? That was a name she hadn’t heard in quite a while…
“Numa and Ryuko’s trainer? They’re all here, too?”
A wave of memories came back to Marl in a flash. Garrett was a trainer who came from a faraway land with skin and hair that looked very different from what the humans around Hoenn usually did. The humans there apparently normally spoke a different language from the ones in Hoenn, and allegedly whenever he spoke, it carried a peculiar sound to it, even if she didn’t notice anything really different about his rhythm and intonation.
Back when he was in Hoenn, Garrett had apparently picked up a Mudkip—Numa, as he’d nicknamed him—from the local starter program and gotten very far into the Hoenn League. Far enough that Marl distinctly remembered times when Calvin was quietly jealous about it.
As tough and as quickly as Numa evolved into a Swampert during those years, he had been a close friend back then. But closer still was Ryuko, the Salamence Garrett had wound up training. Marl had always looked up to her, and been more than a little envious of how quickly she’d managed to evolve. Marl remembered that Ryuko was always happy to take her out on flights and taught her little tricks here and there about how to wield her dragonfire a bit better, while Calvin had learned things like how to scratch at her chin to lift her mood from Garrett’s experience.
Marl wasn’t going to complain about them being here, but…
“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 that lives in this region through that ‘internet’ thing humans have been using more often. 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 of the stadium after registration to catch up a bit.”
Calvin abruptly called Roy’s name as he and Marl turned and saw their trainer raise a Pokéball at the Blastoise. She supposed that was a sign to wrap their conversation up. 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 passing river passing by from the north and west where one could get a better view of its blue roof and its three golden spires, which from what her teammates said was apparently a multi-use arena which was more typically used to host something called a ‘Pokéathlon’. Aside from some planters, a couple stands at the center that sold shakes of some sort, and some light poles along the edge, it didn’t seem like there was a whole lot here in the plaza.
Or at least aside from the humans and Pokémon that were in it. Calvin apparently had said on the way over that the square was relatively quiet at the moment, but there was still no shortage of trainers and their partners who were milling about. As they went along, Marl noticed that a number of smaller Pokémon and even some of their trainers they passed would abruptly give her a berth after they noticed her. She wasn’t really sure if she was annoyed by their reactions or relieved that she didn’t need to deal with them. Maybe that lingering frustration she had over the way Calvin had missed out on her evolution had been carrying over to her body language.
It didn’t take long before they came across a darker-skinned human with short, curly hair. He was taller than he remembered and wore different clothing, but that was Garrett, and sure enough, Numa was out by his side. There was also another human with lighter skin she didn’t recognize who had a Nidorino beside him. She wasn’t sure who those two were supposed to be and for a second, she thought it was that internet friend from Johto, 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 human speech is an arrhythmic mess, but I can’t make sense of anything those two are saying.”
Aoi flared her feelers and closed her eyes in focus briefly. Marl briefly raised a brow as the Lucario seemed to fall deep in thought, before Aoi’s feelers fell and the Fighting-type opened her eyes.
“They seem to be talking about past events and getting nostalgic about it, but that’s just based on the feelings I could pick up from them,” the Lucario said. “I can’t tell what they’re saying at all from their voices.”
Right, that must’ve been through that ‘aura’ thing that Lucario 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 the Lucario didn’t recognize anything she heard 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, the humans here in Johto talk like the ones in Hoenn,” Rako retorted. “They’re also separated by the sea, so…”
The sound of wingbeats rang out as a Tropius along with a bespectacled young man with long hair came in and hailed the other three who were waiting. Given how she could recognize some of the words he was saying, that must’ve been Calvin’s friend from the internet. There was some back and forth between the trainers that she didn’t catch, when a low, familiar voice caught her ear.
“Wait, Marl? Is that you?”
Marl looked up and saw that Garrett and the Nidorino trainer were now much closer to her. 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, and he reared up onto his hindlegs to hold a hand out in greeting.
“Hah! You’ve really grown strong since we last met!” the Swampert chuckled. “You and Calvin must’ve been over the moon when you finally got your wings!”
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 we just met each other for the first time since then yesterday.”
She couldn’t see Numa’s reaction, but just from the pregnant silence and the way he awkwardly shuffled his limbs from the corner of her vision, she supposed that she must have ruined the moment.
“Oh. Uh… That’s really… Er… how on earth did that even happen?” Numa asked. “I thought that Calvin usually kept close tabs on you guys.”
“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 he went back to Unova, 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 Tropius and the Nidorino trainers. 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 middle school. From what she could make out, the Tropius was ‘Bushel’ and her trainer was called ‘Sessen’. The Nidorino trainer on the other hand, was apparently ‘Alberi’ and the Nidorino was ‘Rinaldo’. The latter two were from some faraway land, and had come along with Garrett for some reason she didn’t quite pick up.
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 with him too?
“Is Ryuko here with you, Numa?” 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.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but she’s not with us this time. I’m actually just here myself to cheer Garrett on from the sidelines 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, Marl should’ve expected that things would just keep going wrong afterwards. The Salamence 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 Garrett gotten in whatever League was out there 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’d be cut out for the tournament, Floatzel?” Jaki scoffed.
Garrett said something to the Samurott, who let out a grunt before unsheathing a blade with an audible rattle and raising it up in the air. The foreign Pokémon left the blade up in the air 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 I’m ready to take them on.”
“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’s eyes briefly widened and she stiffened up in surprise. Marl couldn’t say she could fault her reaction, since just what sort of response was that?
“Fenris, en serio. Piensa en conocer a estos Pokémon primero, antes de hacerte el de ideas románticas.²”
After the Samurott answered with those strange words, it dawned on Marl that the pair must’ve been speaking a different language. She supposed that she’d heard others mention in the past that Pokémon from faraway lands often spoke in strange tongues that couldn’t be understood, but it was still surprising to see Pokémon that at once looked so recognizable and yet sounded so… different.
“Don’t bother. They’re speaking Unovan. Or the Unovan that Pokémon speak in that region,” 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 before getting to the Tropius and her teammates.”
Numa helped them pass their nicknames and greetings to each other afterwards in alternating turns. Some of Garrett’s Pokémon like his Samurott had names like ‘Miyamoto’ that felt like they’d have been right at home back in Hoenn. Others like his Lucario had names like ‘Fenris’ that just from their names sounded like they’d come from faraway places. Things went back and forth between both sides for a bit, and Marl couldn’t help but settle in a bit, 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 just 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 a nickname, really,” Roy said.
“She’s… not quite the only Pokémon Garret’s named in that style before,” Numa explained. “Though to be fair, her name doesn’t mean ‘Hydreigon’ back in Unova and she apparently likes the sound of it quite a bit, so…”
… So Marl hadn’t been hearing things. She supposed that she’d heard that some trainers didn’t give nicknames to the Pokémon they partnered with, but somehow Marl doubted this Pokémon even knew what she agreed to be called 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-sounding 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 that the others on Garrett’s team 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 the words she said and was getting bent out of shape over it? 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 the Lucario from Garrett’s team 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 after all? Even if she had, it surely wasn’t anything that was worth getting this upset about. 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’s eyes widened and she 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 sit and 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-”
Marl fanned her wings out and let a low growl come from her throat. She briefly saw Alberi and Sessen duck out of the way and then movement coming from Calvin and Garrett’s direction, but didn’t pay much mind. She turned her attention fully towards this ‘Hydreigon’, locked eyes with her, and bared her fangs.
“You know what? No,” she snarled. “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m not going to be pushed around 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 right flank’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 this stranger 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 wilds.
And Spoink would fly before she just yielded and accepted being treated like this.
“Grr! Fine!” she bellowed. “You want a fight so badly? I’ll give you one!”
Marl beat her wings and lunged forward. Her wingbeats weren’t as steady as she imagined they’d be, and she ignored her trainer’s cries in the background as dragonfire built along her claws. She threw it forward as she closed the gap with the Hydreigon, bringing it down in between the other dragon’s left and center heads. The Hydreigon let out a satisfying, pained bellow as Marl tumbled back with her, just belatedly noticing the red lights that just missed the two…
Along with 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 her left wing about halfway between its tip and her shoulder. There was a sickening crack as it wrenched forward and she crashed to the ground on her side.
White-hot pain followed. She bellowed in agony and tried to thrash only to freeze as the pain in her wing came back worse, as a sudden, dreadful realization came over her.
She’d remembered feeling pain like this before once when she was still a little Bagon. When she’d jumped out the bedroom window and landed wrong afterwards. Except back then, that pain was in her leg.
Her breaths tightened and grew shallow. She suddenly felt much smaller, every bit as helpless as she did back then.
“Marl!”
Marl felt claws latch onto her forelegs and pull her onto her feet. 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 halfway along its length and hurt when she moved it even slightly.
Her vision started to grow bleary and she tried and failed to fight back a whine from her throat. If this pain in her wing was what she thought it was, then she wasn’t going to be flying after today.
And she didn’t know when she would be able to 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."
Original Drabble:
Concession Stand
Tailgating/Picnicking
In the locker room
The Big Match
A brawl battle between fans.
In the commentator's booth.
Memorabilia
Registration Booth
Pre-Game Pokemon Show
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.
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."
Okay, catnip at your service! Hope you're doing fine today! Now let's get to it!
So I'm only going through the prologue for now, might go for the next chapter when I have time.
I love that we're getting another installation of the Bagon/Shelgon drabble. And now, we finally get to see her as a Salamence. Though unlike the cutesy tone of the drabbles, this seemed to be taking a more dramatic step.
Calvin misses her big day and understandably Marl gets mad. Though it is kinda ridiculous to think that he'd abandoned her just because he didn't appear for that one day out of several hundred (I still adore that sunset cliff scene if I remember how that goes). But I guess it does highlight Mark's immaturity pretty well and I do like the idea of a Salamence getting the big mad because their trainer wasn't there when they got their dream realised.
That said, I look forward to how the two will reconcile and strengthen their bonds through the tournament, and will probably review it when I get the chance.
The Salamence watched as a flash of light melted away the simulated surroundings of her Pokéball, and the world outside filled in around her. She looked down at her feet, at her shelled underbelly and then over at the red wings that she’d known for all of two days.
Y'know, if this is the Shelgon from before. I don't think I'd ever saw her name before so is this the first time we get her name?
(Either that or I have terrible memory).
Uh, girl. Anime physics or not, I don't think a normal guy's gonna survive a bite or a scratch from a goddamn Salamence.
Anywho, I don't really got much to say (is it a good thing or a bad thing if I say I was too invested to take notes?). Hope you have a nice rest of your day/night. See ya!
I love that we're getting another installation of the Bagon/Shelgon drabble. And now, we finally get to see her as a Salamence. Though unlike the cutesy tone of the drabbles, this seemed to be taking a more dramatic step.
Technically, those who have been following some of my other works got to see Marl as a Salamence well before this story. Her and Calvin’s first appearance in my published writings was actually as a cameo in Dragonspiral’s Children that was there all the way back in the original version of it.
Calvin misses her big day and understandably Marl gets mad. Though it is kinda ridiculous to think that he'd abandoned her just because he didn't appear for that one day out of several hundred (I still adore that sunset cliff scene if I remember how that goes). But I guess it does highlight Mark's immaturity pretty well and I do like the idea of a Salamence getting the big mad because their trainer wasn't there when they got their dream realised.
I might need to play it up a bit more in a revision sometime, but Marl was explicitly mentioned as being afraid that this would happen at the very outset of her flashback sequence, so it’s not just “that one moment” informing her thought process there (along with a hefty dash of angery clouding her judgement)
That said, I look forward to how the two will reconcile and strengthen their bonds through the tournament, and will probably review it when I get the chance.
Y'know, if this is the Shelgon from before. I don't think I'd ever saw her name before so is this the first time we get her name?
(Either that or I have terrible memory).
She’s explicitly named in her appearances in Like a Dragon, yes. Though said depictions are ambiguous on her gender even if Marl’s been a “she” for a decade now, since I didn’t want to get in the way of the second person perspective narration those oneshots roll with.
Uh, girl. Anime physics or not, I don't think a normal guy's gonna survive a bite or a scratch from a goddamn Salamence.
I mean, Professor Oak apparently survived being set on fire by one in the anime, so I’d actually take that bet. Even if it’d likely be painful and require a trip to an ER afterwards. o3o;
Anywho, I don't really got much to say (is it a good thing or a bad thing if I say I was too invested to take notes?). Hope you have a nice rest of your day/night. See ya!
When Marl came to, light filled her eyes and blinded her vision. The Salamence briefly a moment as her sight adjusted to the lighting as it slowly dawned on her that she was in a large, open room with walls panted in pastel greens. There were shelves and cupboards lining one of the walls, along with machines on wheels with a bunch of buttons and knobs. For a brief moment, she thought that she might have been dreaming, when the pain in her left wing suddenly came back.
“A-Agh!”
A glance over at it revealed it was still hanging at a funny angle and hurt whenever she so much as fidgeted it… and that there was a pair of Chansey just past it. One of them wore a small white hat and looked like she was in charge of something, while the other one looked a bit younger and went about without any accessories. Behind them, each of the Chansey were accompanied by a trainer wearing mostly white clothing: the elder Chansey had a tense-looking human male in glasses, while the younger one had a female with pink pigtails.
Marl set her teeth on edge as everything clicked together and she felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was in the backroom of a Pokécenter. The fact that she hadn’t seen anything of her mock-den and its surroundings or remembered anything about the way over meant that when Calvin recalled her, her Pokéball put her in medical stasis. Pokéballs did that whenever made them work determined circumstances were such that it was better for the Pokémon inside to be in limbo until whatever wounds they had could be treated.
Marl’s breaths started to pick up. Medical stasis normally kicked in when Pokémon returned to their Pokéballs fainted… and in times when they were seriously hurt. Her own Pokéball had done that to her once back when she was a Bagon and broke her leg after an ill-fated jump from Calvin’s bedroom window. It wasn’t hard to see why she’d been put into stasis: her wing looked awful right now, and she swore she could see it swelling up worse and worse in front of her eyes.
Wh-What if that awful Hydreigon had broken it permanently? What if she was just stuck like this?
“We’re so not getting paid enough to deal with this,” the elder Chansey’s voice said. “Ema, have your human go get Ari from radiology. He’s going to need to look at this… and maybe also throw a few sparks around.”
Marl looked back and saw the two Chansey sizing her up. The one without the hat tugged at Pigtails and said something her ears didn’t quite pick up which sent the female doctor hurrying out into the hall. Glasses remained where he was in the room, tense and wary-looking as the Chansey with the hat sized her up. The elder Chansey shook her head, and had an expression that reminded Marl of the ones Roy would have when he caught her trying to climb up to high places as a Bagon on her own.
“The tournament hasn’t even started yet,” she sighed. “How on earth are Pokémon already getting drug in off the field in this state?”
Marl hesitated. ‘Off the field’…? As in off the stadium’s field?
“W-Wait, but I thought the Pokécenter was an entire bus ride away out in Goldenrod.”
“It is,” the Chansey with the hat explained. “You’re in on-site overflow set up for initial assessment and treatment here at the Pokéathlon Dome. Normally we get sprains and pulled muscles from Pokéathlon contestants, so getting a patient in your condition is admittedly unexpected for us.”
That wasn’t reassuring to hear at all. These Chansey and their trainers didn’t sound like they were as skilled as doctors, so why were they keeping her here? Shouldn’t they be sending her over to the normal Pokécenter?
The door suddenly flew open as Pigtails came back huffing and puffing with a Pokéball in her hand… along with a stack of thick blankets. Marl eyed the blankets, before shooting a sharp frown over at the Chansey.
“What are you doing? It doesn’t take this many doctors to treat one Pokémon,” she demanded. “And why are there so many blankets? My wing doesn’t feel cold right now, it hurts.”
“They’re not to warm you up. The blankets are restraints,” the younger Chansey said. “They’re meant to wrap up parts of your body like your claws or your tail to keep you from moving them around while you’re being examined.”
Marl started to inch back until she could feel her tail brush up against the wall of the room. She flashed her fangs, when her voice came out with more of a nervous stammer than she expected.
“S-So you’re going to tie me up? Since when do Pokémon need to go through that when they’re hurt?!”
“When they're Pokémon of size and strength class like yours where a human or a Pokémon simply can’t simply hold you down against an examination surface to keep you still,” the Chansey with the hat explained. “It’s a basic safety measure for us and our trainers in order to do things like taking a closer look at that wing of yours.”
Marl backed up tighter into the wall and subconsciously found herself spreading her uninjured wing out as the human doctors cautiously approached. Pigtails spread out the blankets on the floor, as Glasses called for her in their language. Marl dug her claws into the floor and turned her snout up. She didn’t trust these four. Couldn’t she just tell them to return her to her Pokéball and have the doctors back at Goldenrod’s Pokécenter look at her?
Marl suddenly felt a sudden flash of pain run through her wing and looked left. It was still hanging with that ugly swelling, and it’d surely still keep hurting until someone made it better. If it were even possible. She shook her head and relented, grudgingly placing her foreclaws down on the blankets.
“Lie down and bring your tail in as close to your right hindleg as you can,” the Chansey with the hat instructed. “Assuming you can stay orderly, there shouldn’t be any need for a muzzle as part of this examination.”
Muzzle? Marl wasn’t sure if she liked where this was going, but Pigtails and the Chansey without the hat were already stooping down and wrapping the blankets around her before fastening zip ties over them, which enclosed her claws and kept her from being able to pull her limbs back. She felt the pair move on to her tail and felt them wrap one of the blankets and repeat the process between her right hindleg and her tail, preventing her from doing much more than wriggle its tip.
The Salamence grit her teeth, partly from the pain, partly from the frustrated growl coming from her throat. Were these Pokémon trying to convince her to just go back to her Pokéball?! They didn’t even seem to care about how awkward and uncomfortable this was for her! Especially with the way the elder Chansey was just going around with that exhausted, indifferent expression on her face…
“Alright, now that that’s taken care of…” the Chansey with the hat sighed. “Where does your wing hurt?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the part where it’s obviously being held funny right now?”
“You have no idea how little that narrows things down,” the Chansey grumbled, pinching her brow. “But I assume that you mean this part?”
The Chansey motioned up as Glasses brushed fingers against her wing. A piercing pain suddenly shot through her wing and her mind went blank. Marl bellowed in pain and reflexively brought her jaws towards Glasses’ hand. He yanked it back just as she clamped down on empty air, and felt the blankets dig into her tail as she tried to swing it out from its curled position.
“Wh-What did you do?!” she cried. “You just made my wing hurt worse!”
Marl thrashed and tried to shake the blankets on her forelegs and her tail loose as the doctors and the Chansey suddenly rushed her and held her back, with Glasses hurriedly running a plastic cord around her snout that he pulled tight, enough so that it barely let her move her mouth enough to speak. She bellowed, partly from the pain, and partly because for the first time she could remember in a long while, Marl genuinely felt scared.
She briefly glimpsed her Pokéball was right there on the shelf. She just needed to get these four out of the way and then she could go back into it. She wouldn’t feel any pain that way. She didn’t know if a real doctor could fix her wing, but it had to be better than this.
“Ema, hurry up and get your trainer to bring Ari out here!” the Chansey in the hat snapped. “These restraints aren’t going to hold her forever!”
Marl lost her footing and yelped as her injured wing shifted, beating her free one wildly. She briefly saw the female doctor throw out the Pokéball from earlier, which bounced against the floor and shot out a red light that materialized into the form of a Luxray. The Electric-type saw her, and after his eyes met hers, had a brief flash of alarm cross his face.
“Oh boy, I just had to get dragged along for stadium duty this week.”
One of the doctors shouted something frantically at the Luxray that made Marl’s eyes widen as she recognized it to be a command for an attack.
“Th-Thunder Wave?!” she spluttered. “What sort of ‘healing’ is-?!”
An electric crackle suddenly filled the air and Marl felt warmth run through her body. Her limbs locked up, and she stumbled forward, her legs too numb and stiff to get her back upright. The Chansey came up and yanked at her muzzle with a brief grumble about it being “too loose” as Marl swore she could feel starting to dig into her scales. Her ragged breaths came out mixed with stifled whimpers, as she briefly saw the Chansey with the hat turn to her counterpart with a tired sigh.
“Ema, bring her trainer in here… and get some localized anesthesia while you’re at it.”
Marl tried to thrash about, but her body barely managed more than a pathetic wriggle as moisture started to bead up at the edges of her eyes. So this was what she’d waited her whole life for. To be lying splayed out on a cold, tiled floor, unable to fly, unable to even push away strangers who were hurting her.
She briefly saw Glasses holding a syringe as footsteps approached the door and her heart raced in a panic. The Chansey were shouting something at her as she tried to get onto her feet and limp away as they neared, but between the paralysis and the restraining blankets, she just couldn’t shake the doctors’ and the Chansey’s grip. Couldn’t do anything other than to let out stifled cries in protest in increasingly frantic, pleading tones.
The door suddenly opened as a familiar-sounding human voice joined in and suddenly the others let go of her. Marl frantically started to struggle up as much as her limbs would allow, when she suddenly felt human fingers cupping and stroking her neck, and looked over to see a young man with an unplaceable face, who moved his hand and loosened the muzzle around her mouth just enough for her to get out a soft murmur.
“C-Calvin?”
Sure enough, he was there. He looked tense and worried, but kept stroking and saying soothing-sounding words in his language. That things would be okay. That he understood she was uncomfortable right now, but the whole ordeal would be over soon. He moved his fingers under her chin and scratched at it as her breath calmed, and she lowered her head down onto his shoulder with a low whine.
Marl wished that he would just take her away from here. She didn’t know how she’d get her wing healed, but there had to be better places than this.
The Salamence blinked after noticing pink in the corner of her vision, and saw that the elder Chansey had stepped in front of her.
“Salamence, we’re going to need to administer anesthesia to your wing. It’s delivered by syringe, so you’ll feel a bit of a pinch at first,” she said. “But unless you want us to call in the anaesthesiology team to break out the Sleep Powder, we need you to hold your wing out as straight as you can for us to deliver it. Can you manage that?”
Marl didn’t meet the Chansey’s eyes. When she dreamed of being fully evolved when she was younger, she thought she’d be big and strong. That she’d always be up above looking down on the world, and never be afraid of anything…
And here she was, somehow feeling even smaller and more pathetic than she had during her lowest points as a Bagon.
“Uh- Uh huh…”
She turned her head away as her trainer stroked her and spoke to her, cradling her head and turning it rightward away from her injured wing. She didn’t understand much of his words, but it kept her mind occupied until the prick in her wing came.
There was a brief flash of pain, then a chilly feeling that started to spread along her wing’s membrane as her vision began to grow bleary.
True to the elder Chansey’s words, that ‘anesthesia’ thing really did make it so that after about a minute Marl could barely feel her left wing beyond a dull ache. The Luxray briefly looked her over, before nudging at Pigtails and prompting her to go and fetch a thick metal plate, along with a bulky device with a handle that looked almost like some sort of strange flashlight. The Chansey with the hat passed on a few hushed words to her trainer which her ears mostly missed, beyond overhearing something about wanting a ‘friend’ out but not one that was ‘too big’. She wasn’t sure what to make of it until Calvin took one of the other Pokéballs with him and aimed it at the ground. He tapped it, and in a flash of red light, Eira took form in front of her and stared at her.
There was a brief moment as the Marowak took in her surroundings, before she noticed Marl’s left wing and fell silent.
“Oh boy, it’s just been one thing after another with you these past few days,” the Ground-type sighed, before turning to the Chansey. “Though what exactly do you two need from me here?”
“Your friend needs to lay on her side and get her injured wing as straight as possible for us to check the bones in it,” the second Chansey said. “The anesthesia should dull the pain of the process, but considering what happened earlier with her and how we had to have her Thunder Waved…”
Marl really didn’t like where this was going, especially when she could barely raise a word in protest with her mouth fixed mostly shut like it currently was. She looked down at Eira, who traded askew glances between her and the Chansey, before giving a dubious frown.
“I’m sorry, what do you expect me to do here again?” the Marowak asked. “She’s still looks paralyzed right now, and if you’re looking for someone to help hold her down, literally everyone else on my team would’ve-”
“Just… help keep her calm, alright?” the Chansey sighed. “I’d prefer if things didn’t have to come to putting her under a Sleep Powder and rolling her onto her side afterwards, but we can’t treat her if she’s going to stay uncooperative.”
Some doctors these were. They couldn’t even spare a Cheri Berry for her! Marl couldn’t understand how they expected her to stay calm when they couldn’t even be honest about whether what they were doing would hurt her or not. She shrank back and tried to flare her good wing amidst its stiff and sluggish muscles, only to feel human hands stroking at her head crest and look down. It was Calvin and his unplaceable face, he spoke and patted her, before motioning off at her side with her injured wing.
It was like that time she’d hurt her leg as a Bagon. Except she was much smaller back then and Calvin always seemed to have more time for her when he was younger. She wouldn’t have imagined that he’d miss an evolution of hers back then, much less her most important one.
She looked back at her right wing and the way it hung limply and swallowed a gulp. She could almost feel the pain coming back just looking at it. She still didn’t trust these doctors, but what if it was really hurt? What if it needed to be fixed quickly or else the wound would be permanent?
She shook her head and knelt down.
“O… Okay… if you’re sure…”
Marl fought against her stiff limbs and knelt down and started rolling onto her side. Glasses took her right wingtip and gently tugged at it while Calvin held its base closer to her shoulder. She felt a pain through the numbness and fought back a yelp, as the Chansey and humans guided her body to the ground and Pigtails slipped something under it. Eira grabbed her free hindleg to hold it still under the blankets as Calvin placed his hands under the base of her injured wing, guiding her down until she saw the world on its side and faintly felt something cold on the parts of her wing that still had feeling left in them.
Marl shifted her head to lie it flat on the ground to try and peek under her left wing. It was straight along the floor now, aside from a large swollen spot next to dark discolorations that ran along in a line where she’d hit the pole, with the metal plate from earlier underneath. Pigtails was aiming the strange flashlight-like device at her wing from above, while Glasses and Calvin were holding her wing steady.
She cast glances as they moved the machine around in a slow arc over the stretch where her wing was swelling. She tried not to whine and fidgeted her free hindleg, only to feel Eira’s grip tighten on it as the Marowak poked her head past her back.
“Deep breaths, Marl,” the Marowak said. “You’re doing good, you’ll be able to get up again soon.”
The Salamence breathed in and out as her breaths calmed. Pigtails eventually hit a switch on the flashlight-like device the younger Chansey took it away. Glasses went off out into the hallway with the Luxray following after him.
“Your results will be back in a few minutes,” the Electric-type said. “Though Io, Ema, start getting the padding and casting tape together for her. Just from what I could see of her wing’s bones with my own eyes, they’ll most likely require a half-wing cast to hold them in place.”
Marl felt her breath catch in her throat and her heart skip a beat.
“H-Half-wing cast?”
The process of putting the cast together went by faster than Marl expected. First came the padding along her wing, then the white layers that were wrapped around them and hardened, with the two Chansey finishing up the last layers as Eira and Calvin stayed at her side.
Extra restraints aside, this really was like the time she’d broken her leg, except… something was missing. She supposed the splint she’d had then let her see her hide underneath and this cast didn’t outside of a couple coin-sized holes that had been punched near the site of her wing break for shortened tubes made of clear plastic with some sort of twistable tip to be inserted and then taped to her cast, but there was something else that didn’t feel right at the moment.
“Can’t my other friends be here with me right now?”
Right, back then, all of her teammates had been out to try and cheer her up. Even Jaki reined in his normally rude and abrasive attitude back then for the occasion. Marl supposed that she technically had more teammates now and none of them were as small as back then, but she thought that she’d at least have more than just one of them there at her side right now.
She glanced over at the Chansey with the hat, who shook her head with a low sigh.
“It’ll have to wait until you’re transferred back to Goldenrod Main where they’ll have you stay overnight in a recovery room for observation,” she said. “We were a bit tight on space for treating you as-is, and we need to keep our other rooms as free as possible for other patients.”
Marl looked around and realized that just from standing in place, her body and her wings were taking up at least a quarter of the room’s free space. After accounting for Calvin, Eira, the medical staff, and the equipment in the room… there really wasn’t much room leftover to spare.
… She supposed that it was understandable the doctors here wouldn’t want her to stick around, at least, and maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing being cooped up in a cramped space all night. But it still didn’t make her feel better.
“On the positive side, we’re done applying your cast,” the Chansey explained. “We should be able to start undoing the restraints on your limbs now.”
Silver linings, Marl supposed. The female doctor briefly said something to her trainer as they stooped down and undid the zip ties and blankets around her forelegs. She got up and idly pawed at the floor to try and shake some feeling in them, then came the restraints that were on her tail and right hindleg, and finally her trainer undid the plastic loop closing her mouth shut, holding up a Cheri Berry just below her snout.
She bit down and gobbled the berry up as almost immediately, she felt the stiff numbness in her limbs start to fade away. Her trainer briefly patted at her afterwards, and said something about thanking her for her patience.
Marl still thought that these doctors were quacks, but at least things were over and they could go back to worrying about the tournament. Even if she didn’t know how she was supposed to manage things like this.
She still felt a dull pain in her left wing, and when she tried to bat it, it didn’t catch air right. She kept at it a couple times, when she heard a sharp tak against the floor and saw Eira pulling her bone up from the tiles.
“Marl, don’t stress your wing like that,” Eira said. “Let it heal on its own with time.”
Yeah, but how long would that take? Didn’t the tournament start tomorrow? She knew she wasn’t super experienced with flying yet, but just how was she supposed to fight effectively if she couldn’t get into the air?
The door suddenly swung open as the male doctor came back without the Luxray carrying a darkened sheet that reminded Marl of camera film. He stopped and traded words with Calvin before passing the sheet over, as her trainer seemed to tense up after looking down. Why was he reacting like that, was whatever was on the sheet bad? Marl made a couple faltering attempts to crane her head to see the dark sheet, Eira noticed it and tugged at Calvin for attention.
“Calvin, I think Marl wants to see.”
The young man with the unplaceable face looked down, as Eira motioned between Marl and the sheet. He seemed to put two and two together, and went over and grudgingly showed it off to her.
Marl looked down and noticed that there was an outline shaped like her left wing, with white lines that fanned out from a set near its base with an arrangement that vaguely reminded her of Calvin’s fingers whenever he spread them out.
“What is this?” she asked. “Why are those white things in my wing?”
“I think Roy called it an ‘X-Ray’. You had one like this taken when you broke your leg a few years back… even if I didn’t remember seeing the doctors using a machine like this back then,” Eira explained. “Those white things are the bones inside of it. That’s how the they can see where and how badly they’re hurt.”
Marl looked down at the Marowak’s club and then back at the sheet. Their ends weren’t quite the same shape as the one that Eira used to fight with, but they really did look like bones. The Salamence followed the bones on the sheet up to her wing’s midsection, when she saw it:
One after the other, there were dark gaps running across the bones, almost in a straight line from one end of her wing to the other. Maybe it was just a trick of her eyes, but she swore that some of them looked like they didn’t even line up properly.
She suddenly noticed her breaths coming in and out quickly and shallowly. She knew that it wasn’t the first time she’d broken a bone, but there were so many of them. And with those dark gaps and how much it hurt even with that ‘anesthesia’ she’d been given, she was starting to fear the worst…
“I-I’m never gonna fly again, am I?”
“Don’t be so dramatic. It’s just a few fractures,” the junior Chansey said. “When I heard that you were thrown into a lightpole, I was honestly expecting worse.”
She whirled around and set her teeth on edge. Just a few fractures?! Was this ‘mon even listening to herself speak right now?!
“Worse?! I’m just stuck here waddling on the ground like a giant Shelgon right now!” Marl snapped. “I’m supposed to take part in a tournament tomorrow! How on earth am I supposed to do anything in it like this?!”
“You aren’t.”
Marl froze and turned her head towards the voice, seeing the head Chansey walking up with a stern shake of her head.
“You won’t be doing any battling until that wing of yours is healed,” she said. “No proper trainer would expect you to go out on a battlefield in your current state. Even if yours tried to enter you into the tournament with a broken wing, the organizers would never allow it.”
Marl’s attention drifted down towards the floor as her mind went blank and vision started to grow fuzzy. She knew she wasn’t happy about how things had started, but now she couldn’t even take part in the tournament? Calvin and the others had said they wanted to spend time with her to make things up, they’d promised!
Except, if she couldn’t do anything other than just sit and watch, th-then…
“But- But I-I-”
“Need to focus on getting rest,” the head Chansey insisted. “We’re done here, so please return to your Pokéball so that way your trainer can bring you to a larger facility for observation.”
Her vision started to grow muddy as she just stared down in shock, trying to blink back tears from her eyes. She briefly overheard Calvin saying something in his language and saw him grabbing a Pokéball, as she felt a tug at her foreleg.
She looked down and saw Eira staring up at her. There was an uneasy, pitying look about the Marowak’s face that made Marl feel small and pathetic, when the Marowak motioned off at the Pokéball with her club.
“I think we need to return you to your Pokéball before bringing you over. You didn’t exactly fit on the bus even when your wing was healthy,” Eira said. “Will that be alright, Marl?”
“Y-Yeah.”
Marl briefly felt the scales around her eyes start to grow damp when her Pokéball’s light swallowed her up again. And then, everything once again returned to darkness.
Before Marl knew it, she was laying on a set of bedding spread out on an adjustable frame that had been lowered for her to clamber onto it easier. It was in a larger room with a window at the far end and other sets of bedding like it lined up in nice rows, some of which were occupied by other Pokémon. She’d quickly gathered that she was in one of the recovery rooms in the Pokécenter back in Goldenrod, along with an explanation from one of the Chansey on-staff that she’d need to spend the night here away from her teammates for the on-site doctors to keep an eye on her wing. Her trainer had been let in by the staff shortly afterwards, and spent a good deal of time uneasily sitting beside her and patting at her foreleg—to try and lift her mood, she assumed.
Calvin let her teammates out to try and cheer her up, if fewer at a time than what she remembered when she was younger. They were simply too big to all crowd together in the room like they used to.
They came one after the other, including those two new Pokémon from the Field Biology course. Even Jaki wasn’t as obnoxious as he normally was, not that Marl had much of an appetite for idle chatter or do much more than lie in her bedding and glance down towards the floor. Human shoes and Pokémon’s feet drifted by her bed in a hazy blur, and before she knew it, it’d already been almost half an hour in that bed. Marl stirred after hearing slow, lumbering footsteps come towards her and looked up to see Roy beside her and her trainer, her Blastoise teammate looking down with his teeth set on edge.
“Hey, are you doing alright?”
Marl turned her head away after the words reached her earholes. She knew that Roy had surely meant well, but was he really not able to put two and two together right now?
“Roy, my wing’s broken. Of course I’m not doing alright.”
A noticeable pause followed afterwards, before the Blastoise sighed and spoke up again.
“Yeah, I kinda figured,” he said. “I don’t think any of us realized that Numa’s warning would be this serious…”
Marl whirled her head around and narrowed her eyes, forcefully enough that Calvin stumbled back from her and she swore she saw the Blastoise jump slightly. Was Roy seriously insinuating that this was somehow her fault?!
“‘Warning’?! Roy, that Hydreigon attacked me first!”
“Marl.”
“I didn’t even start it! She was-!”
“Marl.”
The Salamence caught herself and bit her tongue. That was the sort of tone of voice that Roy took with her whenever she’d gotten in trouble and he was passing word along to their trainer. 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 shell with a low sigh.
“It doesn’t matter at this point, Marl. The damage is already done,” he said. “Those broken bones are nothing permanent, but it’ll still take time for them to heal.”
Marl lowered her head and slunk against her bedding, casting a glance off at that ugly white cast that took up half her left wing. 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 she’d smashed one of her legs into that light pole and that she’d broken one of its bones instead.
At least she’d still have been able to fly that way…
She heard Roy briefly hem and haw, as the Blastoise seemed to fish around for words before finally speaking up.
“Garrett felt guilty over not being able to recall… er… ‘Hydreigon’ in time to keep everything from happening,” the Blastoise explained. “So he’ll be covering the cost of the Potions and other materials needed to help speed up your recovery.”
“Yay me, I guess,” she muttered, curling her head in towards her body.
Calvin hesitated a moment at her side and scratched under her chin to turn his attention up. Large chunks of human language were 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 we can’t keep you on the team roster in this condition,” Roy said. “Calvin pulled you from the tournament about an hour ago and has been trying to line up another Pokémon to take your place.”
Marl’s mouth hung open. She turned to the young man with the unplaceable face and as her vision began to swim. It wasn’t that anything that Roy said was wrong, but after everything that happened… Calvin was really just going to push her aside?
“Y-You’re really going to send me back home all on my own? L-Like thi-?”
She felt a stroke at her neck as her trainer spoke soothing words in his language. That things weren’t her fault, that she’d get better soon enough.
That he and the others would be there for her.
From the side, Roy listened in briefly, before waiting for their trainer to fall silent before joining in.
“He considered it, but no. Or at least not if you don’t want to go back,” Roy explained. “Your wing still needs someone to observe it and treat it while it heals, and there’s nothing saying that Calvin and the rest of us can’t do it here between matches.”
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 their trainer’s place and raised out a claw to her.
“Calvin still wanted to make good on his promise of spending more time with you. There should be plenty of time for him to do so whenever he’s not battling or imminently waiting to take the field,” he explained, before trailing off.
“... Is that something you’d like? Garrett and those friends that he came here with also offered to help keep an eye on you whenever Calvin’s not able to do so.”
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 when all she could do was stay grounded with that ugly cast on her wing...
“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 practice my flying at the moment…”
“Then stay around with us and the others,” Roy insisted. “We’re going to be spending the bulk of our time around the stadium until the tournament’s over. I’m sure that there’s things that can be done for fun there.”
She didn’t know how much that was going to be manageable when she already didn’t fit in half the places she used to as a Shelgon. What on earth was there to do aside from watching battles? Going outside to gawk at the blue roof and those golden antennas on it?
There was a lingering silence, as she looked up and saw the Blastoise pawing at the back of his head.
“Though if you change your mind about not wanting to go home… just speak up and let us know, okay?”
Marl hung her head, as her words came out in a defeated croak.
“Okay…”
Marl sank down into her bedding and looked away. She heard her trainer come over and felt him try to stroke her, but she didn’t have the heart to turn and face him.
Calvin and the rest of Marl’s teammates lingered around her bedside in the Pokécenter for about an hour afterwards, before it came time for them to leave her behind with the doctors. The Chansey on-staff insisted that if push came to shove, that it would be easy for them to gather her companions since they were rooming elsewhere in the same building, but that it was best for everyone involved they gave her space for the evening. As they told it, she needed peace and quiet to get some rest and they needed much the same to do their jobs keeping an eye on her wing.
It would’ve been sensible advice… if Marl had been able to actually sleep well. With how much trouble she had just dozing off, Marl couldn’t help but wonder if she would’ve been better off just ignoring the Chansey’s advice and following Calvin and her teammates back to their room.
It wasn’t even the Chansey and the doctors’ fault for the most part. They came by later in the evening to check up on her wing and fiddle with the tubes that were attached to it—which Marl quickly discovered was there for them to apply Potions around the site of her wound. They waited a bit for the sting to die down and spray to dry off before leaving some food for her—bland, but not terrible as food in human hospitals supposedly was.
The real problem was that the anesthesia she’d gotten at that ‘Pokéathlon Dome’ had worn off well before she felt tired and the lingering aches and pains in her wing came creeping back. She couldn’t even go back to her Pokéball to deal with it. Marl knew from past experience that a Pokémon with a broken bone had to stay outside of their Pokéball as much as possible until it healed—the bones wouldn’t stitch themselves back together properly while in medical stasis, or so she’d been told. She didn’t understand why stasis had to work that way, since it meant that dull pain in her left wing was always just a light jostle away from flaring up into sharp agony.
Perhaps she’d have had trouble falling asleep even without that lingering pain in her wing. Even with how soft the bedding was, she noticed some of the other Pokémon in the room would occasionally stare at her. They’d generally stop and quickly look away after she made it known that she noticed them with a sharp glare or low growl, but the moments still stuck with her. Worse still, every time she managed to get some little snatch of sleep, her mind would just turn to all the ways that things that had gone wrong in the past few days.
She found herself reliving those first two days as a Salamence as her initial joy and excitement crashed to earth and gave way to bitter tears in that now-too-cramped house back in Hoenn. About how awkward things had been in Johto having to go along like nothing had ever happened for this tournament that now she couldn’t even be a part of. And then there was that Hydreigon swooping in and doing this to her over a few words the ‘mon didn’t even understand. It was all some stupid misunderstanding that they could’ve shrugged off, but no, she just went and flung her into a lightpole over it!
Even worse was the way that Hydreigon had left her reeling and put her on her back foot from the very start. Marl wanted to think that the reason why the Hydreigon hit her so hard was because of a dirty trick, that it’d been because she’d been caught unaware and that stranger had been hiding behind an old friend for a trainer… that once her wing was better, she could settle the score properly and give that three-headed harpy a taste of that same pain and humiliation she was going through right now.
Except Marl kept remembering the way that Numa tried to tell her that she couldn’t win fighting her. Marl didn’t think that Numa was the type to lie, but if he was right, it meant that she’d be waiting for a long time to grow strong enough to have a chance at revenge.
… Perhaps that chance would never come at all.
Gah, what on earth was she even supposed to do right now?! Could she even do anything…?
Marl tossed in her bedding again and immediately regretted it after feeling pain shoot through her left wing. She grimaced and cracked open heavy eyes, when she noticed that there was light coming through the window of the Pokécenter room—daylight.
She supposed that was one way to tell she wouldn’t be getting any more sleep.
Marl just laid there as the sun came up. Before she knew it, the nurses started making the rounds through the room and tending to the few other Pokémon inside. She didn’t look up as she heard footsteps nearing her bed and stared off vacantly, only for a familiar voice to prick her ears.
“... Calvin?”
She raised her head and saw the nurses were there holding a purple-and-white spray bottle—and sure enough, her trainer with his unplaceable face was also there. Things seemed to blur together afterwards, Marl wasn’t sure how much of that was from sleep deprivation, and how much was just her mood weighing her down. The nurse walked Calvin through how to untwist the caps on the tubes running through her cast and line up the nozzle of a Potion bottle to From there it was a quick series of squeezes before moving onto the next tube to spread the dose of Potion along her injured wing, and then waiting for it to dry out. A process which needed to be done periodically during the day to help speed up its recovery from what Marl could gather of her explanation. Then she was shuffling off her bedding and following after the two down pastel-colored hallways and double doors which all looked the same to her until one set suddenly took her back to the lobby of the Pokécenter.
Her friends were waiting there for her near one of the couches, with Roy giving a wave that looked more forced and worried than cheerful. A pat and a few words from Calvin told her to go on ahead. That he needed a few minutes to check out for the day. She shuffled off as her trainer lingered at the counter, keeping her eyes trained towards the ground as a part of her felt so small right now. It occurred to her from a glance at a morning shadow on the floor that she was subconsciously pinning her good wing close to her body… which probably wasn’t helping with that small feeling.
“... Marl? Are you feeling alright?”
Marl briefly felt a flash of heat at the back of her throat and narrowed her eyes with a low growl. She craned her head up, and saw the Blastoise’s eyes briefly widen as the Water-type reflexively pulled his head partly into his shell.
“Gee, what do you think, Roy?”
There was a moment of silence, as Marl noticed her other teammates trading worried looks, aside from Jaki, who gave a muttering “What on earth were you expecting?” in the background that he didn’t even try to hide under his breath. The Blastoise fumbled with his words briefly, before pulling his head back out a quiet sigh.
“I’ll just take that as a ‘no’,” Roy said. “I suppose you already know the drill for how things work with injuries like these. If it’s any consolation, the nurses said that they expect your injuries to heal after about a week, right around the time when the tournament will be going through its final rounds.”
Of course. It wasn’t even just missing one or two battles that would force her out of the tournament, she really was going to spend the entire time with this hideous white cast stuck on her left wing.
Marl briefly heard a couple voices trail off in the background and saw an Aipom staring at her. She glared off at the Aipom, who yelped and scurried off to a human child on the other side of the lobby, leaving her to turn her head away with a sullen grumble.
“So if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to fly right around when the closing ceremony happens and everyone will get to see how pathetic I look until then. Fantastic.”
There was a moment’s silence, before Eira made her way over and quietly ran her free claw along her bony club.
“... Would you feel better if you just stayed in the room here at the Pokécenter and rested until we got back from the opening ceremony and initial orientations?” the Marowak suggested. “Or-?”
“No!”
Marl was a little surprised at how forcefully the word came out from her mouth and found herself standing up stiff and upright. Her breaths were tight and shallow, like they would be when she was scared.
Maybe a part of her was scared. Calvin said he wanted to spend more time with her to make up for missing her evolution, and now her own teammates were trying to be rid of her? Like this? A mere night after she’d gotten hurt? While she couldn’t do anything other than just walk around and uselessly curl up on herself?
“Wh-Why would you suggest that?!” the Salamence cried. “Calvin drags all the way out here and you’re seriously just suggesting that he should just dump me all off on my own the moment I’m not useful to him?!”
“Tch, well what are we supposed to do?” Jaki scoffed. “It’s not like we’re just going to go and forfeit the tournament because you’re having problems.”
Marl whirled around at the Honchkrow and let out a low growl, which he answered with a long, unmoved frown. They remained in their standoff for a moment, as the Honchkrow’s remarks lingered in her head and her heart sank.
… She was part of a team, even without counting that Lucario or Floatzel, there were four others on it. So of course they wouldn’t consider it fair if they were forced to pass up their chance to compete in the tournament just because she wasn’t able to.
A sharp grunt snapped her to attention. She briefly noticed Jaki jump back and stiffen up, and saw Aries was now giving a piercing glare over at the Honchkrow.
“That’s not your call to make, Jaki,” the Ampharos harrumphed. “Calvin’s the one who organized this, and if decides that it’s better for us to pull out from the tournament, then that’s that.”
Marl briefly noticed the Lucario—right, Aoi—shifting awkwardly from the back of the group alongside that Floatzel she hung around with. The Lucario stepped forward and folded her arms, before giving a puzzled quirk of a brow over at the Ampharos.
“Eh? But I thought that he didn’t want to pull out,” she said. “Didn’t those trainer friends of his say they found a way for him to make up for that missing spot on the team now that Salamence here isn’t taking part?”
Marl’s breath briefly caught in her throat. ‘Missing spot on the team’? As in her? Were- Were they talking about replacing her?
Marl’s breaths started to grow shallow and tense again, as her eyes drifted towards the floor. S-So Calvin really was just going to push her away now that she wasn’t useful to him anymore! Then everything that he’d said about trying making up for things w-was all a—
Marl trailed off after hearing footsteps and felt fingers pat at her head crest. She looked up and saw the man with the unplaceable face looking down at her. His face looked uneasy, and his tone of voice sounded worried, as he asked a question in his tongue:
Was she okay?
“N-No… b-but what am I even supposed to do like this?” she asked.
“I mean, we can’t do anything about that wing,” a rumbling voice said. “But why don’t you come along with us today?”
Marl turned and saw that Roy had made his way up beside their trainer and pawed at his shoulder. Calvin hesitated briefly, before backing aside for the Blastoise to step forward and meet Marl face-to-face.
“Whatever happens with our spot in the tournament, we’ll at least be there to see the opening ceremony,” he suggested. “It can’t possibly hurt to help to get your mind off your wing, right?”
Marl paused and subconsciously batted her good wing. Going out to that arena? With all those humans and Pokémon there who’d see her like this? Marl knew that her teammates would have to spend time there each day if Calvin didn’t pull out of the tournament as long as they were still in the running, but…
“... I- I don’t know…”
She looked away and hung her head, when she saw Roy stoop down and meet her eyes. There was a moment’s pause between them, before the Blastoise cracked a reassuring smile.
“You won’t be alone out there, alright? Most of a tournament’s just time waiting for your turn, and there will be others with you for those times when we can’t be together,” he insisted. “Just speak up if things aren’t working out for you, and we’ll try something different.”
Marl wasn’t sure whether or not she believed Roy’s words or not. At the very least, she supposed that it didn’t hurt to come along to the tournament at least once...
It wasn’t as if she had anything to lose by doing so.
The bus trip over to the Pokéathlon Dome was much more disorienting than it had been just the day before. Entering medical stasis meant that Marl couldn’t see or sense anything from outside her Pokéball like she normally could. One moment, Calvin was holding it up and pointing it at her in the lobby of the Pokécenter, and the next, she was coming out from it in front of the entrance of the blue-domed arena, where Garrett, Alberi, and Sessen were already waiting there along with their Pokémon.
… Well, along with some of their Pokémon, anyways. Garrett thankfully just had Numa with him, Marl was sure that his partners from Unova were mostly fine, but she wasn’t sure how eager she was to see them right now… especially not that Hydreigon. Sessen had Bushel out with him, while Alberi was accompanied by a Nidorino, along with an Espeon Marl didn’t remember him letting out before the fight the day before and everything afterwards. Much to her disappointment, the Psychic-type also spoke in that strange language from Unova, so it was hard to make sense of anything she said that couldn’t be gleaned from the Espeon’s body language; in fact, Marl could’ve sworn the Espeon just from her tone of voice sounded as dispassionate as that one Chansey from the other day.
After a brief exchange of words with Calvin, Alberi and Sessen prompted her trainer to let that ‘Rako’ Floatzel out of his Pokéball before leading everyone along. They went down a set of hallways deeper inside the arena with sleek black flooring. The whole time, Marl kept noticing others, both humans and Pokémon alike, staring at her left wing. The white cast wasn’t exactly easy to miss against her red scales, and just from the way she felt it throb as she walked, it surely looked swollen, and the way her cast kept it stiff and unmoving surely just made it stand out even worse…
They made a brief stop by an elevator with a set of double doors wide enough to let them all on at once that took them a couple floors down into the ground. When it opened, they emerged and made their way down more drab hallways that were only different from the lobby and rooms on the ground floor from the lighter color of the walls and the diamond tiling on the floors.
How on earth did their trainers know where they were going in a place like this? And where were they going anyways?
“Numa, why did we go down?” she asked. “The arena’s not underground, is it?”
“It’s where the locker rooms are,” the Swampert explained. “The entrants to the tournament are supposed to gather in them to take part in the opening ceremony.”
Locker rooms? Like the ones around Calvin’s high school or in the sports facilities at his college? This giant ‘Pokéathlon Dome’ had them, too?
They reached a set of double doors that seemed to be built in mind for bigger creatures passing through much like the elevator, and entered into an open chamber. Sure enough, there really were lockers along the walls, but there were also benches, and training equipment such as a punching bag that had been set out. Cube-like monitors were set up on stands along the wall, with smaller ones dangling from mounts on the ceiling.
This was certainly was very different from what Marl had been expecting, even if it looked crowded enough to be a locker room. The place was already packed with other trainers and their Pokémon: some human dweeb in a Charizard suit was giving his matching Pokémon a pep talk—probably one of those ‘Poké Maniacs’. A little further off there was a Hitmonchan idly punching into the air, while others like a Persian and a Houndoom’s trainers talked with each other even their Pokémon glared daggers at each other…
And without fail, every one of them stopped and stared at her wing as she passed. As if the lingering ache under her cast wasn’t already making it impossible to get her mind off of it.
“... This was a mistake,” she murmured.
Marl turned and went over towards Calvin’s side. She craned her head out to try and reach for her Pokéball and just go back into stasis, only to be cut off with a flash of blue in front of her face—Numa blocking the way with a hand.
“Whoa, easy there, Marl,” the Water-type insisted. “You don’t want to coop yourself up in medical stasis any more than you have to in your current state.”
“Gee, thanks for the concern, Numa. Since you’ve done such a good job looking out for me lately.”
The snarl left her throat before she even realized it. She briefly saw Numa jerk back with his eyes widened, when she noticed that her claws were dug into the floor, and the fangs in her mouth were exposed.
“¡Hey! ¡¿Qué problema te traes?!¹”
She saw that that ‘Miyamoto’ Samurott was out of his Pokéball, and had a paw on the hilt of one of his seamitars. Garrett hurriedly ran in and pulled him aside as Calvin and Roy did much the same to her when she noticed the locker room had gone quiet beyond some idle chatter coming from the televisions.
Everyone was staring at her. Again. Except this time they looked visibly tense much like Numa. Her eyes widened as she realized that she’d snarled at Numa, not even a day after they’d met up again after being apart for literal years.
“Wait, Numa. Th-That’s not what I…”
She trailed off and hung her head. Great, so she was breaking limbs and friendships at this rate. She heard plodding footsteps and chewed the inside of her mouth as she saw Roy hardened his expression and frown down at her.
“... Marl, I know that you’re going through a lot right now, but don’t-”
“It’s alright, Roy. I kinda walked right into that one.”
Roy paused as Numa waved for a stop, before walking up in front of Marl. The Swampert hesitated briefly, before shaking his head with a low sigh.
“Look, I’m sorry for the way things got out of hand yesterday,” he explained. “It really wasn’t how I was hoping to see you again after so long. I just wanted to do what I could to help you out until you got back on your feet… if you want me to, anyways.”
Marl pulled her head back and looked aside with a low mutter. Numa surely meant well by intervening then, but it didn’t really help her mood. It was frankly hard to want anything more right now and just find some dark cave to hide herself in. It was good enough for Shelgon waiting to evolve in the wilds, wasn’t it?
… That wasn’t right either, since when she was a Shelgon, she wasn’t worried about being stared at like some weird failure.
She felt Calvin pat at her before stepping away and heading for the door. Roy followed along, and then Garrett and that Samurott did as well. Marl briefly stiffened up and reflexively started after them, only for Roy to notice her and motion for her to stop.
“We actually need to step out for a little bit, Marl,” Roy said. “Could you wait here for us?”
She blinked, before giving a worried tilt of her head.
“Stepping out? For what?”
“We… actually didn’t work out our spot in the tournament yet,” the Blastoise explained. “We needed to square that away as soon as we can since the opening ceremony’s in less than half an hour. It should only take a few minutes, so we’ll be right back.”
She hesitated before looking at the others with her. Numa aside, she didn’t really know anyone here all that well, but at least they’d been nice so far…
“If you’re sure that it won’t be long…”
“So… uh… why am I not with the rest of the team again?”
It’d been about five minutes since Calvin and Garrett left and the locker room was back to its normal hubbub when they first entered. All her other teammates had gone with Calvin by virtue of them still being in their Pokéballs when he left… except for that stupid Floatzel who was still pouting and whining about not getting his big break to compete in the tournament.
As if Marl needed more things to make her feel pathetic and useless right now. She didn’t bother turning to bare her teeth at the otter, and from the very corner of her vision, saw Sessen’s Tropius stepping forward and leaning in on him with a piercing glare.
“Because you’re not joining, Floatzel,” she said. “Your trainer specifically needed a flier to fill in for your teammate. So unless you’re suddenly going to sprout wings, you might as well do your part trying to help her out on the sidelines.”
“But we’ve known each other for less than-!”
The Tropius fanned her wings out with sharp huff that made Rako abruptly stiffen up and shut his trap, thank gods. Not that it did much to make Marl feel any better. The Salamence pricked her ears when she heard plodding footsteps coming to a stop in front of her. A glance up, and there was Sessen’s Tropius, looking down at her with a smile and wave of her wingtips.
“Hi, it’s ‘Bushel’. I know that our introduction got cut short yesterday, but our trainers are friends with each other. Your trainer asked Sessen and the rest of us to help keep an eye on you and your wing whenever the tournament kept him busy, so we’ll be watching the opening ceremony together from the stands. Sessen even got some spare seats for you and your teammates, so there will be plenty of space to go around in between their matches!”
Marl looked up and at the Tropius’ still-waving wings. Her eyes glazed over briefly, before she turned her attention off to her own in that ugly white cast. She hung her head with a low murmur, and from the corner of her eyes, Marl saw Bushel hesitate a moment, before stiffening up and giving a quiet sigh.
“... Right, sorry. I probably should’ve greeted you some other way which wouldn’t have reminded you of your injury,” the Tropius said.
“It would’ve been nice…” Marl said. A lingering silence followed, before the Tropius sidled up and craned her head down with a wavering expression.
“I know that flying means a lot to Salamence like you, and that you’re probably not feeling very well right now… but if there’s anything you need, just tell us, alright?”
She briefly turned her head over towards that Alberi human and the Nidorino and Espeon with him as they briefly looked at her before turning to each other.
“¿Crees que debamos traer a otro miembro del equipo a darle ánimo? Se le ve algo decaída.²”
“¿Traer? ¿A quién?³” answered the Nidorino, then emphasizing with a huff. “Esquiza, sólo tenemos a esa bola de escamas que Alberi sacó de Préstamos ayer. Desde entonces que salió de su Pokébola se ha dedicado a meter sus narices donde no debe y molestar a todo el mundo.⁴”
For a response, the Espeon stuck her tongue out at the Nidorino. “Pues mira quién habla.⁵”
Marl didn’t know what on earth those two were talking about, but she already could tell that it was about her.
… Maybe she should’ve just gone home last night. Even if she’d be lonely with just Calvin’s parents and a couple Pokémon she wasn’t really close to for company in that cramped house, at least she wouldn’t have to worry about the whole world having to see her like this…
“Hey, what’s that?”
Rako turned and pointed a paw up towards the ceiling as Bushel turned her head to follow. Marl did so herself and saw they were looking up at one of those boxy televisions that had been mounted to the ceiling. The way it’d been set up was kinda like those televisions that had surveillance videos on them which were sometimes in stores, except the pictures on it had glyphs and logos from some human “sports channel”. There were a pair of humans on it, seated in front of large windows overlooking an arena field and crowded stands.
… Which from the blue rooftop and trio of golden spires tipped with flames, was the same very same Pokéathlon Dome they were in right now.
“Oh, it’s something that humans call a ‘pre-show’,” Bushel explained. “Most of it’s just a bunch of talking heads that goes over my head, but humans that are really into tournaments like these often like watching them.”
Was that really what a pre-show was? It looked a lot more boring than Marl would have expected from the way that humans would start watching tournaments and other sporting events on televisions early to see them. The humans on the screen were going on about the tournament and some ‘opening ceremony’ that was supposed to start shortly, which prompted Rako to tilt his head at the sight.
“Sounds like Calvin’s cutting it a bit close right now,” Rako said to himself. “Whelp, if he didn’t find anyone to fill that sixth spot, guess that means that it’ll be up to me to save the da-”
“Hey! We’re back!”
That was Roy’s voice. Marl craned her head back and looked in the direction of the entrance into the locker room from the stadium, where there was the Blastoise along with Calvin hurrying up, with Garrett doing much the same with Miyamoto at his side. Calvin was still putting Roy’s Pokéball back onto his belt—a sign that he’d been running fast enough that the Blastoise hadn’t been able to keep up—and quickly turned his attention to another Pokéball from his bag. A blue-and-white one with red ridges that she hadn’t seen before.
“Oh, so that Rental Pokémon stand Alberi said he visited yesterday did still have someone to fill that sixth slot,” Numa said. “That’s great news! I was starting to get a little worried that you guys were going to have to drop out before the preliminar-!”
“Numa.”
Marl’s face sagged as Roy grimaced and moved the flat of his claw over his throat, prompting the Swampert to blink, before turning over to her. Numa abruptly bit his tongue and after a brief hem and haw, awkwardly swallowed the rest of his words. A loud groan turned her attention rightward, where Rako looked visibly annoyed, as the Floatzel folded his arms and turned 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 was, a purple blur shot forward towards Rako. It knocked him over with a yelp, and as the blur settled, she saw the Floatzel flat on his back and staring up wide-eyed with his flotation sac puffed up from shock. On top of him, there was a Gliscor crouched and pinning him down with a toothy grin full of sharp fangs.
“Oh, so you’re on that team I’m joining!” the Gliscor cheered. “Hey there! My name’s Mathias, and-!”
“Eyaaah! Get him off! Get him off!”
The Floatzel let out a loud, squealing noise that Marl swore sounded not too different from a stuck Spoink from how loud and shrill it was. The Gliscor flinched from the racket and stumbled back as Rako wrenched himself free and beelined behind Roy’s shell with his tails pinned tight against his body. The Floatzel warily peeked out before from behind, as the Gliscor looked back with a sour frown.
“Hey! What’s the big idea?” the Gliscor protested. “Being affectionate and putting a smile on for the teams I partner up with is part of my job, you know!
“That doesn’t work when you shove a mouth full of razor fangs right up in my face!” the Floatzel snapped.
Gods, Marl could already tell that being around that Floatzel in the stands was going to get old…
“Rako actually won’t be fighting on the team,” Roy explained, rolling his eyes. “He’s playing an observing role along with our friends. Since… we kinda needed to keep an eye on our normal flier until she got better.”
The Blastoise pointed her out as Marl’s breathing grew uneven and her head began to feel faint. Calvin was actually replacing her! W-Why on earth would he just rub it in like this? She grit her teeth and turned to give them a piece of her mind… except but much to her surprise, the Gliscor’s face didn’t look satisfied at all. The Ground-type 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 for you until you get bette-!”
“Just leave me alone.”
Marl turned away with a low growl and looked away, blinking her eyes long and hard. She ought to have roared at Calvin, to have bared her fangs and flashed her claws back and loudly demanded him to explain why he thought leaving her behind again was a good idea. But she just couldn’t muster the urge beyond a defeated-sounding whine.
What good was a Salamence that couldn’t fly for a tournament? Or for anything, really?
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 how he was just pushing her out of the way for this stranger, it just fell flat. She pulled herself away, letting her eyes drift towards the floor.
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 that ‘Miyamoto’ Samurott tugged at Garrett’s shoulder and said something that she missed. Numa looked over towards her and Rako, and awkwardly pawed at the back of his head.
“It’s unfortunately time for Calvin and Garrett to get going. The opening ceremony’s about to start and they’re clearing out the visitors,” the Swampert said. “I don’t know why the humans here are so hung up about it, but it’s apparently policy. Though Garrett booked a seat along with all our other trainers, I’ll help the others show you where it’s at.”
Calvin let go and stepped away as Marl looked on blankly. She felt a nudge at her side, and saw Bushel nudging her along with her wings.
“Sessen’s place in the stands isn’t that far away, will you be alright going there outside your Pokéball, Marl?”
“I’ll be fine.”
The words didn’t sound convincing even to her own ears as Marl felt a sinking feeling in the pit in her stomach. Calvin passed a Pokéball over to Sessen, who used it to recall Rako, before doing much the same to Numa with one spotted to him by Garrett. It just left Marl and Bushel,, as she followed the Tropius’ trainer out of the locker room.
Marl’s lip visibly quivered. She didn’t see whether or not anyone was staring at her again. She decided that she didn’t want to know
Marl didn’t pay much attention to her surroundings on the way over to Alberi and Sessen’s seats in the stands. The stares that she noticed the times when she did pay attention just made her feel worse and a part of her die up inside. Their seats were near the top of the stands, right next to the open areas where bigger Pokémon would have the space to sit or stand so they could watch things down on the field. Marl supposed that it also made it easier for Alberi or Sessen or one of the other Pokémon to come up and check up on her like they had when it was time to apply the next Potion for her wing…
“I’m honestly surprised they were able to put on this much of a show in a multipurpose arena,” Bushel’s voice mused. “I wouldn’t have expected a place that normally hosts Hurdle Dashes to be able to support such a big spectacle.”
Marl raised her head from lying on the ground and saw Sessen’s Tropius looking over the shoulder of her trainer towards the field when it dawned on her that there was a booming human voice in the air. On the field, there was a stand set up with large screens set up, as an announcer was there giving a speech that would surely go forgotten in a week after this tournament ended.
A wave of cheers ran along the stands, as Marl lowered her head and curled up on herself, staring blankly at the back of the seats in front of her. She just couldn’t get into things since she came here, with a sharp twinge of pain as she shifted her right wing reminding her why. She knew that it wasn’t as if she’d be allowed to fly as she pleased indoors if her wing wasn’t hurt, but she’d at least be there with her teammates and watching things together from where things were actually happening… not stuck up here with only one Pokémon that she really knew!
She let out a deflated mumble and rested her head against her foreclaws as the announcer’s voice continued droning in the background. She made out a few words in the human language about the tournament, and 'Goldenrod Open', and ‘contestants’... maybe she’d have picked out more if she was paying attention more closely.
“... Marl, are you doing okay?”
Marl’s face fell after hearing the voice coming from her left and she craned her head over. It was Numa, visibly stiffening up with a start, while Rako was inching behind him with a quiet hiss.
“I told you this was a bad idea!”
She honestly wasn’t sure whether or not she’d have felt better if Numa had followed the Floatzel’s advice. The Swampert chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, before awkwardly pawing at his shoulder.
“I suppose I should’ve already known you weren’t,” he said. “But I just wanted to say that the competitors are about to take the field. I figured that it was something that you wouldn’t want to miss.”
Marl stared and narrowed her eyes in response.
“Numa, I’m injured,” she harrumphed. “I’m supposed to be resting a lot right now.”
“Well, yes, but you don’t have to lie down the entire time you’re resting, right? Didn’t you want to see Calvin come out with whoever he picked to go along with him?” the Swampert insisted. “I mean, I assumed that he’d pick Roy for the occasion since they seemed like they’d be closest to each other, but I’m sure that there’s bound to be some surprises from the other trainers.”
Marl turned her body away and flopped down, when she heard footsteps coming up beside her. She looked up and saw Numa stooping down beside her with what looked like an almost pleading expression.
“Marl, I know that things yesterday could’ve gone… better, to say the least. But sometimes even little things can make a difference in bad moments,” the Swampert insisted. “Maybe try holding out for the trainers to come out? If you’re genuinely not feeling well afterwards, you can always lie back down if you feel it’d help you rest better.”
Marl hesitated. She didn’t see how this would really help, but she supposed that just staring at the back of some stadium seats the entire time and knowing that she’d missed the entire opening ceremony wouldn’t make her feel better about not being able to take part in the tournament. She got up onto her feet, and turned her gaze out towards the field, trying to crane it up to get a better view past other spectators further down the stands.
“I guess I can try,” she said. “But just how long is-?”
Almost immediately, she was answered by another wave of cheers in the stands as she started to see figures entering out onto the field. Some were faces that looked like they were right at home in Johto like a scruffy-looking Roughneck with a Tyranitar or a blue-haired young man followed by a Feraligatr, while others like an older woman with what looked like a ghostly floating sword and shield with purple tassels and a more athletic man with a pink creature lugging along what looked like a bulky metal hammer looked like they were quite far from home.
She perked up after hearing Numa join in the cheers as she looked down and saw a Volcarona flying along as Garett led the way. Huh? Garrett didn’t bring Miyamoto from his team to accompany him?
Maybe there was some sort of backstory to that, or else Garett had just wanted to give one of his other partners a bit more time in the spotlight. Marl supposed that it could’ve been worse, at least he hadn’t chosen that Hydreigon to go out onto the field with him-
“Oh! Oh! There’s your trainer!”
Marl looked out onto the field, where she saw Roy lumbering along after her trainer and his unplaceable face. The pair carried on seemingly without a care in the world, as Roy looked around and seemed to soak in the surrounding cheers and excitement from the crowd.
Those cheers and excitement that should have been for her, but now she’d never get them. Even if the tournament’s organizers would’ve let her still enter, it was hard to imagine cheers for a broken wing visible for the whole world to see.
After all this time, she was too weak, too pathetic to measure up to what a Salamence was supposed to be. To what she was supposed to be…
Marl’s attention began to glaze over as the others started to grow wrapped up with the opening ceremony, their voices blending in with the cheers of the broader crowd around them. She crouched down against the concrete and curled up on herself, turning her head away from the back of the stands as the roar of the stands lingered in the air.
Everything blurred together after that, aside from the tears welling up in her eyes.
1. “Hey! What is your problem?!”
2. "... Do you think we should bring out anyone else from the team to try and cheer her up? She seems a bit down."
3. "Bring in? Who?"
4. "All we have is that scale ball that Alberi got from the Rental Agency yesterday, and since he was allowed out of his ball all he's done is nose about and pester everyone."
5. "Well, look who's speaking."
Original Drabble
Concession Stand
Tailgating/Picnicking
In the locker room
The Big Match
A brawl battle between fans.
In the commentator's booth.
Memorabilia
Registration Booth
Pre-Game Pokemon Show
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.
Marl didn’t really pay attention to the rest of the opening ceremony afterwards, or much of anything else that happened. There was a lull after the cheering died down, only for it to start up again with intermixed with the sounds of battling from the arena grounds. Whenever the Salamence poked her head up, she’d see some pair of Pokémon throwing down with each other on the field—’preliminaries’, she was pretty sure such battles were called. There were a couple of local tournaments back home that she and Calvin had sat in on which had been big enough to need them.
All of them were actually well and strong enough to do something other than just sit on the sidelines. Let alone with a part of who they were supposed to be just being broken and useless.
It was hard to stay excited for the battles and somehow, in spite of all the different Pokémon in their varied shapes and sizes that took the field, the matches just started to blur together for her. Even the glimpse of Garrett’s battle, which much to her surprise did have him field Miyamoto, or during Calvin’s match where he fielded Roy, she wound up finding herself drifting back down to lay on the concrete behind the last row of seats. Every time, everyone else would cheer and leave her to curl up on herself, not that she was really in the mood for smalltalk with them.
What was there to talk about? How she wished her wing wasn’t broken? About how her trainer had promised to spend time with her and yet here she was with the only ‘mon she really knew right now being someone she hadn’t seen in years?
The other trainers didn’t do much either beyond Sessen coming in with a periodic checkup or Alberi coming to make noises that sounded like ones Calvin might have made to her when she was really young—which she guessed was an attempt to cheer her up…
“Marl?”
Marl raised her head, and saw Numa looking down at her. Sessen was just behind him, the wavy-haired man checking a spray bottle as his Tropius looked over at her, with a Geodude and Wooper she hadn’t really noticed before alongside the Grass-type.
“Er, sorry if I’m interrupting things,” the Swampert said, uneasily pawing at his shoulder. “But it’s about that time Calvin said you were due for your next dose of Potion.”
Marl blinked. Wasn’t Calvin supposed to do that when he got back? Why was he running late? It didn’t take that long to come back to the stands after his match, did it?
Maybe he really was just pushing her to the side…
The Salamence grudgingly got up, as Sessen came up and applied a Potion through the tubes in her cast. She turned her head out and watched as human workers and Pokémon smoothed over the dirt of the battlefield in the background. She’d heard that some stadiums changed their terrain between matches, but she supposed that that was expecting a bit much for an amateur tournament that was being held in a place which wasn’t originally intended for Pokémon battles…
Pshhhh
Marl winced as she felt the Potion hit her hide underneath and sting. It wasn’t as bad as yesterday, but it was still noticeable enough for her to reflexively shift her wings… and the shot of pain in her left one to come just afterwards.
“Ack!”
Sessen briefly stopped and backed away as Numa reached out a hand to steady her. Marl straightened out her body and steadied her breath, letting her head hang with a tired sigh as Numa held her right wing still and let the young man get back to work. The surrounding noises went in one ear and out the other, the spray of the Potion bottle, the roar of the crowd, and then footsteps passing her. She reflexively cringed at the last one, dreading the stare she was surely getting right now, only to notice that it was Sessen’s Tropius—’Bushel’, or something like that. The Grass-type hesitated briefly while passing, but otherwise left her alone as she went down the steps and over to a Geodude and Wooper waiting in the stands a few seats down from Alberi and his Pokémon… with Rako seated as far away from her as possible.
Maybe it was for the best. The other bystanders, human or Pokémon alike, hadn’t really stopped to get close to her and she hadn’t been in the mood to talk much with the other Pokémon around her when they asked. 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, unable to fly with her wing stuck in that hideous cast…
“I hope she’ll be alright,” the Tropius said. “Poor thing.”
“Wasn’t Sessen going to participate in that Bug-Catching Contest partway through the tournament?” the Geodude asked. “How’s that supposed to work if her trainer’s busy in the tournament? We’re not supposed to just bring her along with us like this, are we?”
“Maybe if I made a bubble for her, she’d feel better?” the Wooper asked. “Between her wing and what happened to her trainer…”
Marl blinked and raised her head. ‘Her trainer’? As in Calvin? She’d spent so much time quietly stewing over how he was running late and failing at keeping the way he promised to spend time with her to try and make up for missing her evolution that it didn’t even occur to her that something might have happened to him….
“H-Huh? Numa, what are they talking about?” she asked. “What’s going on with Calvin?”
“You didn’t notice?” the Swampert replied. “Roy lost his qualifying match.”
… Oh. Marl supposed that explained why Calvin was taking so long, especially if Roy had to deal with those unhelpful Chansey in that on-site Pokécenter. The Salamence murmured and turned her head away, as Sessen pulled the bottle back and Numa gave a wave of his hands that seemed a little too overeager.
“It’s alright! Preliminaries for the Goldenrod Open are a ‘win two out of three’ exercise,” the Swampert insisted. “Roy honestly lost mostly from luck, since if he’d landed that last Hydro Pump a little more cleanly…”
The Swampert trailed off, as Bushel came back up from the stands, trading glances between the two before shaking her head.
“... Marl, was it?” the Tropius asked. “I don’t mean to impose on you, but did you want to step out for a bit?”
“Aren’t there battles going on?” Marl murmured. “What would the point be?”
“Well, for one, you don’t really seem to be enjoying yourself right now,” Bushel said. “I just thought that maybe some fresh air and sunshine would help your mood.”
Marl didn’t know how much that would make a difference. Even if they went outside, it wouldn’t change the cast on her left wing, or the dull pain in it. Or how tired and heavy her limbs felt right now.
Or that growing feeling inside her that maybe it would’ve been better to just stay cooped up in the cramped house back in Hoenn after all. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about others seeing how weak and pathetic she was right now…
“¡Hey, ya llegamos!¹”
She heard an almost barking voice call out in that strange language the rest of Alberi and Garrett’s Pokémon spoke. She turned towards the hallway, and sure enough, Miyamoto and his trainer were approaching in upbeat spirits. Calvin was following closely behind with Aries at his side, both looking more obviously disappointed.
Then they saw her and the four visibly paused. The Ampharos hemmed and hawed briefly before speaking up with an apologetic grimace.
“I take it that you didn’t have fun up here in the stands while we were gone,” he said.
Marl turned away and let out a sour huff. The answer was obviously ‘no’, even a Zubat could surely tell from seeing her like this. She saw Aries going over a short ways, when he peered down the back of that Floatzel’s seat and narrowed his eyes into a sharp glare.
“Rako, you seriously just left her laying around like this the entire time?”
“Look, getting mauled by a Salamence in a terrible mood isn’t my idea of a good time, okay?” the Floatzel shot back. “She said she wanted to be left alone and blew off everyone else. What on earth was I supposed to do?”
… Yes, Marl supposed that she did say that, more than once. Even if a part of her hoped that Alberi or Sessen or one of the other Pokémon would’ve ignored her and stayed with her anyways.
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.
Alberi, Sessen, and their Pokémon made their way up and gathered around her as Calvin shot a worried-looking glance over her way during a conversation with the others that she couldn’t pick up on since it was quick and in human speech—Unovan human speech. Bushel lingered at her trainer’s side, before 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 didn’t get hurt too badly from his loss earlier, did he?”
“Nah, he’s just a little tender, but he’ll be fine. Roy normally skips out on longer walks,anyways,” the Ampharos explained. “It’s been a bit harder for him to keep up on them since his last evolution.”
Marl saw Aries turn his attention over towards her and hesitated a bit, swaying his tail back and forth.
“But… uh… he probably should be out for things right now.”
He turned his attention over to Calvin and tugged at the young man’s shoulder in the middle of a conversation that Marl barely recognized anything of. The young man with the unplaceable face looked up at her, and said a couple words back to Aries that Marl’s ears didn’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 stretched out his limbs and briefly bit back a wince as he rubbed at a raw spot along his arm. Then he saw her, and she saw him. There was a moment’s silence between them as Roy briefly fumbled with his words before finally speaking up.
“Hey, Marl. You… uh… look like you’re doing worse than even me right now, and I just came from a Pokécenter backroom,” the Blastoise said.
She turned away and let a sour grumble come from her throat. If Roy was trying to lighten the mood there, it’d worked about as well as her attempts to fly before evolving. There was a pause, as the Blastoise lumbered up and stooped down as much as his shell would let him with a uneasy grimace.
“... Is there anything that we can do to try and cheer you up?”
No, Marl was pretty sure that there was nothing to do at this point. She was done with this place. Done with this tournament. All that was left was just to go and find some place to den up until those fractures in her wing’s bones were gone.
And there was only one place she could think of that made sense for that…
“Roy, I want to go home.”
“As in back to our room at the Pokécenter, or…?”
Marl narrowed her eyes back, but stayed silent. The message got through well enough, as the Blastoise turned aside and brushed at his shelled underbelly with a low sigh.
“... Right, home, home,” he sighed. “Though are you sure you’ll be fine back there?”
Marl didn’t say anything back for a while. Aries was normally trained by Calvin’s parents. She supposed she wouldn’t be fully alone, but he was the Pokémon they trained she was closest to and she normally didn’t do much with the rest.
… She definitely wouldn’t be moving around there either with how tight the hallways were, and she’d likely be miserable and mostly alone back in the little house. But what on earth was she supposed to do?
It was hardly fair to demand her friends all drop out of the tournament when they’d just started their first battles, and even if they were willing to, it wouldn’t fix the issue of spending time with her trainer. It wasn’t as if Calvin could send himself back to Hoenn through a PC. She supposed that maybe he could send Rako back with her since the Floatzel wasn’t a part of the tournament himself, but just what were the odds that he’d make her feel better?
Maybe she was just meant to be unhappy like this. It wasn’t like anything had been going right since she evolved…
Marl’s ears pricked at the sound of approaching footsteps and she 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 suddenly occurred to her as he moved his fingers that she noticed her scales felt damp.
… Had she actually been crying earlier? She knew she felt tears in her eyes, but she thought that she’d been blinking them back- and-
Gods, she really did just look completely pathetic right now…
Her trainer patted along the top of her head when Roy nudged at him to stop. Marl hesitated a moment, before averting her gaze.
“I… I don’t know, but I feel tired and everyone keeps staring at me,” she murmured. “W-What on earth am I even supposed to do like this, Roy? I can’t even jump from a high place right now! All I can do is just sit and waddle around!”
A low growl filled the air and the others nearby traded startled looks, when it occurred to Marl that it was coming from her stomach. Right, they hadn’t gotten a chance to eat before leaving for the stadium that morning, and she’d been in such a terrible mood the entire time that the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind to ask for something to eat.
Roy looked down at her, and held a claw out in front of her.
“Well, before we worry too much about sending you anywhere. How about we try and get you something to eat?” Roy asked. “No sense in making a big decision on an empty stomach, right?”
Marl supposed that she couldn’t really argue the point herself. She gave a wary nod back as the Blastoise paused, before turning his head over to their 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 and briefly glanced over towards her, before he mused aloud to himself.
“I mean, I don’t know how well you’d be able to feed a Pokémon as big as Marl from them,” he said. “But Calvin and I did pass a couple along the way, yes…”
Five minutes later, Marl was following Calvin and Aries down a broad hallway with tall rafters and large windows that were partly opened to the air outside. Her trainer had parted ways from the others after Roy got the message across with a few gestures up the stairs and a miming pat at his underbelly, and Calvin recalled Roy and Rako to their Pokéballs… but not Aries for some reason, who stayed walking at the young man’s side.
She supposed that it wasn’t the first time her trainer had gone walking along with more than one member of her team at once, even if it felt like he’d stopped doing it as often after everyone grew into their full evolutions. And it wasn’t like Aries was a bad ‘mon to hang around, even if he was usually on the quieter and more reserved side.
Maybe it was for the best since Marl wasn’t sure she really wanted to talk about anything right then, least of all about why she kept trying to hide her hurt wing behind her trainer. Partway over, Aries noticed the way she kept stealing glances off in the direction of her wounded wing and slowed down to walk alongside her.
“Is your wing already starting to hurt again?” he asked.
“Not any worse than it did right after the Potion,” she said. “Why?”
“I was just a bit worried,” the Ampharos said. “You seemed really bothered about others looking at it earlier today.
Marl blinked as she noticed that Calvin had also slowed down and was now walking alongside her shoulder just off to her left. She didn’t know whether or not the two had done it on purpose or if it was a happy accident, but the passersby going past Calvin and Aries weren’t stopping to stare at her now.
So they had noticed. Marl didn’t know how much the two were really hiding that cast when it stood out so much against her scales, but it at least seemed like they were helping.
Marl’s nostrils pricked as she noticed a smell that reminded her of the kitchen in Calvin’s home just before dinner, just noticeably stronger. The rumble in her stomach came back and her mouth began to water as she noticed that they seemed to be passing more and more humans and Pokémon as they went along. She craned her head rightwards, and saw lines of humans with their Pokémon partner queued up in front of various counters with colorful signage. Why, they were almost like stalls at a summer festival, except they were indoors and made of concrete and metal.
“... What sort of food do these places even sell anyways, Aries?” she asked.
“Honestly, I kinda lost track since there was a whole lot to choose from,” 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: there was a Weavile and Floatzel smirking over at the Fire-type. On the other claw, a Heliolisk and Ledian with them looked visibly unamused, with the Bug-type flitting up with a sharp buzzing protest.
“Ew! Honma!” the Ledian snapped. “What on earth was that for?!”
“What?” the Typhlosion replied. “The 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 on the other side of the human lowering one of those big plastic bottles with the same labeling. The Weavile and Floatzel bowled over beside themselves with laughter as they passed and the stranger’s human seemed to be at a loss for words. The Salamence heard a parting “Nice one, Hino!” from them as she lost track of the Typhlosion and his team. A look back at Aries revealed the Ampharos face was screwed up in a flabbergasted stare, before he shook his head and continued on.
“... And drinks, obviously. Even if I think I’d prefer to go for an Aprishake myself,” he remarked. “But the point I was trying to make was that there’s a lot of meal options here. Was there anything in particular that you wanted?”
“Meat.”
Aries briefly stiffened up and shot her a sideways look. Marl felt her face sag a little. She knew that Ampharos weren’t hunters by nature, but did Aries really have to give that sort of reaction? He knew that it was a part and parcel of a Salamence’s diet, and wasn’t meat gathered by humans mostly supposed to come from vats in factories these days? What was there for him to feel queasy about?
The Ampharos blinked before shaking his head and raising a paw to point off ahead.
“Right, I suppose that your diet is a bit different from mine, but that can be arranged if you’re not too picky about what sort of meat we get,” he said.
Marl followed the Ampharos’ paw and saw he was pointing off at some glorified hole in the wall thick with the smell of grilled and fried food, which had a metal rails set up front that formed a queue that already had a small line of humans and their accompanying Pokémon in it. At the counter, she spotted a young blue-haired man leaving followed by a Feraligatr carrying along a small tray of fried, battered balls—probably filled with seafood if they were the same as the ones she’d encountered back home being sold hawked as street food.
Marl blinked and craned her head back as she walked along. A blue-haired human and a Feraligatr? Why did those two look so familiar to her…?
She felt something cold and hard brush up against her forelegs and jerked back. A quick glance down revealed it was the guardrails to the queue. Calvin and Aries already had taken their places in line… which was too narrow to fit the Salamence without her awkwardly squeezing herself between them.
If they’d come here just a few days ago, she’d have fit in line like everyone else. But now, she didn’t know how she’d manage that even if her left wing wasn’t broken.
“Um… Aries.”
The Ampharos turned back and looked at her, and then the guardrails. He paused briefly as a sheepish expression came over his face, before tugging at their trainer.
“Er, Calvin, I think we have a problem here…”
The Ampharos motioned off to her as the man with the unplaceable face paused, before motioning off at a set of tables on the other end of the hallway along the windows. Marl wasn’t sure what to make of it, when Calvin turned and pointed a Pokéball past the railing and tapped its center. A flash of red light followed, as Roy’s body materialized, briefly drawing the attention of some passersby. The Blastoise wobbled briefly and his gait looked tired, as Marl could see patches of scales on his limbs that still looked scuffed-up as Roy shook his head at their trainer and their Ampharos teammate.
“That was a shorter rest than I was expecting, Calvin,” the Blastoise said.
“Sorry, that one’s on me,” Aries said. “It’s just that I figured you’d be well enough to walk around a bit, and well… something came up.”
Aries trailed off and motioned over at Marl. The Blastoise turned and hesitated a moment, as a pang of guilt seemed to come over his face.
“I suppose a little walking wouldn’t kill me,” he said. “Though I take it Calvin needed someone to hang out with Marl for a bit?”
“Well, that and find a table for everyone, ” the Ampharos explained. “They’re just across the hall from us, think you two can manage?”
The Blastoise glanced back over his shell, giving an uneasy paw at his shoulder.
“I’m fine with it if you are. What do you say, Marl?”
Marl briefly frowned back at her trainer and saw him stiffen up. Calvin had promised that he’d spend time with her, not just let her teammates do his job for him. But at the same time, he did need to place the order. And staying with him now meant being around all these others with her wing in full view of them…
“Fine,” she grumbled. “Let’s just get this over with.”
She began to make her way after the Blastoise as he turned to leave, only to see yellow from the corner of her vision where Aries was waving her down from the line.
“One last thing,” the Ampharos said. “Was there anything in particular you wanted Calvin to order for you?”
Marl paused only for the smell of something fried to prick her nose. She turned her head just in time to catch a glimpse of a human with a Heracross walking by with a small plastic bowl of breaded meat lumps piled on top of each other. There was a human name for it that was just on the tip of her tongue that she was forgetting, ‘kara’-something or other. Whatever it was, the humans back in Hoenn also made it, and she knew from past experience that it tasted good.
“One of… whatever that bowl of fried things was,” she said, motioning after the passing human. “But are all of the portion sizes at this stand really that small?”
Aries and Roy both looked after the departing trainer. There was a shared, surprised blink between the two, before Roy shook his head back in reply.
“I think that’s more from you getting bigger after evolving, Marl,” Roy said. “Since it didn’t look all that small to me. Or at least not by human standards.”
“And keep in mind that these are supposed to be snacks since everything here’s not cheap compared to outside,” the Ampharos said. “But I’ll try and pass things along to Calvin before we go. It should be a pretty popular pick with the rest of the team.”
The Ampharos pointed out a picture of a bowl of those meat lumps on the signboard. The man with the unplaceable face nodded back as Roy tugged at her to follow. Marl set off after the Blastoise... slowly as he lumbered along down the hall alongside her left.
Marl knew that Roy hadn’t exactly grown more nimble and dextrous after evolving, but this was slower than she remembered him normally walking. Why there were others just passing around them right now!
She briefly caught a glimpse of Roy wincing as a more careless human brushed past him and couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty. She hadn’t seen anything of how the Blastoise’s battle had ended, so for all she knew, he was hurt worse than he looked right now.
“Roy, are you alright?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s nothing I haven’t picked up before in a trainer battle. It’s mostly my pride that’s hurt right now,” the Blastoise chuckled. “The nurses said to sit out on any training until the morning, but I’ll be up and at ‘em again tomorrow. Hopefully a bit more accurate with my aim, too.”
Something about his tone of voice didn’t sound quite right, and the smile on the Blastoise’s face wavered a bit. She remembered Numa said that competing teams had to win two out of three qualifying matches in order to continue on in the tournament, and Roy had lost the very first one. However disappointed the Blastoise felt in himself over the outcome, he surely didn’t feel any better knowing that there now wasn’t any margin for error left for their teammates.
Maybe she’d have done better if her wing weren’t broken and she were there to fight in his place. She knew that she was still getting used to her body, but Salamence were strong and swift, so if it’d been her on the field instead, she could have gotten hurt a bit at worst, and Roy would’ve been fine.
The Salamence hesitated a bit and decided to keep her thoughts to herself. It wasn’t as if voicing them would make either of them feel better right now. She craned her head around the Blastoise’s shell off towards the tables ahead. A part of her just knew that she was going to regret this, but…
“Roy, why don’t you take a moment to catch your breath?” she said. “I can go and find that table.”
The Blastoise turned around and hesitated, before letting his eyes drift off towards her left.
“Are you sure, Marl-?”
“Roy, I can at least walk. At least let me do this much for you.”
Her voice came out snappier than she intended, but the Blastoise ultimately relented. He shook his head, before coming to a stop next to a pillar up ahead, and sitting himself down on the ground.
“Alright, just let me know if you need anything.”
Marl nodded and continued on, craning her head around to size up the tables. She made a point of dutifully avoiding looking at other people and Pokémon for too long in favor of the empty spaces where they weren’t present. She really didn’t want to know how they were looking back at her right now.
As much as Marl tried, she just couldn’t find any open spaces along the tables up ahead. Or at least not any that were big enough for a full tournament-sized team plus two extra Pokémon. She sighed and began retracing her steps, when she happened to see a flash of red from back in the direction of the concession stand. It was Calvin, letting out those newer Pokémon with him out on the opposite side of the queue’s guardrail: Aoi, Rako… and that Gliscor.
She looked away with a grumble at the sight and stopped. Ugh, did the Rental Pokémon really have to be here? Wasn’t he supposed to go back to whatever place hired him out in between battles?
Maybe it wasn’t right of her to feel that way, since the ‘mon seemed like he was trying to be nice earlier, but couldn’t he just go away once his job was done? Calvin had said he wanted to spend more time with her, not some complete stranger who only swooped in in the first place because that stupid ‘Hydreigon’ got her pulled from the tournament!
Marl she suddenly felt a sharp pinch at the tip of her tail. Her eyes widened, and she sprang up off the ground and forward. The pain in her wing flared back as she landed and pulled her tail in close to her, looking around wildly.
“Ow! What was-?!”
“Hah! So dragons really are like cats!” a cawing voice sneered. “She jumped just like an alley Meowth!”
Marl looked down to see a trio of Murkrow behind her visibly snickering and felt angry heat at the back of her throat. So Jaki did get his tendencies of being an obnoxious pest from somewhere.
Fortunately for her, these three weren’t her teammates, and they’d be much easier for her to show them their place. She bared her fangs and snarled, crouching for a lunge.
“Let’s see you do that again, you little twerps!”
She sprang forward as dragonfire sprouted on her claws and swiped, except she hit nothing but empty air. She winced and froze as her left wing jostled as laughter and wingbeats followed from above, turning Marl’s attention upwards to see the Murkrow perched on an overhead rafter and looking down at her.
A sickening feeling came over her as she realized they were staring at her wing’s cast. 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?” the Murkrow taunted. “The big, scary dragon can’t keep up with a couple of little birds-?”
“Hey! Knock it off!”
A sharp bleat rang out, followed by a thin 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. Roy and Calvin hurried up behind him as best as they could… as did a human in a peaked cap followed by a Growlithe. The human in the peaked hat pulled Calvin aside, as the Ampharos’ angry expression dissipated and gave way to a worried, sheepish one.
Marl was going to guess that Calvin didn’t manage to get in their order before leaving the line. Worse still, there was murmuring all around her, some in human language, some in language she could understand. Some of it was relief over “someone finally doing something about those birds”, but other comments were about her.
… She was being stared at. Again.
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. At least there wasn’t anything that could go wrong from tha—
“Hey, it’s okay. Don’t let those Murkrow get you down,” a low, rough voice said. “They pulled the same trick on me a bit earlier today. Swiped a snack from right out under me.”
Marl blinked and looked over to see a wall of blue and red scales filling her vision. It was that Feraligatr who’d left the stand earlier, just without his tray of food.
… Right there in front of her. With her broken wing barely an arm’s length away from him.
Marl 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 and 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.
He visibly set his teeth on edge, before fumbling a bit for his words.
“... Oh. What happened to you?”
Marl hesitated. A part of her didn’t really want the Feraligatr to know what happened, and she just wanted to be somewhere else. But the words came out of her mouth before she knew it, as she spoke up in a deflated mumble.
“I got hurt right before the tournament started,” she said. “There’s nothing for me here and I wasn’t having fun watching things, so I was just getting 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. The Feraligatr and his trainer traded glances with one another before the young man said some words in his language, ones that she could follow better since it was in normal human language, about how he and the Feraligatr needed to get going.
Her own trainer was wrapping up his own conversation with the human in the peaked cap, who turned him and Aries away as the Growlithe nodded after them.
“We’ll let you off with a warning since those birds had it coming,” the Growlithe said. “Just don’t make a habit of fighting in public like this.”
Oh, so things had worked themselves out after all. Thank goodness. Marl looked back at Miloch, who pawed at his shoulder and averted his gaze with a quiet murmur.
“I guess I can’t really blame you for wanting to go home… I can’t even imagine what it’d feel like to get benched at the last moment like that,” the Feraligatr murmured.
The Water-type briefly hesitated and seemed to weigh his words, before giving a small smile in reply.
“But I’m sure you’ll get better before you know it. After all, you had to be quite strong already to get this far,” Miloch said. “Though if you’re really not going to come back after today, may I give a word of advice? It might help you 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 if you’ve eaten something 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 two briefly as they vanished into the crowd of other humans and Pokémon milling about and the passersby stopped giving her as big of a berth.
She paused, before turning around and making her way back for her trainer and teammates as they approached each other. She stole a glance back at the signboard that she couldn’t properly make out from the angle and distance, before craning her head back at her trainer.
“Calvin? What’s ‘taiyaki’?”
That one seemed to go over the young man’s head as he blinked back at her. Aries turned his attention over and pointed off at the signboard for him, as Roy quirked a brow in reply.
“It’s a kind of dessert that usually gets served for festivals or as street food,” the Blastoise explained. “Why do you ask?”
Marl 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 if it would really make something good come out of this day…
“Can you ask Calvin to buy some? The stand apparently sells it and I’d like to try it.”
“Hey, why does she get multiple servings?”
Five minutes later once again, Marl was standing at the long end of one of the tables along the windows with her trainer and teammates… with three servings of those fried meat lumps in front of her—’karaage’, as she’d been reminded—and snout-deep in one of them. She looked up at Rako who was seated just off to her right along with Calvin 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 these servings, shut your trap and quit whining.”
That one silenced the Floatzel nice and good. His eyes briefly widened as he scampered away a few places down and turned to nervously pester Roy about whether or not she’d been joking. She briefly caught the Gliscor shooting an uneasy, sidelong glance at her, before he cleared his throat uneasily.
“Are you still feeling upset right now, or-?”
“I’m fine, thanks. Let me eat.”
Marl turned her attention to finishing off the bowl in front of her and moved onto the next as Aries said something to the Gliscor in the background she didn’t listen to. This food surely wasn’t all that good for her with how oily it was and how humans insisted too much of this sort of food wasn’t healthy in general, but it tasted good enough. More importantly, it took her mind off of the pain in her wing and how miserable she’d been earlier.
Maybe she really had needed to eat, since she was going through these snacks faster than she remembered doing so as a Shelgon. A part of her wondered if she should have asked for food earlier that day. It certainly felt a bit less lonely when there were others alongside her like this… even the Gliscor being here wasn’t all that bad since he wasn’t trying to push her trainer away from her right now.
Marl heard a faint patter and looked off to her side. There was some sort of breaded Magikarp in front of her on the table, except it didn’t smell like a Magikarp. She brought her snout down and sniffed at it, confirming that it didn’t smell anything like fish at all. She looked up, giving a puzzled blink towards Aries’ spot at the table.
“Wait, Aries, what’s this?”
“It’s the taiyaki you said you wanted to try,” the Ampharos replied. “It’s a baked pastry which looks like fish, thus the name.”
She brought her snout down before giving it a dubious nudge. She supposed that she’d eaten baked human foods in the past, but it was always a bit hit-or-miss as to whether or not she’d actually like it. Especially since she couldn’t tell what was in this tricky-looking pastry. Did humans really like being deceived by foods which looked like they were one thing but were really something completely different or something?
Though… that Feraligatr had suggested trying it. Feraligatr as Pokémon were also hunters in nature, and they were supposed to specifically be fond of fish. So it couldn’t be that bad, could it?
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 over and a sweet taste washed over it.
She chewed the piece and gulped it down, before turning back to her unfinished pastry on the table. She gave another tentative nibble at it, when it dawned on her that that icky-looking paste inside was the source of the sweet taste. 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.
“Well you sure went through that taiyaki fast, Marl. I suppose that means that you liked it?”
“I did, yeah. Even if I still don’t understand why humans would make it look like fish.”
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.
… Did she have to go home? It occurred to her that the happiest that she’d been today had been just sitting 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 were still staring at it, but…
“Roy? You said that I could choose to go home whenever I wanted, right?”
“Yeah? Wasn’t that what you wanted?” the Blastoise asked. “We were going to send you home through the PC network before trying to squeeze in some training afterwards. The rest of Calvin’s preliminary rounds are tomorrow, and he was a little uneasy about how ready we were after that first loss today.”
The Salamence hesitated, when she felt fingers brush at the side of her head. It was her trainer, who moved his fingers under her chin as she found herself letting out a content rumble.
Her thoughts turned to that little house in the sprawl back in Hoenn. It wasn’t as if Calvin’s parents didn’t know what made her feel better, but if she went home, there wouldn’t be moments like these with her friends. Or at least not until they were done in the tournament. At the same time, one good thing happening didn’t mean it was worth staying here for an entire week like this!
She paused, before shaking her head.
“I’m… actually don’t know anymore,” Marl replied. “I’m not sure if I’ll really be able to enjoy myself here or not, but this is the most fun that I’ve had since coming here.”
A thought crossed her mind. She wasn’t sure it was the best of ideas, but nonetheless, she found herself turning and nudging at her trainer’s chest.
“Could… I try coming back for another day?” she asked. “Won’t you know for sure whether or not everyone will continue on in the tournament after tomorrow? If I’m still not having a good time then, at least I can go home knowing whether or not everyone made it, right?”
Her trainer blinked back at her, as from the corner of her eye Marl saw Roy’s smile widen. A few murmurs went about the table as Marl swore she saw the others share the same relief on the Blastoise’s face.
“Yeah, I think that we can arrange that. I’ll make sure Calvin gets the message.”
1. "Hey, we're here!"
Original Drabble
Concession Stand
Tailgating/Picnicking
In the locker room
The Big Match
A brawl battle between fans.
In the commentator's booth.
Memorabilia
Registration Booth
Pre-Game Pokemon Show
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.”
