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Pokémon Grounded

K_S

Unrepentent Giovanni and Rocket fan
review i.p.

Grounded chapter 2

(I'll dm you when its done i dont have access to any other form of storage atm)



2: Hospital Pass



When Marl came to, light filled her eyes and blinded her vision. The Salamence briefly took a moment to let her sight adjust 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!”

I suspect bwtween title and everything else this is notngoing to be a "sting in the center and done" sort of thing. And consoderong this is a Sal'... yeah might as well retitle this cruel and unusual tje ficlet.

(Checks word count)

Excuse me the novella.

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.

Hm what makes a chancy look older vs younger. Tail length, fur shine, do they turn more sherbert pink vs buvblegum pink as they age?

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.

So basically mon icu?


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.

This feels a bit run on... i dont know if the coma placement is gramatically right or not...

Pokéballs did that whenever (whatever) 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.

The whenever made then worknsecti9n feels likenits missing something... i just poped a suggestion in?

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

shes in for a very bad time. Wonder if cal' will have to drop out of the event due to her injury.
.

Wh-What if that awful Hydreigon had broken it permanently? What if she was just stuck like this?

Utter nightmare fuel of the highest calabre considering mel's speicies as well as marls natural love of flying.

“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.”

Sparks?

Also i'm wondering why marl isnt flying (bad pun i know) off the handle and losong her mind. Shes a bit of a hothead and all...

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?”

Gotta admit life as a medical chancey must be pretty aweful...

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.”

Yeah i'm sure this is filling Marl w confidence...


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.”

... i dont think pogtails was supposed to say that... and as a dragon i'm not sure how good of an idea towels is...

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.

Marl my sister in arms.. i feel your pain of a broken limb and wanting t9 nope out of medical mayham land. Hopefully the staff wont have to pry her off the ceiling... that last line was not a confesion.

“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.”

Again... they prob should not be saying all this... as marls likely to hit the roof.

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?

... i'm imaging...like comparitivly
.. washclothes being spread before a broken leged person baring the physic of say... did you ever seen green mile, the man who plays coffee? That type of biuld. Insanely tall wide and... and a washclothe being plopped down in front of the man with aide chirping. "Hop up, this will work fine..."


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.

Shes being more complient then i anticipated...

“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.

Yeah i'm agreeding w marl hwre. Muzzle. No thanks.


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?”

Yeah i'm tempted to send that chancey back to chanc' school to learn basic empathy again... yeesh...

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.

Yeah i'm surprosed no one explained why that wasnt an option tbh

Or asked her which she would rather persue...

I mean i'd get it with an all human med team but the chanxys can comunicate... and arent... and marl is going to get trauma from all tjis isnt she?

“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.”

Love how all the mon on hand are like... "mew i hate my life/job today." Its clearly a whole staduim med team mood.

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.”

Again i'm thinking 90% of tjis could be dodged if theyd asked her opinion. Or just explained. I wonder how comon tjis is on the mon world and how calvin is going to respond to this madhouse...


Also wonder how psychics are treated in this sotuation as theyre equiped either via painshare telekenisis or telepathy to let everyone know thier opinion on everytjing.

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?”

Hm this feels make or break for thier relationship. Marls stressed. Cals swoopong in to seemingly save. If this goes well if feels like the lynchpin to mend thier relationship...

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.

Ah so hes being used to calm her down... so they.can poke and numb... i've mixed feelings on tjis trick...

“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.

Bleary? Looked it up... and nevermind no complaint.



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?”

Hmm compassion perhaps. Or to consent to be a chew toy. I doubt marl isnt too picky at this point.

“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 left 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 left 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?”

And reality is sinking in like a rock. Poor marl shes going to have it rough as this revelation is hitting from a place of
A medicated
B in the mother of all her sore spots...



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?

I take back everything about reality sinking in.. marls still on the banks of denial and is sport fishing there as we speak... this is going to be another kick in the teeth for her scaliness, isnt it?

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.”

while i salute eira for showong some bloody ta ts (glares dryly at every other cast member in scrubs) i suspect that marl isnt anything like alrigjt... i wonder jow calvin and co are going to handle it?

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.”


That is goong to do spme damage. Not only to marls pride but ppssibly to her relationship w calvin.

I wonder of calvons aware of it?


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.

While i get calvins offer was made from a place of good intentions i can see marl taking the being on the sidelines experience very baddly. Shes very active. Insanely so. Bed rest is gping to go as well for her as a fairy type dancing on her backside..

It will be interesting to re-meet the rest of the cast in less incidentary circumstances and see jow they all ping off of each otjer, and marl in a safer setting...

Thanks as always for sharing your tale.
 
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