Ren remained huddled close to Luna under the blanket, only reaching out from underneath it for another nibble of the last pizza slice. He insisted to his mom that he’d be able to eat it, and while its first half went down without an issue, every bite afterwards was spaced further and further apart in a clash of will versus bodily limits. A silly conflict for sure, and one that would’ve been concerning in most other circumstances—especially involving any sort of bodily exhaustion—but here, Palemoon was unconcerned.
Which wasn’t the case for the rest of the room.
The Gardevoir sensed Hiroto’s attention before she saw him turn towards her. She didn’t acknowledge it initially, but after well over a minute without showing any signs of easing out, she couldn’t help but to bring it up. “^Is everything okay, Hiroto?^” she asked just him, not wanting to stir Ren from his overindulgence-induced drowsiness.
Palemoon expected the man to just shamefully look away, but not this time. Instead, his eyes met hers, and he didn’t back away from her gaze. Whether this was truly unlike him at his core, the Gardevoir didn’t know, but it certainly was a stark change from the human she’d spent half the day around. “I’m just thinking,” he eventually mumbled, “I suppose it’s high time for a bandage change.”
The term corresponded to the wrappings around her injury, Palemoon figured that much, but the idea still puzzled her. She wasn’t actively bleeding, and had spent a good chunk of the day huddled under some cover or another. There was very little opportunity for the wrappings to get dirty; why change them so soon and while they were still fine? “^Already? Has it not only been a day?^”
“Less than a day,” Hiroto clarified. “I’ve already changed them once yesterday. Haven’t checked up on them today yet, with... everything going on.” The voice of his dad caught Ren’s attention, and so did his uncertain, fleeting smile that followed. “Well, normally I’d say that if they’re still fine, then there’s no point in changing them yet. But if I’m already taking them off to check on the injury, might as well replace them with clean ones.”
Now that was more in line with what Palemoon had been taught. Granted, their silken dressings were unlike the human fabric ones, but she figured that the basics of healing arts were still comparable. For once, she was right, the bit of tenuous familiarity lifting her mood a little. “^Of course.^” Not wanting to stir Ren further from his sleepiness than his dad’s words already had, she took her time slinking from underneath the blanket instead of pulling it off them both.
Said gesture was noticed almost immediately anyway, and Ren just shuffled towards the edge of the couch, blanket in hand, to give her space. Before either he could get over the yawn that followed or Luna could say anything, Hiroto got up and sat down between them, leaning in to inspect the Gardevoir’s side. She followed in tow, craning her head to get a good look at her injuries. The cuts were long, jagged, but thankfully shallow—if they hadn’t been, it’s unlikely she would’ve still been here to see them. There was no longer any bleeding, and while her skin was discolored in places around the injury, none of it hurt beyond the obvious bruising.
She was as good as she had any right to be after what had happened. And yet, Hiroto wasn’t quite satisfied, focusing on the multicolored sight before him. His ‘hmmm’s and ‘haw’s were especially familiar to his wife, who perked up and walked over to assess the damage herself. “How’s it looking?” Kaori asked, finding the sight before her unpleasant, but hardly worrisome.
“The thing is, I’m unsure,” Hiroto muttered, pulling out his black rectangle. “I want to say it looks normal, but I don’t know jack about how healing injuries like that should look on a Gardevoir.” Then, a split second later, a realization hit him from the blue, a deep truth he had not considered before.
He could just ask. “So, Luna,” he uncertainly began, “does all this look... normal? For you, I mean.”
After she was done suppressing her laughter at him taking so long to come up with the idea of asking her, Palemoon answered as truthfully as she could. “^For the most part, yes. I’m unfamiliar with the discoloration here,^” she touched around her lowermost ribs, “^but it doesn’t feel sore or painful.^”
“But it’s still something new,” Hiroto concluded. “Truthfully, I don’t like this. I’ll grab the bandage and check if this kind of blueness is normal on a Gardevoir. It kinda looks like a human bruise, but I can see that they’re green on you, down here around the cuts, so it can’t be that.”
Palemoon appreciated his concern, but wasn’t sure whether it had come from wanting to look after her, or from Hiroto’s occupation reasserting itself in his mind with all the accompanying duties included. She wouldn’t say no to a second opinion, though had no idea where he was going to get it from. Perhaps another of those voice connections she had witnessed earlier when Kaori asked for pizza? Those seemed handy for that purpose.
In the meantime, she leaned back in her seat and glanced towards Ren, his drowsiness having stolen all his talkativeness away from him. A fact that he was simultaneously aware and disapproving of, making him grumble while he tried to shake himself awake. Both to spend more time with people close to him, and because his friend was injured right now, and looked like she needed someone close to her.
And because of the persistently depressing fact that those injuries were his fault.
“Are you okay, Luna?” he finally mumbled as he slid off the couch and onto his own two feet, blanket dragging behind him onto the floor. The journey that followed didn’t last long, ending just seven staggering feet later once he climbed back up onto the seat, now on his friend’s other side.
“^Yes I am, Ren. It doesn’t look pretty, I know, but I’m feeling good and it’s not hurting me anymore. How about you?^” she countered, reaching in to physically ruffle his hair while he tried to wrap a blanket around them both without touching the exposed ouchie.
“Ha-haha, I’m good too!” he insisted, briefly awoken by the ticklish sensation. Despite his attempts to appear wide eyed and present, it wouldn’t last more than a few seconds until his eyelids began to creep downwards by their own volition again, millimeter by millimeter. Only to be interrupted by a full body jerk as Ren snapped them wide open again, fighting hard against his exhaustion.
Now, if this wasn’t the most familiar sight in the world. “^Someone’s tired, isn’t he~^” she teased to the entire room.
“Noooo, I’m not!” Ren pleaded with all the puppy-eyedness a kid his age could manage. However hard he tried, though, he couldn’t charm his way out of his own bodily limitations. He grumbled as the drowsiness struck him again and again, shifting in his seat, until finally he’d had enough. Without saying another word, he slipped out from underneath the blanket and took off further into the building, turning on the lights in his wake. His mom was much too amused to even think about scolding him for running indoors, just shaking her head with a wide smile.
“^Is his bedtime close?^” Luna asked, equally mirthful at the display.
“I’m a bit more lax on the weekends, but yes, yes it is. Again, special occasion, so I don’t wanna nag him to bed yet.”
While Palemoon was estimating the odds of the boy just out and falling asleep huddled up beside her, liking the mental image of the scene, Hiroto made his way back from his own journey into the cavernous household. A roll of bandages in his hands was an expected sight, but a small, off-white pack with something light blue inside it most definitely wasn’t. The stark color caught Palemoon’s eye, but it was the concern in the man’s head that her mind ended up focusing on. “^Did something happen?^” she tentatively asked, a tinge of fear at there being something wrong with her clear in her mental voice.
Hiroto sighed. “The thing is, I still don’t know. I tried looking things up online, but couldn’t see any discoloration in photos or even described. I suppose the next step is asking the Pokecenter hotline; that’s what they’re for after all.” He wasn’t confident in said step in the slightest, and it took only one look at his wife to make him elaborate on his barely veiled doubts. “They are League-affiliated, and I’m wondering if they might run an ID check or something.”
The Gardevoir had no idea what ‘League’ meant, but the word still sent a freezing shiver down her back. She wanted to speak up and remind them she was feeling all good and that there was no need to put themselves in danger by reaching out to what was clearly a nefarious entity, but Kaori spoke first. “Can’t you just give someone else’s name if they ask?”
Her husband was aghast at the idea. At least, for the first few seconds, before realizing that it was the least bad option he had, however much he disliked it personally. “I suppose I could, but—what if we get someone else in trouble?”
Kaori tried her hardest to not roll her eyes. “Honey, I doubt they’re gonna be prosecuting anyone over giving a false name to a Pokecenter hotline.”
Neither he nor his wife were operating with any concrete facts here, and her reassurance could only do so much to tame his doubt. “I certainly hope so. Anyway, where’s Ren—”
*EEEK!*
The high-pitched shriek in what was clearly Ren’s voice made the entire room jump. Hiroto was on his way before his legs had even landed back down on the floor, racing towards the source of the sound while the two women sat in the living room, stunned. Palemoon narrowed down on the source of the noise immediately, trying to make out if the boy was in danger, and if he needed further help, if so—
Fortunately, no such intervention would be needed. Instead, she broke into a quiet laughter once she’d connected the dots, and Kaori wasn’t far behind once her son had made it back under his father’s unamused gaze. Now in pajamas, with his soaked shirt getting hanged to dry in the laundry room shortly after. “I’m awake now!” he cheerfully announced as he squirmed his way back under the blanket and next to his friend.
“I’d sure hope so after that one,” his mom flatly added at seeing his still-damp hair. “If you get a cold from this, I’m not calling you from preschool, just so you know.”
“I won’t!” he asserted, deliberately oblivious to his shaking little body. Someone this cold huddling against Palemoon wasn’t the most pleasant sensation in the world, but she was much too amused to pay close attention—especially with the boy’s father preparing to reach out to the ominous ‘hotline’ he’d mentioned earlier.
Hiroto took a deep breath, loudly exhaled, and finally brought the black rectangle over to the side of his head. The rest of the room went deathly quiet as he did so, with even Ren stilling himself as he watched his dad make the call. One paced loop around the room, another—and someone finally spoke back, freezing Hiroto in place. “Hello, yes, I’m calling from Rustboro Prefecture for a medical question. My name is...” he paused, eyes sweeping the room as his focus swept over the mental list of his coworkers, “Fujiwara Shiro. Yes, Fujiwara Shito. I...”
Ren’s father wasn’t a good liar and he knew it, the untruth leaking out of his body through nervous taps on the smooth floor. “No, no, it’s not for our Zigzagoon, it’s for a friend’s mon—Their name? Uh...”
*click*
Hiroto clenched the black rectangle tight as he dragged it away from his head, as if through mud. His heart was racing, his head was full of annoyance, and the rectangle wasn’t even done with trouble yet, breaking out into a very long melodic noise just moments later. Said noise might’ve been silenced with a single tap on the contraption’s smooth surface, but that didn’t extend to the further anxiety it invoked in the man. He kept the device within view, as if waiting for the noise to come again—which it thankfully didn’t, granting at least that mercy.
Palemoon was just confused at it all, but knew better than to sate her curiosity right away. No, that was something best left to Kaori, who at least knew what to ask. “Are you okay, Hiroto?” Her tone was right in the middle between Palemoon’s confused interest and her husband’s frustrated startle. She had most of the idea of what had happened, but was clearly missing some important details.
And once Hiroto could stop trying his hardest to shatter the device with his grip, he muttered back: “I’m fine, I’m fine. Not good with being put on the spot like this, is all.” The words let him move from the spot he’d been frozen in and towards the couch, where he less sat down and more so collapsed. “No-go with the official hotline. They asked for my name and clearly checked it against the list of registered mons, and mentioning a friend didn’t help either, they saw right through that one.”
The Gardevoir wanted to ask why he didn’t just bring her up without trying to disguise her as a ‘friend’s mon’. Kaori then proceeded to have the same thought, but put it into words. “Why not just say you found a wild Gardevoir?”
“What do you think would happen if I did that, Kaori?” Hiroto snapped back, much more cross all of a sudden. “I really doubt they’d respond with ‘oh how magnanimous of you, here let us aid you in assisting this powerful, wild, dangerous creature you have in your home’. The last thing I want is for them to send someone to investigate this.”
Kaori didn’t appreciate her husband’s raised tone, but couldn’t deny that he had a good point. Neither could Palemoon, though she had a much harder time understanding it, deep down. She might’ve already been very aware of what humanity at large thought of mons, but even putting that aside—why wouldn’t they advise someone to help someone more powerful than them? Even if the person on the other side of that connection thought of her as wild, mighty and terrifying, surely it had to have been a better idea to help her out as opposed to what, forcing her out the door? Hiding in fear?
Maybe the unspoken assumption was that she could not be reasoned with altogether. It would hardly be a surprise considering the human track record, and yet it still upset her to think about. Not something to dwell on, and just like Ren earlier with his tiredness, Palemoon tried to shake it off herself. To the same overall result, more or less.
As much of a failure as this attempt at getting a second opinion was, Hiroto remained determined for reasons unclear to the Gardevoir. She spoke up, not wanting the topic to sour the evening even further. “^I really appreciate you trying to help, Hiroto, but you don’t have to. I promise it isn’t painful, and I’d rather it didn’t bring you even more disappointment trying to investigate it.^”
In one ear, and out the other. “No no, it’s all good, Luna. Besides, I have a duty to my patients, and I’d hate to later kick myself over not being as thorough with this as I could’ve been. We’ll find someone that can help us, I’m sure of it.” His words tried to paint a reassuring picture, but his gaze remained unfocused and stressed, jittering hands clenching both the rectangle and his leg.
Palemoon just hoped it wouldn’t take another stressful situation for him to take what she’d said to heart.
“And there have to be other hotlines; we just have to find one that’s not League affiliated,” Hiroto continued, mind steadying itself after coming up with a fresh course of action. “Mind helping me out with the search, Kaori?”
His wife nodded back, her expression unconvinced, but willing to go along for now. “Sure. Lemme just get my laptop and I’ll see if I can find anything.”
With both adults focusing on either the glowing rectangle or a much larger device that Palemoon had difficulty even describing, her attention soon shifted away from them and back towards the boy getting cozy beside her. Whatever impact his earlier mishap had on his awakeness was wearing off fast, and the dark fog of slumber was creeping in to replace it. It wasn’t all the way there, though, leaving the boy still present mentally, if overwhelmed at the scene. He tried to sneak a peek at his friend’s injuries, but Luna would lean to block his head every time—an act Ren took almost embarrassingly long to catch onto.
“I just wanna see how it looks now,” he mumbled, more defeated than the Gardevoir expected. “I hope it’s much better than how it was after that Ursaring attacked you...”
Right, of course he’s seen it at its worst. Not much I can shield him from now, might as well reassure him.
“^It is sweetie, I promise. It’s not hurting anymore, but if you really want, I can show it to you. I just didn’t want you feeling worse about it,^” Palemoon admitted, her tone genuine. She meant her offer too, not moving as the boy gave her other side a tentative peek. A flash of disgust went through his mind, but it didn’t remain there for long, especially with the sight indeed looking much, much better than it did yesterday.
“Thank you,” Ren whispered after his eyes got their fill. “And I’m sorry for—” he began, only for his friend’s psychic ruffling to cut him off, trying to banish his self-consciousness with some targeted affection. The sound made both parents look over for a moment, fleeting smiles filling their faces before they returned to their fruitless searches.
“^You’ve done nothing wrong Ren, I promise. I’d happily get hit like that again if it meant saving you from another danger like that.^”
Palemoon’s reassurance made the boy squirm uncomfortably. The last thing he wanted was to consider something like that happening again. Still, it was hard to not feel better at a promise like that, grizzly as it was. “Don’t say that... but thank you.” He clung to her as close as he could, the thought of something bad happening to her even more terrifying than the Ursaring that had hurt her.
She didn’t want to only add fuel to his worries and discomfort, kicking herself over her choice of words. “^I’m sorry, I won’t.^”
“Thank you.” Thoughts kept swirling in Ren’s mind, some clearly yearning to be set loose with his lips—but his focus was already scarce, and only growing scarcer by the minute. Whether it was a story from when he was younger in an attempt for commiseration or just concern for her wellbeing, she wasn’t sure. She appreciated both of them a lot, though.
It was hard to focus on his thoughts with his parents’ annoyance and frustration steadily growing in intensity. They hadn’t said anything yet, but the short huffs, grunts under their breath, and deep, frustrated breaths told her everything. If they wouldn’t speak up and admit their defeat to each other, it was up to her to help nudge them in that direction. “^How’s the search going?^” she asked with an even mix of faux and genuine curiosity.
“Badly,” Kaori flatly admitted. “There are some private clinics with hotlines, some even for psychics, but none of them are open at this hour. It’s only during work hours.” Hiroto remained quiet, a silent nod conveying everything there was to say.
That was it then, as far as Palemoon was concerned. “^I really appreciate you looking so hard, but I really mean it. I’m okay. If you can’t find anyone who could advise us right now, there’s always tomorrow if you really want to know—^”
“I have an idea,” Hiroto jolted, as if said idea physically smacked him over the head. “Well, more so one last thing we could check rather than a solid lead, but—how about overseas hotlines? It’s the middle of the day in Unova. Everything should be open there.”
For all of her husband’s determination, even Kaori had to admit this was probably going a bit too far. “Hiroto, come on. Are you really going to try explaining all this in Unovan?”
“It won’t hurt to try if we can find the right place,” her husband tried to defend his idea. “I know my Unovan isn’t exactly good and you can’t speak it at all, but we gotta at least give it a shot, right?”
It took Palemoon all the willpower she could muster to not perk up with “no, you don’t.” She supposed she’d been as clear as possible that she was alright, and all their efforts were entirely on them now. That realization didn’t immediately banish all her self-consciousness, but it helped a great deal. And, for what it was worth, Kaori seemed to be on the same brainwave as her, sighing at her husband’s misplaced dedication. “Suit yourself,” Kaori muttered, going back to using the folding machine on her lap.
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And suit himself, Hiroto definitely did. It didn’t even take him all that long to find something. “I think I... wait, I think I saw her on the news once.” The comment perked everyone else’s attention, and Hiroto reached over with the glowing rectangle in his hand to show off presumably the ‘her’ in question. Beyond the question of ‘how did this rectangle capture a likeness of another human’, the sight itself was unremarkable. ‘Her’ outfit was very different from the family’s, and her skin was darker, but that was it for any significant differences Palemoon could make out.
“Wait, wasn’t she crazy?” Kaori asked, digging into her memories for an answer to that half-remembered question.
“Why does she look so weird?” Ren followed up with all the bluntness he was capable of, his parents not appreciating the question one bit.
“Ren!” Hiroto raised his voice, and regretted it immediately as he watched his son shrink before him.
Kaori caught herself before she could repeat her husband and only stress her son out further, but the words that followed remained firm. “Hiroto, please. Ren, she doesn’t look weird; she just looks different from us, okay?”
The boy nodded nervously, clinging closer to his friend. “O-okay. I’m sorry...”
The reason for the exchange went over Palemoon’s head. While the differences between the human on the magic rectangle and the surrounding family were very minor by her standards, apparently Ren was much more attuned to said differences, and he reacted correspondingly stronger. A reminder to not call others ‘weird’ was always a good idea, but the immediate tension caused by him even bringing the topic up suggested there was something more to it. Something that Luna didn’t particularly want to pursue either, considering how clearly sensitive it was.
Still, she held the boy closer as his dad shifted his focus back to the glowing rectangle, annoyance on his features shifting to determination. There was some uncertainty in there too, hardly surprising considering Kaori’s earlier comment about the human they’d been shown being ‘crazy’, but they were clearly the best lead Hiroto had. “Alright, got the hotline number,” he said, breaking the silence. “From translating it, the place seems to be called ‘Gracidea Asylum’. I hope I can pronounce that, heh.” The chuckle was hardly mirthful, but it still loosened the tension up at least a bit.
“Gonna be going through with it?” Kaori asked. Her voice wasn’t too surprised at that outcome, but her thoughts were—she’d imagined her husband’s stubbornness would’ve met its match much sooner than this.
Her husband gripped the rectangle tighter. “We’ve gone through all that search effort, too late to back out now.” An assessment neither Kaori nor Palemoon agreed with, but which they didn’t want to dispute. The former out of not wanting to end up in an argument, and the latter out of... amusement, almost. Despite the tension in the air and in the humans’ heads, she couldn’t deny how silly the situation was. She was all good; there was barely even a dull ache in the affected area, and yet Hiroto continued to insist on seeking a second opinion, hopelessly fixated on it.
I know some people get fixated on topics of interest to them, but this is something else altogether.
Despite Hiroto’s words, it took an awkwardly long time for him to perform the communication ritual he and his wife had previously done. He kept staring idly at the rectangular tool, apprehension and sense of duty boiling inside his skull. Until, at last, his slender fingers touched the device in just the right way to make it do its magic.
Palemoon wondered what could power such a contraption. It clearly wasn’t psychic in nature, evidenced both by it being limited to sound and by not emitting any psychic energies she could pick up on. Which meant that the Gardevoir was out of ideas, since absolutely nothing she’d heard of hit the bill. Even electricity, which Hiroto had extolled the virtues of in their recent chat, didn’t feel like the right candidate. If it was involved, Palemoon imagined the device would at the very least send off an electrical blast into the sky in an attempt to reach the receiver. There was always the possibility that she just couldn’t see it, but with every other feat of electricity she’d ever witnessed beingvery flashy, or at least visible as with the humans’ glowing elements, she doubted this was the right answer either.
Whatever form it might’ve taken, the signal sent out into the void had reached someone. The faint murmur that rang from Hiroto’s device was loud enough for him to yank it away from his head and twiddle with it, before laying it down on the table. And then, the human on the other side spoke again, the sound now loud enough for everyone gathered around the table to hear it clearly.
For once, it wasn’t just her that had no idea what someone had said; the observation filling her with barely contained amusement. Ren and Kaori strained their brains to connect the sounds to any scraps of knowledge they knew, getting nowhere. Even Hiroto’s internal translation was very sparse. Luna focused on it all the same, though, hoping to either be able to help somehow, or at the very least understand more of what was going on.
“Hello?”
Hiroto had stalled for long enough. “Hello. I am Watanabe Hiroto, from Hoenn,” he spoke, his voice much less fluid than usual. The actual sounds being uttered were different, but still much closer to the language the family used as opposed to any non-Human speech Palemoon had ever heard.
“Hello! [???] Hoenn?”
Despite his best efforts, Hiroto had woefully little luck parsing the words the other Human was saying. Almost none of them matched the courses he’d watched, differing in either the pronunciation or the sentence structure in ways that made interpreting the meaning impossible. He had to keep trying, both for Luna and for his own mental sake, but the interaction was sapping his willpower fast. “Yes. We have injury... Gardevoir.” The last word was pronounced in a much more fluent way, sparking a wave of frustration at not looking up its translation beforehand.
“What injury [???]? [???]”
How in the world was he to describe that with his kindergarten vocabulary? He grew angry at himself for going through with such a harebrained idea; at being too stubborn to back out when given a good opportunity to. It was hard to consider that even now, especially when he still had ideas. Bad ideas, but ideas all the same, one of them pushing to the forefront of his mind in desperation.
Without saying another word, he grabbed the rectangle and touched it in a specific spot again, before holding it at a distance. His other hand clenched, he held his breath—and the device opened up. At least, that’s how it looked like, with what was its front side now showing a peek at an altogether different place. It wasn’t even like the static depictions Palemoon had glimpsed before; it moved naturally and in real time.
As did the human therein.
Despite the image being blurry, Palemoon could tell this wasn’t the human she’d glimpsed earlier. Their hair was curly, but it was gray instead of black, and their skin was similar to that of the family around her. There was something on their face in front of their eyes, but it was hard to make out. Kaori was too far away to get a look at this other human, but that didn’t extend to Luna and Ren, and both of them leaned in curiously.
The other human opened their mouth to speak, but Hiroto cut them off, moving the rectangular device first towards Luna, and then close to her injury. She heard them first murmur, then gasp, and finally whisper something, before speaking up once more.
“[???] find [???] Hoenn [???]”
The view then shifted drastically, moving around so much trying to follow it threatened to make Palemoon nauseous. It swung in rhythm with the unusually loud steps, reminding the Gardevoir of the clacking of stone on stone more than of any naturally sounding footfalls. Once in a while, they got fleeting glimpses of other entities there. Many of them she’d never seen before in her life, but not all—that had to have been a Ralts that passed by a while ago.
Wherever this portal led seemed to not be anywhere near as afraid of her kin as Ren’s family initially was, at the very least. Said observation was further evidenced once the other human stopped and spoke again, but not towards them. Whoever they were talking to remained silent and unknown. At least, until they pointed their end of the handheld portal in their direction, revealing someone who almost looked like her. Maybe they could’ve been one of those ‘Gallade’ relatives of her kin that Ren had brought up earlier? The boy thought so at the very last, judging by his excitement at seeing them.
On cue, Hiroto showed them Luna’s injury again. His hands shook, but the view to the other side was already so blurry it probably didn’t make much difference. His eyes were wide and lips were pursed, thoughts racing in the loop between disbelief and having to focus.
Soon after, the other human was on the move again, having picked up the pace. They said something aimed at them this time, but Hiroto didn’t pick up on even a single word. Still, the upbeat, reassuring tone came through all clear, soothing the man’s spirits. The tense, silent wait continued, the steps’ steady pace only interrupted by the rapid crescendo of a staircase. More glimpses of untold forms and species, surrounded by mostly unnatural whites and grays, until, at last, they saw grass and flowers.
It was enough to make Palemoon jealous as she bundled in tighter.
“[???] help [???] Hoenn [???] talk [???]?”
The human that entered the view soon after looked different still, especially in their hair. It was straight like Ren’s family, but more importantly, it was a pinkish color, aside from the small path of brown at the very top of their head. Ren mentioned Luna’s coloration being special earlier; was this a similarly special human?
To some extent, yes. Mostly in that they could speak.
“Ah, greetings. Maddy I, talk small Hoenn. You help want?” This time, the entire family understood, and the wave of relief that followed was potent enough to make Palemoon lightheaded.
Finally, someone who spoke a civilized language. “Thank the gods,” Hiroto murmured under his breath. “Hello Mrs. Maddy, yes, we need help. We... ran into an injured Gardevoir, and we don’t know if her wounds are healing properly. Do you have any expertise in tending to injured Gardevoir?”
Alas, just like with the other human earlier, it was clear the communication wouldn’t be as easy as that. Maddy’s eyes glazed over before she appeared to focus and mouth out a few words. “You meet ill Gardevoir and help need? Sorry for my bad Hoenn.”
“Injured, yes,” Hiroto clarified, before showing off Luna’s injuries again.
Maddy’s reaction was... startled, to say the least. Her eyes went wide in first awe, then concern, and instead of responding to Hiroto’s words, she spoke towards the other human. The words were too muffled, fast, and complex for any meaning to come through, but the tone of worry, suspicion even, was clear. She kept glancing between the gateway device and the other human until finally speaking to the family again. “Understand. Need know how meet they, you.”
Hiroto’s failed attempt at consulting the League hotline was fresh on his mind, and even if this place was supposedly not League-affiliated, the question he’d been asked had a similar, interrogative feel to it. Whether it was because of suspicion of ulterior motives on his end or the same omnipresent fear of mons as the society at large was saturated with, he could only guess.
He hoped beyond hope it was the former. “She encountered my son yesterday, then saved him from an Ursaring attack, Mrs. Maddy. The injuries she sustained are from that attack,” he explained, speaking as slowly as he could.
Maddy had clear difficulty buying their explanation. She squinted in response, spoke something to the other human that sounded cautionary, and got back to them. “Understand. What help need you?” Her tone was suspicious and deservedly so, but she kept going along with their explanation for now.
“The injuries on the side of her left lumbar region are surrounded by a worrisome discoloration, and I want to know whether they’re normal or if it’s a sign of complications or infection.” Nope, much too technical a vocabulary to dump on her like that. He didn’t even have to be told to repeat; Maddy’s dumbfounded expression spoke for itself. “Her injury looks ugly, and I don’t know if it is bad or not.”
Palemoon really wished emotions transferred across this portable gateway in the same way that sound and sight did. Maddy didn’t respond initially, her attention jumping between them and other people in her immediate surroundings. It was only a while later, once the glimpse into somewhere else entered a building again, that she finally responded. “Why not ask company help?” she asked, not waiting for a response as she briskly walked.
The family blinked in shared confusion. Hiroto had no idea how to interpret the question or respond. At least, until a realization struck him, and he did something else with the rectangular device in his hand, making the gateway across the world disappear. Considering how eager he’d been to help her just prior, Palemoon couldn’t help but stare wide eyed at him just deciding to close his means of communication on a whim like that.
A part of her should’ve expected said gateway to return just as effortlessly moments later, but it still surprised her. Hiroto had an answer now. “It’s ‘League’ in Hoennian. And I can’t ask them because she’s a wild mon, and they’d... do something to her, I think.” He might not have known what exactly would happen if anyone came to investigate, but there was no way in hell it would be anything good. Still, the lack of a concrete response sapped much of his confidence.
And yet, it turned out to be the ‘correct’ answer, as far as Maddy’s expectations went, at least. “I see. How you helped her?” she asked, her tone much softer than before. She’d even slowed down her pace, judging by the squeaky, muffled sounds in the background.
“We cleaned her wounds, treated them with a mild antiseptic, and wrapped them in a sterile gauze.” No, goddammit, it was probably too difficult to translate again. “Sorry, I meant—”
“I understood that one,” Maddy cut in. She brought her end of the handheld portal closer to her face, showing off just how conflicted she was about something. To the other humans at least, but picking up on details like that from others’ surface thoughts was almost second nature to Palemoon. “What happen then?”
Hiroto felt he was being tested, but couldn’t make out the question. “We moved her to an empty bed in our house, and today she felt much better.” His answer was as neutral as he could manage, and yet much more revealing than he had initially realized. Maddy’s expression lit up and mouth opened, as if ready to pounce with another question, before she stopped herself. Hiroto gulped, and Palemoon desperately wanted to know what she would’ve asked.
Ren was losing the battle with his sleep.
“[???]”
Unfamiliar words interrupted Luna’s attempt to make the boy beside her as comfy as possible. She glanced back at the rectangular device, before hearing the same incomprehensible sentence from the unknowably distant Human. Followed shortly after by a reply, a drawn out creak, and yet another change of scenery.
From what she could make out, the room was small, much smaller than even Ren’s bedroom, but no less stuffed with items. They were much more boring than the boy’s toys, though, limited to a myriad of colorful rectangles all over one wall, and a handful of white rectangles attached to the other wall. Both kinds were chock-full of symbols that were much too blurry to make out, but probably weren’t the same ‘writing’ Ren had shown her before. Probably.
Hard to focus on that with a familiar face showing up on the other side all of a sudden. The ‘crazy’ and ‘different’ human she’d briefly seen earlier was even less so when seen through this device, at least to her.
Hiroto still had to focus that much more to keep his composure as they walked into the frame, talking to Maddy in their incomprehensible language. All he’d picked up from their chat was a few mentions of ‘Hoenn,’ but that was about it. A part of him wanted to introduce himself to what was clearly a doctor, hoping to get her help, but he didn’t want to add fuel to their suspicion of him.
Before long, the chatter on the other side of the world came to a stop, leaving Maddy and the medic staring at Hiroto expectantly. He did the first thing he could think of, showing off Luna’s injury yet again, hoping beyond hope this would be the last time he had to do it. The office clerk they’d reached earlier couldn’t help him, Maddy wouldn’t help him, but this doctor should be finally able to do so.
Luna watched the doctor lean in close to their side of the gateway, examining her injury—and then looking up, and almost making eye contact with her. It wasn’t quite perfect, making it look like they were looking up at her shoulder or neck, but there was that keenness to their gaze all the same. A focus whose intensity shone through the blurry gateway, but which didn’t reveal anything behind it, anything motivating it. Palemoon had no idea whether to be impressed or unnerved.
The doctor spoke, and Maddy translated. “Ask them if it hurts, mister...”
“Watanabe Hiroto.” Providing his name aside, Hiroto was conflicted about what to do. He had asked Luna if the injury hurt, and she had answered, insisted even, that it did not. He had the answer, and yet did not give it. Procedure was important, regardless of how redundant it felt—especially since he had an inkling that it wasn’t just the answer that mattered. “Since they’re asking, does the injury hurt, Luna?”
Repeating herself wouldn’t hurt, especially with how put on-the-spot Hiroto felt. “^No, it doesn’t, Hiroto. No more than a regular bruise.^”
“She says it’s no more painful than a bruise.”
It was as if a light switch had flipped. The doctor’s expression softened immediately, and from what he and Luna could see in the corner of the frame, so did Maddy’s. It was as if all tension suddenly left the other side of the call, and if Hiroto wasn’t both too mentally drained and too tired to care, he would’ve brought it up right away.
But he didn’t, giving the other side space to respond. “Perfect. Dr. Rosewood say that color from psychic tired. She avoid using psychics, few days. Once better, color vanish.”
And now, it was time for the family’s side of the call to get hit by a wave of relief, Hiroto especially. There; there was nothing wrong with Luna, and all his anxious digging wasn’t even needed, only ending up as a waste of time. Much, much more preferable outcome to the inverse, as far as he was concerned. “Oh thank you doctor, thank you so much. I apologize for all the difficulties involved with this call.”
“No trouble!” Maddy cheerfully responded—only for the doctor to cut her off and get closer to their view. Despite the earlier relief, her tone was much more serious than before, and their translator took her time choosing the right words. “Doctor say if League ask, nothing say. If League ask enter, disallow. If League find anything, broken tool say.”
And then, their final message, its contents freezing Hiroto’s blood. “Help her back her people. Mr. Watanabe. Fast as possible. We never talked.”
The audio-visual gateway disappeared without a trace moments later, and Ren’s dad almost dropped the rectangular device in shock. He hadn’t told that woman anything about where Luna had come from; how did she know that!? The advice she’d given him sounded sensible as far as protecting Luna went, but—how—
“^Hiroto?^” Luna asked, concerned. Both she and Kaori were looking at him worried, their concern making him feel even more insane.
“I—how did she know Luna came here from a tribe?” Hiroto forced out, finally sliding the device into his pocket. “I never mentioned it, did I? I really hope I haven’t, fuck...”
Kaori had to hold in an eye roll at her husband’s overreaction. “I’m guessing she just figured it out. She has to be knowledgeable about Gardevoir, and maybe that’s how all of them live out there or something?” It would’ve been an impressive hunch to make from such a brief chat, but nowhere near as shocking as her husband was making it out to be. Plus, she clearly wanted to help them out, so it’s not like she’d use that knowledge against them, especially with her instructions on how to behave if the League were to show up.
And yet, that only helped Hiroto so much. “But—ugh, fuck!” he grunted, breathing heavily. “If I let that slip through, then what about that earlier call to the League’s hotline? What if they picked up on something too!?”
His wife could empathize with his distress, but this was a bit too much. “Hiroto, please lower your voice, I think Ren’s already asleep. We’re gonna be alright, I promise—you didn’t give them anything identifiable, or even mentioned a Gardevoir for that matter. Just because a professional inferred where Luna came from doesn’t mean a random call center schmuck will.”
That was a more logical objection. Hiroto hated it all the same. “I hope not. I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate being seen through like that.”
“The unavoidable horrors of human interaction,” Kaori flatly joked.
“Pretty much. Non-human too, even,” her husband replied straight, thinking back to Luna reading him like a book earlier. At least there it was on him for saying more than he should’ve; he was the one to blame for oversharing. How was he supposed to protect himself from people figuring him out without even being given information like that!?
...
Good gods, was he tired after that. Tired, anxious, and still faintly unnerved after the conversation they all had with Luna earlier that day, and exactly none of those were helping him maintain a grip on his psyche right now. Just had to wrap all this up and beeline it for the bed, and hopefully he’d be able to think more clearly come tomorrow. Probably not the healthiest way of managing anxiety attacks, but one he was long since used to.
“A-alright. Sorry for that,” Hiroto sighed, rubbing his temples. “Luna, lean away so that I can have better access to the injury.”
The Gardevoir followed his directions, and watched as he put all the items he’d brought with himself to use. He opened an off-white pack, revealing a pair of unnaturally blue hand coverings that he then put on in a deliberate, slow way. Then, he spritzed her injury with the contents of a purple bottle, and cleaned it until it was dry again. It stung a little, but Palemoon didn’t mind. Not after the strife that had given her those wounds, not after the painful talk earlier. Finally, the injury was covered up with a pristine patch of fabric, and held in place with the same kind of wrap as before.
“All done. Apologies it ended up taking so long in the end. Better safe than...” Hiroto cut himself off, palpably grasping his thread of thought and holding it in place. “Nevermind. You’re all good, Luna. Just give me a moment and I’ll carry Ren over to his bed.”
“Nnnnnnn...” the boy cut in, surprising even his psychic friend. Whether it was his dad’s raised voice that broke his sleep or something else, he was at least aware enough again to make his preferences clear. “Can I sleeee—*yaaaaawn*—eep next to Luna, dad?”
Hiroto sighed, looked at his wife, and then back at his son. “Well, I’m not the one you should be asking, Ren.”
For the boy’s sake, no follow-up questions would be needed. “^Of course, Ren. Let’s get going to bed, shall we?^”
Ren nodded weakly as he half slid off, half climbed out of the couch, dragging the blanket he and Luna were wrapped in behind him on the floor. Palemoon was much too amused to speak up about it, and so was Kaori. Hiroto looked the other way.
“^May you sleep well!^”
Before long, both the boy and his friend were huddled under a blanket, the latter’s exhaustion finally catching up with her too. Today had been the most impactful day of her life, and it wasn’t even close. Even beyond accomplishing her original goal, she’d saved someone’s life, and got an invaluable glimpse into a world utterly unlike her own—but also deeply intertwined with it. Earthly concerns remained, of course. Her family must’ve already been close to panicking, and she doubted she’d recover fast enough on her own to make it back home before they made the first move.
Worrisome, but she was certain things would be alright. The human family saved and helped her out; there was no doubt in her mind her own family wouldn’t pick up on that if the two were to ever meet. Hopefully, that wouldn’t end up happening in the first place, but she wasn’t certain how likely that outcome w—
“Can we play some more tomorrow?” Ren asked, his voice a barely audible whisper.
Luna smiled in the dark. “^Of course, Ren. That’d be a lot of fun.^”
The boy’s little mind grew that much warmer as he huddled in. A ‘thank you’ brewed in his mind, one he very much meant, but which he didn’t quite manage to force out.
At least, not before it reached him first. “^Thank you, Ren.^”
The words pulled him right back into the world of the awake. They were nice, but he was the one who was supposed to say them, not Luna. This didn’t make sense. “Why did you thank me? You had to save me and got hurt, a-and then had to play with me. I should be thanking you.”
“^Because I made a friend.^”
Ren couldn’t see Luna’s soft smile, but he certainly felt it carry through her voice. Warm reassurance filled his body, undoing the work of confusion from moments prior. He didn’t manage to express all the gratitude in his mind before sleep finally claimed him, nowhere close.
But Palemoon felt it all the same, and she was happy.
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From the Vast! and
