Frontier Town Drungfield's Remedies

[Jackie Cat]

"Howls," muttered Laura. "I... honestly wasn't expecting religiously-motivated assassination. I guess I didn't know what to expect, but I was picturing agents in black suits, or cops, or soldiers..."

It occurred to her that for all she knew, everything was completely different in Dave's world. He could be from a theocratic state, or in the middle of a religious war. All totally alien to her, but it was still best to assume nothing. Besides, she was here to know Dave better, not his planet's crazed gunmen.

She'd brought two drinks. She cracked open the second with a steel-shining claw.

"If a bullet grazed my head, I don't think I'd ever leave the house again," she deadpanned. "You don't seem too shaken about it – forgive me if I'm totally off-base there – so what about since then? I don't expect they took it as a divine miracle that you survived, and gave up?"

 

[Butterfree]

Dave waved a paw. "Yeah, it's, uh. Not exactly a common occurrence. Most religious nutjobs stick to, I don't know, trying to guilt women out of having abortions. These people were a special kind of batshit who happened to get really fucking hung up on me. Us."

What would Laura think of the Pokémorph debacle? On the one hand, there was that whole thing about how she thought her cat had been kidnapped for illegal experiments, and at least in his own world he'd come to learn that broadly, reporters loved to write some absolute sensationalized bullshit on the Pokémorphs. On the other hand, what he'd read of Laura's articles in the Gazette wasn't bad. She at least seemed to have a genuine instinct for wanting to know what the fuck she was talking about. And she had bought him a beer. Fuck it.

"We're not speaking on the record here, right?" He took another sip of beer. "Basically, I'm a geneticist. The research I worked on was about how human and Pokémon genomes could be combined -- medical applications was the idea, but we did a proof of concept involving engineered hybrid embryos, then were made to keep them because of a legal clusterfuck. So my daughter's half Vulpix. The others, seven more, were distributed between my coworkers. We're just trying to let them live normal lives at this point, but this obscure fucking church decided they're Biblical abominations and it's their God-given mission to kill me and the kids."

He took a breath. Laura had asked about since then, hadn't she. "Anyway, a while after the shooting it all ended up in this convoluted plot where they kidnapped one of the kids. The others tried to rescue him, despite being a bunch of fucking kids with the barest undeveloped hint of Pokémon powers. It didn't end well. At least afterwards the church kind of dissolved."

 

[Jackie Cat]

Laura nodded, compartmentalising her emotional reaction to some of the wild shit she was hearing in the interest of holding a half-decent conversation.

"You know, you're not the first Wayfarer to tell me about genetically-engineered hybrids," she remarked, with a wry smile. "Starting to sense a theme, here. Anyway, uh... this cult. They get arrested, then? The militants and leaders, at least?"

She didn't really have a frame of reference for religious violence of this kind. It felt... distantly foreign, or distantly historical. The kind of thing that happened in the fourth world, or in wars of religion hundreds of years ago. She felt privileged, for all that she had hardly anything to her name back home. At least she didn't have to worry about this.

 

[Butterfree]

Dave watched for Laura's reaction to the Pokémorphs. It wasn't much - probably she'd learned to maintain a straight face, in her line of work. Better than the outrage and disgust that he often dealt with.

"Well... Whole thing was organized by this pair of brothers. One of them, the younger brother, gave himself up after the shooting and went to jail, although apparently now his legal defense is it was really the older brother and he was just covering for him. And the older brother's... dead. They arrested some of the other cronies who were in there when the kids got there, they tried to frame it as self-defense following the leader's orders, it kind of worked because ooh, Pokémorphs are scary, they're not human, they feared for their lives. Don't know that they'll even end up doing jail time with juries being how they are. Meanwhile the kids are under a sort of fucked-up indefinite house arrest, 'just in case' they kill anyone else."

Anyone else. He'd kind of started out figuring he didn't need to get into that bit, but he supposed he was still just loopy enough it'd slipped out. Not that he hadn't figured Laura might probe at this point. He took a large swig of his beer instead of looking at her.

 

[Jackie Cat]

Laura pieced it together pretty easily. Kidnapping, attempted rescue, dead perpetrator... that 'anyone else' that filled her with dread.

Not dread of the kids. Dread for them. Surely there were people who would sympathise more with the murdered criminal zealot than with superpowered kids trying to rescue their friend.

"I'm guessing they are pretty human," she said, feeling the colour leach from her voice. "The kids. An ill-advised rescue sounds like the sort of shit human kids would do if they could, like, breath fire or whatever."

Dave wasn't looking at her.

"You sound like you're the only guy looking out for them," she offered, by way of implicit support.

 

[Butterfree]

Dave glanced at Laura, kind of surprised at how sympathetic she sounded.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, they're all very human."

He took another swig of his beer, trying to drown the weird lump in his throat. Another chomp on the sandwich and it just about went away.

"But, you know, it's also a Pokémon thing. I feel it too, in this body. Weird itch to go and get into fights and blow something to fucking smithereens? Can't have helped, could it. Even if mostly they were just being kids playing superheroes."

He put down the beer. "It's not like the others' parents don't help. I'm doing whatever I can trying to get this bullshit house arrest law repealed, everyone's trying to keep their lives as close to normal as possible. The kids are taking it better than anyone should, really. Been through too much bullshit already at every stage of their lives to really be surprised."

 

[Jackie Cat]

Laura cradled her own beer in both paws, enjoying the coolness of Ice-type-chilled glass as a relief from the warm Soja' air.

"I know the feeling you mean," she said, quietly. "Like, I'd ideate about just, going off on someone, before, but it's different when you can dish it out, and they can take it, and doing it is this reflex under your skin... Sometimes it's like not fighting is as hard as not blinking."

She pulled a face, suddenly conscious of her own – now manual – blinking.

"Point is, I find it pretty hard to blame the kids. In a reasonable world..." Laura trailed off, and made a weird noise of discomfort in her throat. "Whatever. They shouldn't be under house arrest. At least it's not juvie, I fucking guess."

She eyed Dave side-long.

"Is it indefinite, or are they getting out someday?"

 

[Butterfree]

"Right now? Indefinite. But they're getting out someday if I have anything to say about it."

Another sip of beer. It was refreshing to have people like Laura, who would just say that in a reasonable world none of this should be happening. God.

"It's not technically house arrrest. They put it all in terms of, you know, the right of other people not to be in the presence of a morph. Like it's a permanent global restraining order sort of deal. But in practice that just means they can't go out in public, ever. Can't even drive them places unless it's an emergency or certain hours of the night. Others can come to them with informed consent, so some get friends visiting, but visiting them back, nope. Oh, and they mandated these ridiculous fucking warning signs around our houses. Like they're fucking radioactive. I don't know how the fuck they expect this to even work when they're adults. I guess they'd have to get written consent from everyone in a building before moving in, like they're a goddamn pet that can just be vetoed by one asshole. Job options are pretty much remote only. Live forever with someone else getting all their groceries and running all their errands, a whole impossible ordeal when anything needs them to be somewhere in person. I mean, what the fuck. I would say the supreme court has got to see how bananas this is by the time it gets to them, but who even knows at this point."

He paused, chewing on the last of his sandwich. "My daughter Jean, she's part Ninetales. Used to be Vulpix, but then during their little rescue mission, she touched a Fire Stone by accident, changed her whole face and proportions. Always got stared at, but it's in a worse way now. She told me a while back, when I was talking about repealing it, that she doesn't really want to go out in public anyway. But I mean..." He waved a paw helplessly. "At least she should have the fucking right."

 

[Jackie Cat]

Laura hadn't been picturing disfigured hybrids. Why? There was no reason Dave's kid wouldn't look... uncanny. Her stomach turned at the thought of how people were – using unflattering photos to show that some poor kid was weird and gross and unnatural. She could picture it. She could feel the dread of trying to persuade people that a morph deserved rights when they were 'dangerous' and 'hideous'.

"Yeah," she said, in a muted voice.

Howls, the list of mundane problems Dave reeled off... Nobody was considering any of that, huh?

People are stupid.

She squeezed the bridge of her nose and let out a silent whistle of breath.

"At least there's a legal challenge in the system. Not that it helps right now... Any chance of doing crowdfunding online? Getting some foreign interest, maybe seeking asylum somewhere less of a shithole?"

Fuck, why was she troubleshooting this? Dave was probably twice her age or something. With a real job. Functional enough without advice from a teenager, surely.

 

[Butterfree]

Dave exhaled through his nose, picking up his beer again. "That's a solution, I guess. Let them chase us out of the country, see if any other countries want to make us their problem instead."

He finished the last of the bottle, then put it away on the nightstand. "Anyway, this is dead fucking depressing. What's going on with you? Working on anything interesting for the Gazette?"

 

[Jackie Cat]

Laura shrugged, and smiled weakly.

"Thanks for telling me, anyway. I guess I'm still putting out articles okay – a lot of it is really local stuff, soft news and personal interest stories, interviewing entrepreneurs and oddballs. I'm also starting to get a bit sucked into Frontier politics at this point? I guess in some ways it's a lot better here than the old west in my world, not that I know much about it myself."

She bunched up her mouth in thought. Did she really want to relate her articles that were published for anyone to read?

"Actually... It's kinda weird. The Soja' is barely industrial, there's Shadows and Cipher and weird dangerous stuff like that... but still, I feel pretty different here. More... It's like I have my shit together. I don't know whether it's just because I'm a pokémon, or because I'm part of a team, or something about how Forlas is, but I'm not constantly anxious and miserable. I'm still lonely, but maybe that's just how I am. I guess... I guess it feels like I can do things here. Like I'm not lost and powerless."

 

[Butterfree]

Dave nodded as she talked about her articles. "Yeah, I've been reading your work in the Gazette. Glad someone's asking some actual hardball questions in the mayoral race, God help us all. Following the Escarpa negotiations, too. Suspect we're all lucky they've got you on that one, what with all the bullshit I've read at the library. And the fucking... colonists clashing with the Nacre Confederacy thing? Keeping an eye on that one before it blows up."

Laura'd talked before about her parents pushing her into a finance major, spending her time at college alone and just yearning for the company of her fucking cat, who her parents had then turned out to have lost. He supposed it wouldn't take much to beat that experience. Christ.

"As for having your shit together, well, over here you've got a job doing something you don't hate, and no overbearing parents trying to mold you into a copy of themselves. I imagine that helps."

 

[Jackie Cat]

A smile appeared on Laura's face without waiting for her approval. She let it stay there, her tail curling, as she considered that yeah, things were kinda better for her here than back home. She wouldn't stop caring about her mission, but... she wouldn't mind lingering here a while. Where it was – somehow – easier to feel okay.

Like you're worth something.

Like you can accomplish something.

"It does," she agreed. "I don't miss any of that. Although, to be fair, I'm no-contact with my parents lately. So when I go back, it'll be to camping in Galarian weather and eating dirt-cheap noodles, not to that shit."

She smirked at the irrepressible feeling of vindication that she'd actually done that. Howl fuckin' yeah.

She gave an upward nod to Dave. "What about you? You're doing, like, botanical stuff, right? I wrote an interest piece a while back about Greenbough, but what's your part in it?"

Of course, what she was really asking was, do you like it better here, too?

 

[Butterfree]

Dave cracked a grin at the bit about going no-contact with her parents. "Nice. Join the club."

He grabbed the beer bottle automatically before remembering it was empty, fiddling idly with the label as she continued. Camping out in bad weather eating noodles? "How's that, uh, working out for you? I hope that's camping because you want to be and not because you're out on the street. I at least had a college scholarship paying for a dinky studio apartment at the time."

He put the bottle back down on the nightstand. "But yeah, botanical stuff. Greenbough's basically doing genetics research, so it was the obvious place to find work. They don't have molecular genetics over here, obviously, but Greenbough's way ahead of her time. A lot of shit doesn't work exactly like I'm used to, because this is cowboy talking Pokémon world, but, you know, the scientific method is the same in any universe. As you heard when you did your story on her, we're doing a lot of work on dungeon berries, which will apparently just spontaneously create heritable Lamarckian adaptations based on their environment. Drives me a bit fucking nuts, but we're making progress. Honestly more actual scientific work than I've gotten to do lately back home."

Yeah. Lately it'd been mostly politics and legalese and dealing with coworkers' grief and the kids' trauma. Not great for getting up in the morning.

 

[Jackie Cat]

Laura smirked awkwardly at Dave inviting her to the club of people who don't talk to their parents. Had he really been like that with his own family since he was her age? Huh...

"Well, once I got a license and some corpo funding I could at least use Pokémon Centre bed and board, get some basic amenities, and all that. The first couple weeks were rough, though." She winced at the memory. It had been enough, on the worst nights, to have her ideating about walking off a bridge to avoid crawling back to her parents... "Once you have a rounded team of 'mon and some supplies, you're okay. And there're always a bunch of vocational types willing to share their curry if you can muscle through your shyness."

She had done that. She'd had to.

It was a weird thought. Sudden and uncomfortable – like your drink going down the wrong way, or stepping on a loose tack. She'd been thinking of herself as resourceful and maybe a little foolhardy, not... 'Out on the street'. Begging for food from strangers.

"It really wasn't that bad," she said, ghosts in her head clamouring to insist that she was privileged, she had a safety net, she wasn't a genuine victim deserving of real sympathy. That, and a little pride, bristling against pity...

Your parents broke a promise to you. They let you down. The safety net wasn't real, not for you.

Dave had said something about botanical stuff, too. She'd just gone and babbled about her camping shit. She blinked something away, her jaw tense. Sniffed. Swallowed. Tried to think of something smart to say.

"Lamarckian?" she remarked, with a forced chuckle. "That guy who thought athletes would have babies with abs or whatever? The heritable farigiraf neck length guy? I, uh, believe you, it's just funny. Howls, for all I know, berries are like that in my world, but I've never heard anything like that. Kinda trippy."

 

[Butterfree]

Jesus. She was homeless. Even if it sounded like Pokémon trainers had some socialized amenities. And corporate funding, apparently...?

"Pretty much. Lamarckism is the idea of the inheritance of traits acquired through use and disuse in the organism's life. Real life does have epigenetics, where particular genes being expressed more or less can be inherited, but it's pretty limited. What these dungeon berries do is they manage to generate their own spontaneous complex adaptations in accordance with what they need in the current environment, and those are heritable. Leads to way quicker evolution, but potentially overspecialization. Still not clear on the mechanism. God, what I wouldn't give for some modern technology." Maybe Cipher had some proper microscopes, somewhere.

"Anyway, uh... Glad it's not too rough out there. What's that you said about corporate funding? Like, for being a trainer?"

 

[Jackie Cat]

Laura nodded along, grinning at the wistfulness for modern tech. The first couple of weeks without her phone had been vaguely agonising, but eventually she'd shifted into a routine of walking around, talking to people in town, looking at the world. Writing in her notebook.

Still, she really fucking wanted her phone back.

Something about corporate funding, Dave was saying. Oh, right. Money.

"Yeah, there's not really a public stipend for young trainers or anything, just odd individual programs around the country. But like, I'm not actually desperate because I could just go home and not be a trainer. So I don't get that."

She hated how entitled that sounded.

"Used to be that Macro Cosmos dominated sponsorships, pretty much anyone with enough talent to get noticed, got noticed by Macro. Then the CEO or chairman or whatever, this guy called Rose, tried a stupid fucking stunt where he pitted his pet champion trainer against a dormant extradimensional legendary pokémon and it nearly destroyed Wyndon. Or the country, even."

Howls, he was gonna ask about that instead of the money thing, wasn't he. It'd be funny to just keep talking about the money instead. Yeah, she was gonna do that.

"So anyway, with Macro Cosmos under investigation and all, the sponsorship program kinda evaporated. Some new ones popped up to replace it, charity ones and other companies and all that. Lotta public pressure for the government to nationalise this or that, but no dice. But the company I'm investigating – Perihelion – they have a new sponsorship program. Several, in fact. And the one I got into, specifically, was this one for older trainers who're starting late, pairing them with 'first partner' pokémon who aren't suitable for rookies, usually because they already evolved. That's how I got Sleet. And enough weekly cash to get by without having to grind until my eyes bleed."

 

[Butterfree]

Dave was going to tell her not to let them grind her down and send her crawling back home, that she could earn cash and stay on her own two feet and make her own life, fuck them. But then she casually dropped extradimensional legendaries in there, and it took some heroic concentration to absorb the rest of what she was telling him. He furrowed his brow.

"Hang on, so you're currently being sponsored by... the company that you think took your cat, right? Doesn't that throw a wrench into things? I mean, are they liable to just cut off your cash flow if they find out you're snooping into their business?" He rubbed his forehead. "And... sorry, dormant extradimensional fucking what?"

 

[Jackie Cat]

Laura kept a deadpan expression. She was gonna give a quippy answer and move on, like it was nothing. It _was_ nothing, really – it would be ridiculous for the Darkest Day to have affected her, she wasn't even in Wyndon or anything when it happened. Somewhere in a remote district of her mind, it occurred to her that she might be dissociating. She didn't care.

"Legendary pokémon, possibly alien or extradimensional, generates enough fissile material to power Galar for a millennium. It's called Eternatus. It's a dragon- and poison-type. Looks like a lizard fucked a garden rake in a neon sign factory."

She sniffed at her own joke, and moved on before Dave could respond.

"Yeah, Perihelion are my target, but that's kinda why I've got the sponsorship," she ploughed on. "Like, I can't just walk into their premises without an invite or a good reason, and performing in the League means I might. I already got in once to get Sleet, my drizzile. Well, she's an inteleon, now. She's got a mean mouth on her, but we're starting to trust each other. I think."

 

[Butterfree]

Dave snorted at the 'lizard fucked a garden rake'. Eternatus? Might be something from a monster movie back home or something? Christ. And some CEO had, what, awakened the thing for a publicity stunt? What the actual fuck went on in all these worlds.

"Jesus. That's a lot." She'd gotten a sponsorship, her only source of wages, from the company whose dirty laundry she was snooping on, in order to snoop on their dirty laundry. Well, let no one say she didn't have balls. "You're not worried about being discovered? If you're looking around in places you shouldn't be at this shady corporation that kidnaps people's pets?"