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Frontier Town Traveller's Haus - Guest Rooms

Reader mode
"Well, I may have been a little emotionally compromised, Tarahn... Makes it difficult to be all dodgy and whatnot. Didn't know you were able to see any of the battle from inside though..." To be fair, he didn't know where the hell the Toxel *was* the entire time of the gala in general.

"It was a good thing I triggered that destiny bond when I did though, at least I could be comfortable in knowing I was bringing that bastard down with me... I'm sure the others wouldn't have let him get away with it anyways though... but enough of the gala... I'd really rather not talk so much about that time if it's alright with you. All I can say is I'm sorry if I worried you guys..."

Just as he finished his remark, he heard the sound of knocking at his door, and Archie's voice accompanying it. Seemed these three really did have some kind of bond, so often showing up incidentally at a similar time.

"Y-yeah... I'm awake," Corey called out as he concentrated, his telekinesis eventually unlocking the door. "Come in... Tarahn already invited himself... again..."
 
“Wait, you’re keeping Tarahn in here again?” The Oshawott asked, as he pushed the door open.

Sure enough, there was the Toxel! … Standing beside Corey’s bed, with Corey currently laying in it.

“… Am I… Interrupting something?” Archie asked, “Should I come back later?”
 
"Tarahn!" Corey said with utter embarrassment upon realizing what this was evidently starting to look like.

"No, Archie, despite whatever the hell this looks like, you're not 'interrupting' anything... good god..."
 
"Uuuuh... I think I'm good, Tarahn, but thanks," Archie hummed.

He was about to close the door, when Corey called him back. Well, if the two weren’t actually in the middle of something… Intimate, the Oshawott supposed he could stick around. So, he entered fully into the Ralts’s room, closing the door behind him, and approached.

Corey looked… Well, rough would be an understatement. All Archie’s carefully prepared words faltered upon sight of the reality. He frowned, and scratched behind his head, finding it difficult to look the Ralts in the eye.

“Jeez… Corey I… I’m really sorry.”
 
Corey let out a sigh, at Archie's reaction and subsequent apology. Initially he'd hoped maybe even with the bandages he hadn't looked too bad... but the reality was he definitely wasn't in a good place aesthetically.

"Hey, don't apologize... You had nothing to do with it... apart from trying to get me off my ass and save myself. Had I listened to you I probably wouldn't look like someone just finished using my face as a skateboard."
 
Tarahn patted Archie on the shoulder as well, since he seemed sad as soon as he saw the Ralts's injuries. "Don't worry, he'll get better. The doctor wouldn't have let him go if he was burning energy instead of regaining it. That happened to some pokemon I know when they were fighting a kaiju and made a mistake, it hurt them that bad. But Corey just got hit by a regular guy at a way higher level."

Tarahn looked over Corey's bandaged head, sniffing the coarse cloth and making a face at the antiseptic smell and faint odor of blood. His teammate Vleridin had a well-developed energy sense, and she would have been able to see the places on Corey's body where he was still healing, or residual Steel energy was still being broken down. But the doctor had already seen him, and it wasn't really Tarahn's specialty. He was just curious.

"I miss the pokemon center, if we had it here you'd be feeling better already probably. And potions. Then you wouldn't have to wear bandages like a human."
 
“It was my responsibility to look after you guys, I’m the one with experience with this kind of stuff,” the Oshawott protested.

Still, there wasn’t much he could do at this point. He just had to hope Tarahn was right, and that Corey would get better. He didn’t really know the state of medicine here, but it certainly wasn’t Pokecenters and portable potions. Corey would have to heal naturally, just like injured Pokemon had to back home. Until then, it was unlikely the Ralts would be doing many jobs. Maybe he could ask Wes if the Rockruff wanted to work a few bounty hunting jobs…

“Well, it’s up to us to nurse Corey back to health, Tarahn,” Archie said, “Are you up for that?”
 
Corey slowly sat himself up from the bed and turned to sit along the side.

"It'll be okay, fellas... I know it looks bad but, physically I just feel... kinda sore and tired. The burns don't feel too good either but they're not debilitating. I could probably get back to doing missions as soon as tomorrow even." Whether or not he truly believed this, Corey couldn't stand the idea of just staying in his room, helpless and useless to the cause, especially when he felt he had some stuff to atone for.

"What's the point in my being here if all I'm gonna do is just sit around and wait? I gotta get back out there... help you guys out some more... I'm not gonna just be dead weight."
 
Archie frowned. “Listen, Corey I…”

He stopped, frowned deeper, tried to reformat the sentence he was going to say.

“Corey, I say this as a friend, so please don’t take it the wrong way, but…” He paused a moment again, lifting a paw to make vague circular gestures in the air, “If you don’t want to be dead weight, then stop acting like you’re fine. Because you’re not fine. Injured as you are now, you’d only be a liability on the field, and put yourself at risk of reopening your wounds, or getting an infection, or getting hurt worse because you can’t move like you can when you’re healthy.”

“So, the thing you can do right now, that’s gonna help us most, is stay here and recover,” the Oshawott said, “Because the less strain you put on yourself, the faster you’ll recover, and the faster you recover, the quicker you’ll be able to get out there and help again.”
 
Weazel said:
“Well, it’s up to us to nurse Corey back to health, Tarahn,” Archie said, “Are you up for that?”
Click to expand...

Tarahn nodded eagerly, but he watched Corey tense up as Archie advised him to take it easy and not risk further injury.

"We won't leave you alone, Corey," Tarahn told the Ralts. "Just sitting around is so boring! We're not gonna go off and do fun stuff without you. It's easier to get tired when you're hurt though, so, how Moriko does it is, whoever is hurt just watches. Oh but that's in a pokeball, so you don't have to walk anywhere. Ummm." Tarahn flopped onto the floor of Corey's room and rolled from side to side thoughtfully. "Maybe we won't go so far from town. Or we'll make a plan and you'll do the town stuff and we'll go out further. Don't be sad, though, okay?" The toxel leapt back to his feet and headbutted Corey gently, rubbing his cheek up against the Ralts's. "It's just for a day or two. You'll want to sleep anyway, I always do when I'm hurt. Or just normally."
 
Corey wanted to argue, yet Archie's words were like a bucket of cold water; there was just no debating the truth. Tarahn's assurances and... very cat-like gestures of affection, certainly softened the blow a little, but all the same Corey still felt plenty disappointed as he flopped back onto the bed.

"...This really sucks..." he muttered. "I've got so much to make right, and yet I'm stuck here recuperating..."
 
Well, he thought that maybe Tarahn was being a little optimistic about the timeline, but Archie couldn’t argue with the Toxel’s ideas. There probably was a fair amount that Corey could do around town that wouldn’t risk further injury, and both the doctor and the Haus were near enough by that either could be reached quickly if necessary.

“Well, hey, Tarahn’s right. Just because you can’t go out on jobs doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff you can do around town,” Archie said, encouragingly. “In fact, I learned from that blue Electrike the other day that there’s actually a library in town! Why not head down there sometime and see what you can dig up?”

Information gathering was something of a specialty of the Corey of his world, so hopefully as a suggestion it wouldn’t be too far off the mark from something this Corey would be interested in doing, too.
 
The library... right... He'd wanted to look into that place earlier, but his attempts to get in good with the other bounty hunters had taken up most of his time, not to mention all the gala business naturally. Perhaps there was something to that... He was a researcher by trade...

"I guess I could give it a try... Not sure what I ought'a be looking into in particular though. Seems like a lot of these threats we're facing are pretty under-the-table or otherwise newly uncovered... I doubt they've had a whole lot of time to publish anything in great depth, especially with all the corrupt authority going about."

Well, it wouldn't hurt to try, at least he'd finally get the chance to go into that library and see what it had to offer. Whatever the case he was at least glad he had friends to look out for him like these two... Such was a luxury he didn't appreciate enough as a human, but he really couldn't afford to do so here as a tiny little ralts in this dangerous new world.

<><><><><>​
 
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Ch02: Bitter Medicine [Koa & Bellatrix]
  • Threadmarks
    • It was your plan. You did this. A shaky sigh escaped him, his chest aching again. If only he could just get a pokemon to use hypnosis on him. Did it work like that here? Every time he closed his eyes, his thoughts traveled back to the wagon, the fire, those eyes and the sound of the Rattata-.

    Drungfield had advised him to take it easy for the next few days, and he was too tired to really protest. Not like he had somewhere better to be. No team to go back to, or journey to get back to. Just sleep, hopefully. He stared at the wall, trying to distract himself by thinking of anything else...
     
  • Threadmarks
    • "Those wounds look quite severe," said a voice behind the electrike. Turning around would reveal a maus, a bit larger than usual, who'd seemed to have tailed Koa into his room. "But I'm at least happy to see that you're in one piece," she then added. "The others too, of course, but you're the one I was most worried about."
     
    Koa jumped on instinct at the sound of a voice, half ready for a fight, only to realize it was one of the maus that worked there. He forced his hackles to lie flat and relaxed. "Oh. Thanks," he said awkwardly. "It looks worse than it feels," he lied. How did she know about his wounds? He knew the Maus tended to get around, but that was surprisingly quick. And she was weirdly friendly. A moment of silence fell and Koa shifted uncomfortably. He didn't feel in a conversational mood, but he felt bad telling her to leave after she'd been pleasant.
     
    "I'm not looking for a fight, nor do I think that you're in any state to," the maus responded. Then, with a polite nod she folded her arms behind her back and continued, "Silver linings, though I doubt that it's anything mild."

    Her ears swivelled for a moment, trying to hear if anyone else might've been listening in, but when all she could hear was the activity of other maus in the wall, she lowered her voice. "What happened on that wagon?" she asked. "How much did you know going into it?"
     
    Koa blinked narrowed his eyes. He opened his mouth, then paused and frowned. Even in the haze of his weariness, something felt off. Very off. Why would one of the maus suddenly be so interested in the wagon, or their mission? Or for that matter, even know about their mission? Laura didn't seem like the kind of mon to go and tell a bunch of other mon.

    "It's... I'm sorry, but its kind of complicated. I'd rather not go into detail." There. Hopefully that was enough a of a hint that he wasn't open to discussing with a stranger. Just for good measure, he yawned. Which wasn't hard to do given how tired he actually felt. He briefly wondered if they needed to start worrying about the Maus eavsdropping or something.
     
    "Hm." The maus frowned slightly. This one was clearly not the observant type given that he didn't even bat an eye at a maus talking to him using words instead of incompressible squeaks. She needed a more direct approach it seemed.

    With a sigh, Bellatrix dropped the illusion.

    "I doubt there is little complications in the finer details of 'you got attacked on the way and didn't even reach Terminal Two'," the zorua proceeded to state matter-of-factly. "And that's not something I feel inclined to judge you for. What I'm most curious about is how much of a good idea you and the others thought this was going to be and more specifically, why?"
     
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