Searching Far and Wide - 28 (Patreon)

Teams:

Pierce Lawson:

- Narcissa, Beedrill

- Orion, Onix

- Cygnus, Abra

Lillian Dale:

- Root, Bulbasaur

- Talon, Spearow

- Gem, Geodude

Mt. Moon VI

“And that’s that. You are as healthy as you can be, little one,” Pierce declared, tickling the cleffa that had been laying on his lap and making her giggle uncontrollably. The clefairy that was currently peeking over his shoulder, for her part, pointed at the writhing child and babbled something animatedly. “Yeah, that’s what she gets from not staying still,” he added, making the clefairy join the younger one’s giggles.

“Stop being such a child, Pierce,” Lily commented, even though she was smiling widely at the sight. Not that her expression had changed much throughout their whole time with the fairy types. His traveling companion hadn’t stopped looking like a child in a candy store, but he couldn’t really blame her for that. “He’s a meanie, isn’t he?” she asked the cleffa on her lap, receiving a squeal as a response.

Pierce wondered what that was supposed to mean.

However, he didn’t have much time to ponder that.

“Done, buddy?” he asked then, hearing and seeing Orion slithering through the tunnels up to them, a bunch of members of the clefairy line riding on his back. The stone serpent was unbothered though. If anything, the little guy seemed to have fun playing around with the fairies, actually. “He didn’t work too hard, did he, girls?” he asked then, looking towards the clefairy and cleffa on the onix’s back. According to their cute babbling, he hadn’t… At least that was Pierce’s guess. He could be wrong. “And boy, sorry,” he added, when a clefairy protested.

Orion, for his part, rumbled something before continuing to give the fairy types a ride, now around the room instead of through the tunnels. Pierce simply watched with a content smile on his face as the cleffa on his lap twisted into a sitting position before he planted a hand on top of her head. He wondered if Gem would be coming back soon too. She didn’t have to worry as much as the onix did when pushing herself, after all, so she could train and generally do more than Orion could… at least for the moment.

Fun as it was that they’d met a whole family of clefairy and such, they’d still kept moving, only with a lot more company. As they did so, Orion and Gem had continued repairing the cave walls as best they could. It helped that the residents of the mountain that they came across seemed to be really happy with their results and what they were doing too, of course. Pierce almost wished he had some tools to help out himself, even if he knew it likely wouldn’t really help that much. He wasn’t a rock type, after all, and he would never be able to get the same effect that the onix and the geodude did.

Looking around again, he saw Cygnus standing off to the side, his hands holding onto two little rocks. Weight training, as it were. The little psychic type was progressing already. Soon enough, Pierce would see the abra carrying around boulders and punching trees, he was sure. A slightly amusing image to think of, for sure, but he couldn’t deny that when he thought of their future battling, it also made him excited.

Whenever Cygnus finally got around teleporting and punching an opponent in the face would be great. If the rush of excitement that Pierce felt coming from the abra was any indication, the psychic type couldn’t wait for that either. He had to wonder how people would react to that. In his research, he’d seen the occasional member of the line using the punch moves, of course. However, nobody focused on them like Cygnus wanted to.

If nothing else, if they reached high enough, his psychic would become known for that, he was sure.

For the moment though, the little guy was struggling to hold pebbles in his hands, which was all sorts of adorable, really. Cygnus didn’t seem to appreciate that thought at all, of course, but Pierce regretted nothing. He’d get there, he was sure, but there was no rush and no need to skip on the enjoyment. ‘Gonna have to share these memories with the family later, huh?’ he thought “out loud” as it were, and he was fairly sure he saw Cygnus twitch at that.

Deciding to give the poor psychic a break, Pierce turned to look at Narcissa. His beedrill was stubbornly flying around, training with Tailwind and trying to train Agility too. She was getting the hang of the former, it seemed, and while the latter wasn’t anything other than the occasional manipulation of psychic energy, it was slowly but surely progressing. Which was great, because they would probably need to keep working on their move idea some more later and Agility would come in handy with that.

The cleffa on his lap pulled at his shirt then, making Pierce look down.

“What’s the matter?” he asked with a smile and a raised eyebrow. His response was a pair of narrowed eyes and a pout. He held strong for all of two seconds before he chuckled. “I know, I know, I didn’t forget,” he told the fairy, shaking his head. “Just wanted to see if you remembered,” he added, receiving a slap on the chest and an intensified pout that only made him laugh harder. “Special delivery of pokeblock for the nice Cleffa,” he said, picking up one of the treats from a container to his left and offering it to the fairy type, who took it like she was afraid it’d vanish.

Considering the way some of the other members of her family were staring at it, Pierce felt her fear was justified. It’d taken him a few tries, but he’d struck a combination of berries that the clefairy line family had enjoyed. Sure, some of them preferred some other stuff and so on, but he was confident that he’d struck a happy medium for all of them with that one. He made sure to note down what all of them liked though, for future reference.

“Any other volunteers?” he asked out loud then, and a bunch of different fairies all but jumped at the question. Off to the side, he heard Lily giggling as he grinned at them all. “Good to see you guys take your health so seriously,” he commented, making his traveling companion lose the battle she was fighting against herself and burst out laughing.

[}-o-{]

“It’s a good thing you’ve made a lot of money and I’m a sponsored trainer,” Lily commented wryly one night and Pierce could only agree with her on that. “I don’t think we’d be able to afford to do this kind of thing otherwise,” she added, looking around. He did the same, taking in the sight of the clefairy family around them. The fairy types were happily eating away at berries and kibbles that they’d both offered them. Having the pokemon group traveling with them was great and cute and cheerful and what not but…

Well, feeding that many pokemon was a bit much, he’d admit.

He regretted nothing, but the point stood.

“You’re not wrong,” he commented, sharing a grin with his traveling companion. “We’ll just have to make sure we have plenty of money and food from now on, huh? Gotta keep our priorities straight.”

“I think your priorities might be a little skewed, Pierce,” Lily pointed out and he just turned towards her together with the clefairy family in its entirety. “Or not, definitely not.”

“That’s more like it,” he said, grinning widely. “But yeah, I guess I’ll have to make sure to secure as much money as I can to keep this going,” he added, his mood lowering a little. Feeding wild pokemon and getting new friends was nice and all, but, well… Lily wasn’t wrong that it wasn’t a priority of theirs. They were trainers, above all else. If they used all their money to feed random pokemon on the road, that was less money they spent on their own partners. “I don’t want to hurt my team’s chances,” he added, receiving an agreeing hum from Lily.

At that, the clefairy family around them reacted in different ways. Some looked conflicted, others looked sad and others looked… Well, the young ones didn’t look like they understood, really. Pierce gave them a wide, reassuring smile.

“Don’t worry, guys. We can afford this no problem. It just might become a problem in the future, but we are fine right now,” he told them, waving off their concern. “So, what do you guys-?” he started, before being interrupted as he saw the sole clefable of the group stand up and move towards him.

With uncharacteristic seriousness, she regarded him for a long moment. Lily too, but the pokemon seemed to focus mainly on him, for whatever reason. Then she babbled something, gesturing for him to follow her down one tunnel.

“Eh, sure? Do you need something?” he asked, sending a look towards Cygnus who was resting to the side. If the psychic was awake, that would have been a nice moment to do a little translating. It was then that he noticed that most of the fairies weren’t quite so playful anymore. Even the younger ones seemed to have grown serious, or concerned.

Instantly, he felt Cygnus’ presence on the back of his mind, brushing against it and painting a picture on his consciousness. Several images flashed by at that moment. Pierce treating Orion, then treating the spearow, then treating the rest of their team and Lily’s after battles… And he got the idea.

“Someone needs healing?” he asked, growing serious then as he stood up. “Give me a moment,” he said, gathering his things quickly, food bowls and others. Throwing everything as neatly as he could manage inside the boxes and then the boxes in his backpack, he got ready to move. “Cygnus, pokeball?” he asked while he was at it. “Orion? Narcissa?” he added then. The psychic gave him an affirmative answer while the other two decided to stay outside. That worked, unless they had to move too far.

When he was finished, he noticed that Lily had done the same too, looking a little confused and worried, but otherwise seeming ready for business.

“Lead the way, lady,” he told the clefable then, before they all started moving through the tunnels. There wasn’t much said as they moved, only the occasional babbling between clefairy and cleffa, really. Narcissa latched onto his back, predictably, while Orion stayed at the back of the whole group, since he took up a whole chunk of the space in the caves.

As they walked, Pierce frowned, running through his medical knowledge. As he did though, he side-eyed Lily, who was biting her lip. He wasn’t sure, but there was a good chance that they were thinking the same thing.

“If there are pokemon that need help, we can call the rangers,” he offered, but a single look from the clefable answered that rather intently. “I’m starting to get the feeling that pokemon either don’t like the rangers or that they don’t trust them,” Pierce commented. To his side, Lily let out a thoughtful hum.

“The latter, maybe?” the girl offered then, looking at the clefairy around as if they’d give them an answer. “I don’t think there’s a reason to dislike them all, but maybe they don’t trust humans as a whole, rangers included. At least, not when they are vulnerable.”

“But the zones…” Pierce started, before trailing off. “They couldn’t really hide while in the zones though,” he answered his own question before he could voice it. To that, Lily nodded.

“I guess it makes sense. They don’t know what people will do, right? They could be good or…”

“They could not be,” Pierce finished, pursing his lips. “Guess we are lucky that they trust us at least.”

“That they trust you, more like,” Lily corrected with a wry smile. “And I think it’s more that you earn their trust really easily more than luck.” To that, the clefable babbled something. “See, she agrees.”

“If you say so…”

[}-o-{]

“Ok… This is worse than I thought,” he mumbled, suddenly feeling a little weak just taking in the sight before him. Behind him, he heard the clefairy family that had been with them mumbling and crying, which made complete sense.

Suddenly, he understood why all the clefairy in the group had felt so… youthful. They were children. And they’d been out there in the tunnels with clefable to keep away from this mess, evidently. In front of him were two more clefable and some bigger, probably older clefairy moving around.

And they were treating pokemon.

A whole lot of pokemon.

They’d been led to a big open space in the mountain. It was a dome-like chamber with an opening on top of it that let the moonlight through, shining on the stone floor of the place. ‘This was in the anime, right?’ a corner of Pierce’s mind whispered as he looked at the big rock in the middle of the “room”. ‘The moonstone meteorite thing, right?’

‘Focus,’ he told himself, shaking his head. There was a lot of work to do and he didn’t have time to get distracted with unnecessary things like that. The chamber was, after all, filled with injured pokemon. Clefairy, zubat, golbat, paras, parasect, geodude, sanshrew, sandslash. There was even a golem, resting off to the side with a worrying amount of cracks on its stone skin and Pierce was fairly sure that there were holes in it too.

The healthy clefairy were running around, using moves that Pierce imagined were healing the pokemon or at least helping. They looked half-dead themselves though, and he imagined they were basically working with no energy whatsoever. Taking a deep breath in, he nodded to himself, narrowing his eyes.

“Ok,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “I need to know who is in worse condition to get started with them,” he told the clefable to his side who gave him a nod before gesturing to continue following. “Come with us, Lily, I’ll need a hand with this.”

“Of course,” the girl replied from behind him.

Their guide stopped by a clefairy, babbling something and gesturing towards the younger members that they’d come with. With a nod, the – probably younger than the clefable – fairy type went to the young ones and they disappeared through the tunnel once more. Good, the sight in the chamber was anything but nice, after all.

From there, they were led towards one of the other clefable, who had a short, curt conversation with the one that had taken them there before they shared a nod. Turning towards Pierce, the pokemon gave them a nod too and then started guiding them somewhere else. That somewhere seemed to be the golem, unsurprisingly.

‘I did think it was very injured,’ Pierce thought to himself, gulping down and gathering his thoughts.

“Hey there, big one,” he said. He’d have liked to have Cygnus out to help him, but the abra might be necessary later on. It’d be better to let his partner rest. Knowing the gender of pokemon wasn’t that important. He could probably avoid mentioning that or just ask if he really needed to know. “I’m here to help, yeah? So, I’m gonna treat your wounds, you just gotta lay there and maybe hold still even if it hurts, ok? After we are done, I’ll get you a few berries. I have just about every type, so you just have to tell me which ones are your favorite.”

To that, the gigantic rock type rumbled something that sounded to Pierce like a weary chuckle.

“That’s the spirit!” Pierce said, letting his backpack fall to the ground and then taking out two of his container boxes. Expanding them, he took a look inside and then at the golem. “Ok, Lily, check the contents so you know where things are, yeah? I’m gonna check Golem’s wounds and see what I have to do. I’ll need you to pass me stuff and maybe help me apply some, ok?” he asked, turning to look at the girl.

He paused, seeing her pale expression.

“Or I can have Cygnus or one of the clefairy help me out. You can leave with the young ones if it’s too much. I know this… Is a lot to take in,” he told her, understandingly. “Lily?”

“I’m… I’m fine. I want to help,” she mumbled, her voice barely above a whisper.

“You sure?” he asked, trying not to sound too impatient. It was getting him restless to see so many injured pokemon and not be treating them. However, he needed to secure some help. Healing Orion had taught him that doing the whole thing by himself was exhausting and it had only been one pokemon, not a small army of them.

“I am… So, check the boxes, right?” Lily asked hesitantly, her voice still low.

“Yeah, learn where things are so I can ask you to pass them over, ok?” he repeated softly for her. Then he gave her a pat on the arm that made the girl smile, even if it was an uneasy, weak thing. “Ok,” he mumbled, this time to himself as he turned and walked up to the golem once more. The creature looked at him too, even if it didn’t move, and Pierce did his best to smile reassuringly at it.

Carefully, he started moving around it, inspecting every wound, every crack on the skin, every hole on the armor. If the pokemon hadn’t been a last stage one and one as sturdy as Golem, Pierce was pretty sure it’d be dead. As it was, things were “merely” very serious. Left to its own devices, the rock type would have died anyway, he guessed.

“You’ll be fine,” Pierce whispered to the pokemon softly. “Ok, I need a whole lot of potions. A few bandages. A lot of plasters too,” he listed off, taking a deep breath in as he started thinking of how to start and the order in which he needed to treat the injuries.

[}-o-{]

“You are going to be fine, little guy,” Pierce said softly, spraying some potion on the carapace of a paras before placing a plaster on the wound. “That’s all. We’ll just have to change it a few times and that’ll be it. You are fine,” he reassured, because the poor thing had been positively terrified, even if the damage hadn’t been that bad, certainly not as serious as many others he’d treated that day.

The thing clicked a response at him, nervous, but certainly calmer than before.

“That’s it. Here,” he replied then, picking up a berry he’d set aside for the moment and giving it to the bug type. With that out of the way, he stood up, stretching his now hurting back and looking around. He’d gone through a lot of pokemon already. Entire hours had passed, to the point that he’d had to send Lily to rest when she started getting tired.

As for Pierce himself, his eyelids felt heavy, his legs and arms hurt as if he’d gone through one of his exercise sessions and he was starting to feel hungry too. He felt tired, exhausted, really, but there were more pokemon to help still. There were pokemon suffering. He just knew that he wouldn’t be able to sleep even if he tried.

A wave of concern brushed against his mind.

“I know, I know. I just… I wanna deal with the more pressing ones, ok?” he told Cygnus, who was sitting off to the side on the ground. “Who’s next?” Pierce asked his guide, a clefairy instead of the previous clefable. This particular fairy type had been assigned to help him, but mostly to keep tabs on pokemon so she could tell him where to go.

A few seconds later, Pierce found himself kneeling once more, treating the wounds of a sandshrew.

“Some of these look fresh,” he commented idly, keeping his voice even so that he wouldn’t worry the ground type. That wasn’t even only regarding the sandshrew. Some injuries he’d had to treat through the entire thing had been much too new, in his opinion. “They can’t be from the attack here.”

The sandshrew whined something at him.

Cygnus, ever the trustworthy guy, translated for Pierce. The mental pictures and shared emotions took a while to get the message across, but the answer he got was far from pleasing for him. ‘You are getting better,’ he commented, wanting to bring his pokemon’s mood up a little. Fortunately, he succeeded.

Apparently, the pokemon of Mt. Moon were very on edge, even as time passed. Some of them were, at least, those that had been the closest, those that were the most affected. There were fights breaking out in the caves still, pokemon jumping at shadows and throwing attacks before thinking. It made Pierce wonder how Lily and he had managed to avoid such cases, really, because as Cygnus painted the picture, the mountain was a fucking mess.

According to the next response of the psychic type, they’d been lucky because, one, they had a very peaceful approach to things, and two, they never attacked back, really, unless they had to. Even when they did, they were careful about it. Which was true enough, he supposed. There had been a few encounters that had been a little worrying, but nothing too bad.

Then Cygnus added that Orion helped a lot too. Small, he might be, but he was still an onix and onix were respected in Mt. Moon. Pierce wondered if that was the influence of Mama Onix or if it was just a general onix thing. According to Cygnus, it was both.

‘Good to know, I guess. We’ll need to be more careful from now on, just in case,’ he mused to himself, spraying some potion on the sandshrew’s wounds. Halfway through the process, he yawned before bringing his hands to massage his face. ‘Come on, just a bit more,’ he thought.

His mind was starting to drift off too much, or just shut down entirely. ‘I could just… rest my eyes for a bit,’ he thought, closing his eyes. Yeah, he could do that. Only thing left was placing a bandage on the sandshrew’s leg after cleaning the wound a bit and that’d be it, really. He could take a second-

Something poked his arm and his eyes snapped open and turned to the side.

“Yeah? Did something happen?” he asked the clefairy, taking a deep breath in and having to hold back a yawn. He wasn’t entirely successful but there was no time to be tired. “What is it?”

The fairy type simply stared at him for a long moment before miming sleeping.

“I’ll rest in a bit, yeah? There’s a few more pokemon that I still need to treat. They aren’t in that bad a condition, but it’s better to get them treated as soon as possible,” he explained, turning and picking up the bandage he’d prepared for the sandshrew, wrapping it around the pokemon’s leg. “Just a few more,” he mumbled, standing up, stretching a little and then turning back to the clefairy. “Who’s next?”

There was a moment of silence before the fairy type sighed and started moving. Once he reached the next patient, a parasect, Pierce paused. His hands shook a little and he still felt like he’d drop to the ground and fall asleep at any second. With a growl he looked in his boxes for a bottle of water before pouring it on his face and taking a sip.

“Better,” he commented, sending a grin to his clefairy guide and Cygnus. The former looked concerned while the latter sent him a sense of exasperation. “I’m fine. Stop worrying,” he mumbled, rolling his eyes.

He was still very tired, but at least that had helped him wake up a little. He could rest once most pokemon were looked after. Besides, if he helped enough, maybe the clefairy and clefable would be able to take care of the rest with more ease.

‘Just a bit more…’

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

I… Don’t really have anything to say here today, really. I have some doubts regarding the chapter, of course, but that’s just the usual thing, right? So, I think I’ll just leave the notes at that and get on with it.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: Maybe I’m feeling a little meh right now, can’t even think about a question either.

See you.