Searching Far and Wide - 56 (Patreon)

Teams:

Pierce Lawson:

- Narcissa, Beedrill

- Orion, Onix

- Cygnus, Abra

Lillian Dale:

- Root, Bulbasaur

- Talon, Spearow

- Gem, Geodude

- Star, Cleffa

Cerulean City XVII

It was going to be a long day… and a long night, evidently.

Magikarp – Or Gyarados now, he supposed – wasn’t going to let him go anytime soon. Him telling her that she was being sent away set her off, after all. He was pretty sure that leaving her side would be a terrible idea. So, he was going to have to stick around for a bit until he was sure that she was calm enough for that.

Hence, a predicament that he was currently dealing with at that very moment, for example.

Pierce needed to go to the bathroom but there was no way Gyarados would take that well. He could already see the tantrum happening whenever he said he needed to go away for a bit. It didn’t look pretty, at all. No, he needed to find some kind of solution to keep the giant sea serpent calm for a bit while he went away…

A yip snapped him out of his thoughts. More worryingly, it made Gyarados literally snap, her body twitching and turning violently as she turned to glare at the unwanted new arrival. Pierce, where he sat with his back against her, stumbled a bit, but he was able to stay relatively unperturbed by the movement. It seemed that even in her maddened state, Gyarados had enough presence of mind to be careful with him.

Still, he felt a roar building inside the water type and he couldn’t afford to let that get any further.

“Girl,” he called, his voice soft but firm all the same. It gave Gyarados pause and further pulled her to a calmer state when he placed a hand on her side. “It’s fine, girl,” he reassured slowly, rubbing his hand on her red scales. A confused rumbling left the water type then as she shook her head. He could only guess what kind of mess her mind was after she evolved and furthermore could only hope that she’d recover quickly. He felt bad for her, truly, and he wanted to help her as best he could.

Holding back a sigh, he turned to see which pokemon had caused the small scene and he smiled softly, sadly.

“Hey there, Vaporeon,” he greeted, getting another yip in response that made Gyarados twitch but otherwise she remained calm. The eeveelution, for her part, seemed utterly at ease in the situation they were now in. Pierce idly wondered if he looked like that to others at that very moment. Unconcerned even though he should be. “Things are a little tense now, so I’d suggest staying away for a bit,” he told her before turning to look at Gyarados, who was still glaring at Vaporeon. “Hey, you know Vaporeon, right? She’s nice. A lil’ cold, but nice,” he commented, smiling a little as he heard the eeveelution’s huff behind him.

Gyarados let out a grumble, evidently struggling against her mostly irrational anger. Pierce was getting the idea that he needed to avoid giving her even the slightest reason to be angry. So, if he needed to leave and not make her think he was leaving at all, how could he go about that?

Well, there was actually an easy answer to that, he supposed.

First, however…

“Gyarados isn’t in a good mood, Vaporeon,” he said, looking at the eeveelution even as he continued petting the gigantic sea serpent. He couldn’t believe he had to explain it to the water type, honestly. She was supposed to be a smart one in their little group of damaged misfits. “Maybe we can spend time together tomorrow, yeah?” he asked, not feeling very sure of that.

Who knew when Gyarados would calm down enough to be around others? Certainly not Pierce. He’d read some things in regards to the pokemon, since it was one of his favorites, but they all agreed that the time right after evolution was the most chaotic. There were no certainties, no guarantees. Every gyarados was different and every one of them ended up different after the fact. Some would be a lot more prone to anger, some would be calmer, and there was no way to predict any of that until everything was over.

Vaporeon yipped stubbornly, sitting where she was some distance away. She was certainly not far enough, which worried Pierce a whole lot when Gyarados twitched again to glare at her. Why was she…? Pierce stopped then, looking at the eeveelution for a long moment. ‘Of course,’ he thought with a smile before chuckling. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised at all,’ he added, looking fondly at the pokemon before making a decision.

“Girl,” he said softly, turning towards Gyarados again and patting her scales. He looked up at her red eyes and smiled. “Vaporeon wants to spend time with us, girl. You ok with that?” he asked and he felt her tense up. He saw the struggle happening behind her eyes, but he wasn’t done. “Just like we have so far, right? You like her. You like standoffish but nice Vaporeon, don’t you?” he asked, smiling a little wider at the huff behind him. “Don’t you?”

Pierce saw the Gyarados turn to regard Vaporeon and then Pierce and then again and again. She was having a lot of trouble, trying to fight the anger in her. She wanted to be angry, but she had no reason to be, but she had to be angry. So, in the end, she was just confused and afraid. It was painful to see, but hopefully Pierce could help her.

She gave a shivering, shallow nod. She let out a shuddering breath. That was enough for Pierce, making him smile and rubbing her scales a little more enthusiastically. It was progress and he’d take it. Little by little, his adorable little friend would recover and be his adorable not-so-little-anymore friend.

He couldn’t wait.

“You are great, you know that, girl?” he asked her, making her relax and turn her body so she pressed her head against his side. “And adorable,” he added, because it seemed like she liked to be called that. He was more than happy to oblige, honestly. “Soon, we’ll have all the gang around and we’ll have a great time, I’m sure,” he added, pressing his forehead to Gyarados’. “Do you like the sound of that?” he asked, getting a happy wiggle that made him stumble.

Well, Gyarados was still getting used to her new body, evidently.

“For now, how about we celebrate? You’ve been doing great so far, so how about I go and prepare some poffins and pokeblocks for you and Vaporeon, eh?” he asked, keeping his calm and his smile even if he was a little nervous. Gyarados twitched at that and he almost took it back. “You don’t want some? I promise they’ll be just as good as the ones I prepared before. No experiments today, just good ones,” he reassured, but even then she looked unsure.

Someone had other plans though.

Vaporeon yipped again, this time closer, and Gyarados turned to look at her. The glare from before wasn’t there though. Instead, she almost looked considering, annoyed but considering. Eventually, Gyarados moved to push Pierce away with her tail.

‘God, I take back everything I’ve said before,’ he thought, celebrating internally as he stood up. ‘You are the best, Vaporeon!’ Not that he’d tell her that. It’d go to her already very big head.

“I’ll be back in no time, ok?” he told them and he got both a yip and a growl that both seemed to tell him “you better”. He chuckled to himself and decided to hurry and make the most of it. Who knew when he’d get a chance to get away for a bit again, after all?

It was going to be a long day, for sure, but it didn’t seem like it’d be that bad.

[}-o-{]

‘Only you, Pierce,’ Lily said when he explained the situation through a message. He’d also asked her to drop by the Gym and get his team’s pokeballs so that she could let them out and take care of them until he could leave Gyarados’ side for an extended period of time. It wasn’t ideal, and he was very sorry to impose, but he couldn’t let his team out with Gyarados around and he couldn’t leave so…

The situation was kind of complicated.

‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ she sent him and he nodded. He’d likely have to ask someone to take the pokeballs to her or something like that. So far, he was pretty sure that things would be fine so long as he didn’t leave the room, meaning not leaving Gyarados’ sight. When he’d taken the chance to go to the bathroom, he’d returned to a very cranky water type, twisting and turning and growling. She’d gone as far as jumping out of the water and trying to slither towards him when he’d come back. It was adorable, of course, and he told her as much. It was also a little worrying, he’d admit, if only to himself.

All in all, things had been mostly quiet after that. He just sat at the edge of the pool, petting and whispering to Gyarados. Vaporeon sat next to him, occasionally yipping something at certain points of the conversation but otherwise just curling up there. Pierce had caught sight of several other members of their group approaching from afar, but they had stopped before they could actually get anywhere close.

“One was already a risk,” Lily said in his mind, through Slowbro, probably. Pierce had gotten a lot of yelling from her during and after his stunt with Gyarados, but she seemed to have mostly- “I’m still angry, Pierce,” she corrected in his mind, making him grimace.

Well, that kind of sucked.

“Vaporeon was the one that was closest to the magikarp… aside from you, that is. From here, we’ll let them join when we think the gyarados is ready,” Lily continued then, sounding more professional than ever. “I take offense to that,” the woman grumbled. “We’ll probably start with tentacruel. Should be big, strong and resistant enough not to be too affected if the gyarados snaps.”

‘Sounds like a plan,’ he agreed, leaning forward and resting his head on Gyarados’ red scales. ‘Guess I’m spending the night here.’

“Inviting yourself to a woman’s place? That’s rather bold, Pierce,” Lily projected at him and he had to wonder if that was somehow a trait of women with her name. “And with her sisters around? My my. And you haven’t even invited me to din-”

‘You done sometime soon?’ he interrupted, wishing she could see how unimpressed he was. Maybe she could pull that from his mind, at least. Or Slowbro could, at least. Speaking of, he had to feel sorry for the poor pokemon for having to be part of that conversation.

“Life with Leader-Sister is an eternal struggle,” a different voice said and he knew that it was the aforementioned pokemon. “I appreciate the sentiment, Helper-Voice.”

Then the connection went silent, even though it was still there. Pierce liked to think that him knowing that was a product of spending so much time interacting with Cygnus that way. Maybe he was getting better at that kind of thing. He was no psychic, but maybe he could work better with psychics in his mind than he could before.

“... Take care of yourself, ok, Pierce?” Lily told him softly. “There’s only so much we can do when you are right there.”

‘Don’t worry your pretty little head,’ he reassured with a smile as he pulled back and looked at Gyarados’ calm expression. Sure, something would happen at some point to make her anger rear its ugly head again, but she was able to stay calm so long as things didn’t happen. It gave him hope for his friend. ‘I got this.’

“Wish I could be as confident as you are,” Lily told him before he got the psychic equivalent of a sigh. “We’ll be around and try our best if something happens. Be careful, ok?”

‘I will,’ he answered, more seriously this time. Because he understood. He’d been terrified at that moment himself. Pierce knew he was good with pokemon, but there was nothing that could make him confident when he was faced with a just evolved gyarados. He wasn’t that crazy…

“Could have fooled me,” Lily told him, interrupting his line of thought. Slowbro was probably feeling a little playful because he even got the mental image of the woman looking unimpressed as she idly looked at her nails.

‘Weren’t you leaving?’ he thought, eye twitching.

“Sure, sure. Just don’t do anything crazy while I’m not looking, ok?” she replied and this time he saw her rolling her eyes.

‘So I can do something crazy when you are looking?’ he asked, deciding that if she could be a brat, he could be one too.

“Shut up,” she snapped at him with no bite behind that whatsoever.

The connection was cut off then, or as cut off as it could be. Slowbro was there, at the edge, barely connected at all. There wouldn’t be any communication unless he pulled closer. Pierce was pretty sure the pokemon was skilled enough to do that without him being able to see it coming, but it seemed like there was some social rule going on there that prevented that from happening unless it was truly necessary.

Slowly, he felt the presence draw closer to his mind.

“You’d be correct, Helper-Voice,” Slowbro told him, before pulling away once more. Meanwhile, Pierce considered that for a moment. ‘Not Helper-Speaker anymore. I’m now Helper-Voice? Wonder why,’ he mused to himself. It didn’t take a genius to notice that the change was probably due to the Gyarados incident, but… That still didn’t really help him figure that thing up.

Cygnus couldn’t develop fast enough to answer that question, honestly.

[}-o-{]

It was nighttime and it was agreed that Pierce couldn’t safely leave Gyarados just yet. Safely for the gym, that is, because he was fairly sure he could leave the place before the recently evolved pokemon snapped. She’d calmed down plenty through the hours, but she was still very easily upset and she’d get twitchy if he was gone for more than a few minutes.

At least he didn’t struggle to go to the bathroom anymore, so that was nice.

As it was, that meant that he had to sleep in the Cerulean Gym, which didn’t sound so bad. However, the bad part came when one realized that he couldn’t sleep away from Gyarados. She’d fallen asleep for a bit due to the exhaustion quite early and it had been a fitful few minutes before she woke up, roaring and looking almost like she’d just evolved.

He’d calmed her down once more and after an hour, she’d fallen asleep again. This time, he stayed by her side, even though everyone was worried that would end badly. However, chastising and complaints had subsided a fair bit when they realized that Gyarados was a lot calmer in her sleep. Then, when she woke up, it was further proven that it was a good decision to stay like that.

She’d twitched and whine-growled, but other than that she’d been relatively calm. So, it was agreed that it was better if they stayed in contact while they slept. Their first idea for that had been to just have her float close to the edge of the pool but that proved not to go so well when she drifted away while sleeping. The second idea was to have her curl up outside the pool and have him lay against her, not unlike how he usually leaned against Orion.

Gyarados didn’t have a problem staying out of the water for extended periods of time, after all. Some theorized that it was their secondary Flying typing that helped with that. There were some other explanations, but Pierce didn’t much care for the science of it. Ultimately, they could… But that didn’t mean they were comfortable outside the water and it was just awkward enough to make things difficult with the still unstable Gyarados.

So, third approach it was, which was the one they were currently trying… and it was going fairly well so far. Still, it all but promised one or several unpleasant surprises through the night, which Pierce wasn’t a fan of. However, for the sake of his friend? He’d put up with that no problem. He’d probably had worse nights through his life anyway.

Like that one time he’d gone to spend a weekend at a friend’s place with some others and he hadn’t slept a wink from Friday to Sunday because he’d been afraid they’d do something while he was sleeping. A fear that had proven justified in the end, because another one of them had woken up with some less than flattering drawings on his face. It had been a fun weekend of course, but staying awake had sucked…

‘I’m gonna miss those idiots,’ he thought, taking a deep breath in and letting it out.

A rumble under him made him smile, even if there was some sadness bled into the gesture. Turning slightly, he looked at the red scales that were going to be his bed that night. Or, more specifically, he looked at the head that peeked off to the side. Gyarados was looking a little unsure of things, it seemed.

“Everything ok, girl?” he asked with a smile. He didn’t get a response, but Gyarados did worriedly look around him. It was almost like she was checking that he wouldn’t fall off, which made him laugh. “It’s fine, girl. Even if I fall, it’ll probably wake you up and we’ll get comfortable again in a second, yeah? Just try not to blast me off if that happens, ok?”

He wasn’t too worried though. Gyarados had proved to move very little so long as someone was touching her, which was why Vaporeon and him were both on top of her for the night. They were the only ones allowed close enough to touch, after all, let alone on top of her.

‘Speaking of,’ he thought, looking to his side, where the eeveelution was curled up and resting her head on his stomach. Idly, he placed his hand on top of her back and slowly petted her as he rested his own head on a pillow he’d been given. It wasn’t the most comfortable he’d been while trying to go to sleep, but he’d had worse too. It’d do for a night or two, he was sure. And if it needed to be done more, then they’d work something out or he’d put up with it.

Gyarados needed him and so did the Sisters, even if they wouldn’t force the issue.

He cared about these pokemon by that point, so Pierce was more than happy to help out however he could. Gyarados was a sweety, both back when she was just a magikarp and now that she’d evolved. She was a little cranky now, of course, but through the hours she’d proven that she was still there, even if she was very easily angered.

Pierce really hoped she’d reach some level of normalcy sometime soon, because it was painful to watch her struggle to keep her own mind under control. He couldn’t begin to imagine how it must have been to feel like that. One minute she was almost normal, like she was just Magikarp but in a gyarados body. The next, she’d see something out of the corner of her eye or he’d stay silent too long, or Vaporeon would look to the side… And she’d be immediately set off.

Anything and everything could be a reason to be angry.

It was more sad than it was frightening, if Pierce was honest. Granted, it still scared him like few things did, but it was also incredibly depressing. His friend was going mad right in front of his eyes and there was very little he could do to help her other than trying to keep her calm.

Even that wasn’t much of a reassurance, really, considering that she was still getting angry anyway. It was like picking someone up after they fell flat on their faces and hurt themselves. Sure, it was nice, but it’d be much better if they didn’t need to be picked up at all, if they didn’t need to be hurt. That was more or less how he felt in regards to Gyarados.

“Relax, girl,” Pierce said softly when she continued looking him over. Idly, with his free hand, he petted a patch of red scales to his side, keeping the other on Vaporeon. “It’ll be fine, ok? I’m not going anywhere. We’ll all go to sleep and we’ll have a great day tomorrow, alright?”

Gyarados let out a soft growl that sounded to his ears more like an affectionate purr. Then she moved her head to rub it carefully against him before lowering it to the water. She let out an even lower sound then, half muffled by the slight distance there was now between her head and him. He still felt it just as well through her body though, which made him smile.

“Good night, girl,” he told her, patting her scales to his side and earning a pleased shift of her body. He left his hand there, if still now. “Good night, Vaporeon,” he added softly, his hand staying on top of the eeveelution, who meowed something, shifting her head this and that way on top of his stomach.

And like that, the three of them settled for the night, the only light around being a few small ones set around the pool’s space. They didn’t illuminate much, but it was enough that one could at least know where they were and where everything else was. The bigger lights had been turned off long ago as one by one others left the place.

Now, there was only the night shift of the staff and Lily, the Sensational Sister. They’d told him that there’d always be one of them keeping guard just in case. They were taking no chances, evidently. None of them was particularly happy with the situation, but they had to roll with the punches. Nobody wanted to have an angry, recently evolved gyarados in their hands. So, there had had to be some less than ideal concessions made.

Pierce didn’t mind, but that didn’t mean everyone else was of the same opinion.

As it was, the Sisters had to make him sign a document in case anything happened, since they were responsible if something happened to him through the whole thing. That was fair, even if it made the danger all the more real for him. Pierce still didn’t mind, even with that. He wanted to help Gyarados. It’d have been shitty to try and give the others trouble because of that.

‘This isn’t as bad as I thought it’d be,’ Pierce thought to himself, closing his eyes. Sure, Gyarados’ scales were hard and rough and both her and Vaporeon were cool to the touch, which gave him the impression that he might get sick after a whole night spent with them touching him like they were… But Vaporeon was much softer compared to the other water type. Furthermore, Gyarados’ slow breathing felt like he was being rocked.

On top of that, it had been a long day. Pierce could safely say that he was exhausted. So, he just closed his eyes and let the weariness take over, slowly pulling him to the land of dreams. He was strangely comfortable lying there where he was, even with the danger of slipping off and falling into the water.

It was sort of like lying down out in the wild with his team around, he supposed.

‘Not bad at all,’ he decided with a slight smile before falling asleep.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Well, things are looking up. Gyarados’ recovery takes time, as you guys should expect. Few things in life can be dealt with immediately. There’s always more to it than just doing this one thing and calling it a day. Either things before or things after, or both, I guess.

Still, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: Are you in my Discord server? If you are, what do you use it for? If you use it at all and it’s not just sitting there, I guess.

See you.