Searching Far and Wide - 29

Teams:

Pierce Lawson:

- Narcissa, Beedrill

- Orion, Onix

- Cygnus, Abra

Lillian Dale:

- Root, Bulbasaur

- Talon, Spearow

- Gem, Geodude

Mt. Moon VII

“Here you go,” Lily said, passing Pierce a mug of coffee that he took with a slightly shaky hand. He didn’t say anything else after that though, simply taking a sip from the hot beverage. The drink all but burned a hole in his tongue, but he honestly couldn’t care much for that at the moment.

He was sitting against the rock walls of the open chamber in Mt. Moon, facing towards the injured pokemon the clefairy family had led them to. He’d spend a good many hours treating as many creatures as he could manage and he’d honestly lost track of time for a while by that point. There was so much to do, so many wounds to help with, so many uneasy pokemon to calm down…

“You need to rest, Pierce,” Lily told him softly, taking a seat by his side.

“I slept already.”

“You did so,” she agreed easily, but he knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. Sure enough, she started speaking again a moment later. “But you only did for a few hours. It’s not enough, Pierce. And you’ve been running yourself ragged too. I don’t think you’ve eaten more than a bit at a time through this whole thing, or drank more than a bottle of water.”

“I’m almost finished,” Pierce argued weakly, his shoulders slumped and his eyelids heavy. “I just… have to finish treating them. Might need to check those I treated first to see if they need re-dressing and-”

“You need rest, Pierce.”

“There’s no time for-”

“Pierce,” Lily interrupted once more, her voice firm. “Will they die if you don’t do that?”

“No, thank God, but still they-”

“Then you can rest.”

“They are suffering, Lily,” he said and he saw that those simple words took a lot of wind from her sails. To her credit, she didn’t let that beat her though. “I just… I can’t stand that, especially since I can help,” he added, looking to the side, where a zubat was trying and failing to move around with an injured wing. It didn’t look serious, from where he sat, but he should check just in-

A new voice joined in then, one of the magical little whispers that signaled the now familiar speech of the clefairy line. It was his partner, the fairy type that had guided him through his different patients. The clefairy gave him a pat on the shoulder before calling for a member of her group to look at the zubat.

“See, even the pokemon themselves agree with me,” Lily told him, jumping at the chance to reinforce her argument. It didn’t help that the clefairy apparently actually agreed with her, the absolute traitor.

“... Fine,” he whispered, deflating against the stone wall. “I… We are running out of supplies,” he told the clefairy then, gaining her full attention. “I think we might have enough to get everyone treated, but some pokemon will need their wounds redressed and extra care that we definitely don’t have enough for,” he told the fairy, who immediately called out to the others.

Soon, a clefable hopped/floated up to them, where Pierce’s nurse partner explained things to them. Or so he assumed. Considering that for a moment, he released Cygnus from his pokemon. He sent an apologetic thought to the psychic but he was quickly waved off, if tiredly.

“So, I know you don’t want rangers involved, but they are our best bet,” Pierce said, not quite able to keep his voice steady. He was just so damn tired. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to rest, just that he didn’t have the time. There were pokemon in pain around, how was he supposed to sleep well when he could be helping them feel better? “So,” he continued quickly, before the fairy types could argue against him. “What I was thinking of is this. We can send someone out to the tunnels to inform them and get the supplies and bring them here. No need to bring the rangers here, right?”

“I can do that,” Lily said and Pierce wasn’t really surprised. She was the best for the job, and she likely knew it. He also was pretty sure that she was a bit too eager to help, considering that there wasn’t much she could do other than assist him with some things. That and try to help him rest for a bit and prepare food or drinks. Which was great, but she obviously still felt pretty useless considering all that was going on around them.

“What do you think?” Pierce asked the clefable then, who was looking between them rather intently before they- she focused more on him. “I know it’s not ideal but… We need more supplies,” he told them. “I could also use a second opinion on some of this. I’m not as knowledgeable as you guys seem to think I am. I’m doing fine, but for all I know, I could have messed up at some point.”

That was met with definite denial, which he half expected, really.

“I could be damaging these pokemon,” he argued anyway, even though he knew it’d lead nowhere. The clefairy didn’t want anyone anywhere near where they were, probably a secret place of theirs or something. Lily and him were barely being tolerated for what they could do and little else, he was sure. Still, he needed someone that had a more solid grasp on the knowledge of treating pokemon.

There was also the fact that he could get in trouble for treating wild pokemon as he had without a license, but he feigned that that wasn’t an afterthought at best.

“Look, I… Maybe I can go too, and get a second opinion away from here?” he asked then, making the clefable pause and regard him for a long moment. Eventually, the fairy type looked around at the chamber before turning towards him once more.

Then, the clefable sighed and then nodded.

“Thank you,” he breathed out. With that out of the way, the pokemon left to do the rounds around, checking on the injured and her own family members. As for Pierce, he took another sip of his drink, now a little less boiling hot.

“Maybe you can take a break and think what you’ll check with the rangers and what supplies you need?” Lily asked and he turned to give her a tired look. She wasn’t wrong about that though. It’d be better if he went over the current situation and had a better idea of what to ask the rangers and what to ask for…

“Fine.”

He ignored the way the girl beamed at him.

[}-o-{]

“I’m very, very surprised,” the ranger that greeted them said after teleporting to a chamber in the mountain quite some distance away from the one where the clefairy seemed to live and the injured pokemon were. “It’s been forever since the clefairy family willingly contacted the rangers. Much less the last time they did so with trainers. I was here for the former, after all, one my first years, actually. The latter, I’ve never personally seen it happen.”

Considering the woman in front of him looked as old as one could get, Pierce could say he was equally as surprised as her, really. He almost wanted to ask her if she should be moving about in the field, but she also looked like she’d smack him if he did that. So, he settled on moving on with things, there were pokemon that needed his help, after all.

“I’m Pierce Lawson,” he introduced himself, extending a hand to the woman. The ranger, in turn, shook it. He regretted the gesture immediately as pain shot through his fingers. “And this is Lillian Dale.”

“Oak’s brat and the new find, huh? I’m Ruth Holzman,” the ranger introduced herself then, looking at them curiously. As for Pierce, he was actually a little confused.

“New find?” he asked, receiving only a chuckle from the woman. Then, she waved him off before speaking.

“Nevermind that, ramblings of an old woman,” she said, even though she didn’t even try to make it seem like that was actually the case. “Now, we were told you need medical supplies for pokemon here and to check if you’ve been treating them as you should?”

“Yes, I definitely don’t have enough to treat them all, especially those that need more constant care for the moment,” he explained, bringing his new mug of coffee to his lips. Maybe it wasn’t very professional of him or something, but coffee was great for keeping him going as he was. “I also don’t have an actual First Aid License. I’m studying for one, but I thought I’d check with someone that actually knows what they are doing.”

“Good, you aren’t an idiot, then. That makes sense, I guess,” Ruth said, regarding him with a tilt of her head. “Tony,” she called then, snapping her fellow ranger, much younger than her, from his awed state as the man looked at the clefairy to the side. The guy looked to be around Pierce’s age, actually… Although he sucked at guessing people’s ages, so there was no saying how old he actually was. “Tony will gather supplies for you, if you have a list.”

“Lily, if you would.”

“Sure thing,” the girl nodded, beaming as she walked towards the ranger and they started talking. Pierce, for his part, focused back on his current conversation.

“I’m guessing you are going to give me a second opinion regarding the treatments?” he asked, getting only a grin from the woman. Taking a gulp of his coffee, he set down his backpack and pulled out a notebook where he’d written down everything he’d done so far and what he was planning to do in the future.

“Looking like a veteran ranger already, kid,” Ruth told him, looking more amused than anything. Evidently, she didn’t give a fuck if he was unprofessional or anything like that. Which was great, really, but also a bit surprising, Pierce would admit.

“Well, if I weren’t already planning on not being a ranger, that’d certainly convince me,” he commented with a groan as he watched her starting to read his notebook. ‘One page and she hasn’t told me I screwed up. So far so good,’ he thought. Sure, he’d tried to check with his books as much as possible, but there was only so much time he could spend like that, even with Lily doing the checking sometimes.

As he waited for the ranger to tell him something, he looked off to the side.

“Partner, go back to the chamber and rest, will you?” he told the clefairy that had basically stuck with him through the whole thing. She went to protest and he suddenly could relate with Lily a lot better. “You, take her, will you? I’ll need you 100% there when I go back and have to get back to work, yeah? Nothing for you to do here though.”

To that, the clefairy glared at him. Eventually, she had to concede the point, letting the other fairy type he’d spoken to take her back. He watched her go with a sense of amusement that pierced through his weariness.

“Your pokemon?” Ruth asked.

“Nah, just my personal clefairy assistant through this mess,” he answered with a shrug. “She points me where I need to go, helps dealing with the pokemon and sort of liasons with the other clefairy for me.”

“Sounds like she’s a team prospect.”

“Could be,” he replied with another shrug, that was about as expressive as he could be, really. Even his face felt too tired to make actual expressions. “I think she likes this place and helping here too much to come with me though,” he mumbled, taking another sip from his coffee.

He didn’t quite like it, but maybe there was a reason for people being addicted to the stuff besides the taste. He was certainly understanding a little better after the last day he’d had. ‘God, I’ll need another after this one,’ he mused, noticing that his mug was almost empty by that point.

[}-o-{]

“Ok, we have more supplies, we have food and I’ve checked what to do with the rangers,” Pierce said as Cygnus teleported him back to the chamber while the rest of their little group walked their way there. Immediately, a clefairy dashed away as soon as he appeared, but he didn’t pay them much attention. “Now, I need to check on Golem again and then I’ll go back to treating those that I haven’t been able to yet, ok?” he asked, receiving a nod from the gathering of fairy types in front of him, his team, Lily and her team. “Except you, Lily, I need more coffee and then you can help.”

That didn’t make the girl very happy, but she agreed nonetheless.

She was great like that.

“Hey there, partner,” he greeted with a weary smile as his clefairy nurse-partner appeared. Evidently, the fairy type from before had gone looking for her. The small pink creature replied cheerfully. “Ready for more work. I promise it will be done… eventually… hopefully,” he mumbled, sighing as he cracked his neck. “Let’s get to work.”

And so, that’s exactly what he did.

Wounds were checked again, re-dressed and sometimes re-treated. Pokemon were cared for, fed and sometimes bathed. He moved around doing most of it, but when a task was simple enough, he tried to delegate it to a clefairy or to Lily. More because they wouldn’t let him do simple things like feeding pokemon if they noticed. Apparently, everyone was in agreement that he needed to focus on more skill sensitive tasks.

As for Pierce himself… Well, he wanted to do as much as possible, just that. He didn’t want to feel like he was letting someone down or that he was failing a pokemon. Looking at a pokemon in need of help really pulled at his heartstrings, he found.

Eventually, he found himself sitting against a stone wall once more. Everyone had been treated already. Now it was time to just wait for a bit and make sure everyone was fine, re-dress some wounds for a few days and so on. As it was, there was no need for Pierce to rush around anymore.

“How is it going, guys?” he asked before yawning, turning to regard his team with tired eyes. “You were training, right?” he asked Narcissa and Orion, who had indeed been working on stuff while he tended to the pokemon. After all, the two of them weren’t really suited for nurse work.

Cygnus, for his part, had been able to help, even if he wasn’t awake for very long. He’d used most of that time to continue working on his physical strength as much as his psychic one. Moving things around with his body or with his mind was about as much as he could train anyway – with or without using Teleport added into the mix –, so it worked out.

“I’m tired,” Lily sighed, taking a seat next to him. “How have you not, you know, passed out yet?”

“I don’t even know,” Pierce mumbled. “I took some naps but I really should be sleeping for real soon-ish. I’m just… I’m really tired, but I can’t go to sleep, does that make sense?”

“... No.”

“Yeah, I thought that too,” he muttered, groaning as he went to stand up. “Ok, I think I’ll just… Go and try to sleep a bit. Just… call me if something happens, yeah?”

“Sure thing,” Lily told him as he started walking towards his things to pull out a sleeping bag so he could just die already. He didn’t feel like setting up his tent like Lily had done, after all.

In the end, he just let his head fall on the rolled up sleeping bag and that was it.

[}-o-{]

[Lillian Dale]

“You are doing great, Golem,” Pierce praised, giving the big rock type a pat on the back and receiving a rumbling sound back. “Just a few more days and you’ll be going around good as new, I promise,” he added, checking some wounds, plasters and bandages. “You just gotta stay put and let us take care of you until you are ready for that, yeah?”

To that, he got a nod. The pokemon wasn’t a fan of that, Lily could tell, but he’d do it. Golem seemed to be a pretty old pokemon, after all… Which she thought didn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t be a stubborn, difficult patient, but fortunately he wasn’t. There were enough pokemon around that refused to heed Pierce’s warnings and only delayed their own recoveries already.

Speaking of…

“Zubat,” Pierce called flatly, making the poison type freeze where he’d been flying by them. Which made the pokemon fall and land on the ground. “What did I tell you about flying?” he asked, receiving some sheepish sounds from the flying creature. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Don’t make me tell your mother,” he threatened, making the poison type seemingly become even smaller. “Off you go, and remember not to fly or I will make you regret it.”

Personally, Lily thought it was impressive that he seemed to be able to tell which zubat that one was. She wouldn’t have been able to do that if her life depended on it. They all looked the same to her, even with the different bandages and plasters and such.

On her arms, Cleffa babbled something adorably, bouncing up and down as she pointed off to the side.

“What’s the matter, little one?” she asked, trying to decipher what the young one wanted. That is, before Pierce beat her to the punch, rolling his eyes and pulling out a pokeblock. “Ah, that’s the last one for a bit, yeah?” she told Cleffa as the pokemon took the offered treat. “You’ve been eating a lot and Pierce has already said you shouldn’t take so many.”

“Well said,” the man in question agreed. “You can have more later for dinner, little one,” he added, smiling wearily at Cleffa while tickling the fairy type’s belly and getting a giggle out of her. “Anyway, I have to go around some more, make sure everyone’s sticking to the instructions and nobody is making things worse,” Pierce told her, looking very intently at the zubat from before.

Lily nodded then.

“You should take a nap sometime soon,” she told him, drawing an absentminded nod from the man. While Pierce had calmed down after having treated every single one of the injured pokemon, he still was pushing himself a lot. There was a lot for him to check on, even after that, after all. He needed to make sure nobody was getting worse, he needed to re-dress wounds from time to time, he needed to prepare meals for some of the stubborn pokemon and children and so on.

Lily and the clefairy family helped as much as possible, but there were things that only Pierce could do, unfortunately. That meant that the man never wanted to take a break, in case he was needed. It was frustrating, but it was also something that made Pierce who he was. He wouldn’t be himself if he weren’t so… emphathetic, Lily supposed.

It was still troublesome.

Cleffa looked up, still munching on the pokeblock Pierce had given her.

“I just worry,” Lily mumbled in response to her questioning expression. “He’s great, but he’s really not taking care of himself,” she added, following her friend as he continued checking on pokemon. She’d been so happy when they got to contact the rangers, but the clefairy family really didn’t want to get mixed with humans other than Pierce and her, apparently. Even they were there more out of necessity than anything else, she was sure.

That meant that Pierce had to do everything by himself instead of getting the help he needed. The rangers had promised compensation for the help, especially since it seemed that the clefairy had been causing some trouble in the tunnels after the Rocket attack and they had calmed down after Pierce helped with the injured pokemon. Lily almost had wanted to ask what they were going to pay with, because she really hoped it was a lot. Her friend deserved good payment for how much he’d pushed himself the last few days.

Even Narcissa, who was all for trying harder and pushing one’s limits, had started getting worried that first day when Pierce refused to just sleep. Things had gotten better, but they were still nowhere near ideal. Fortunately, as the time passed, it meant that they’d be finished soon. With that, it would be time to return to the road and for Pierce to return to normal.

Which was a bit of a bittersweet thought, really.

“I’m gonna miss you,” Lily said then, hugging Cleffa a bit more tightly. She’d grown attached to the lil’ fairy type through the days. The young ones had, after all, returned to the chamber once it didn’t look like a disaster zone anymore. Now, with everyone treated and mostly fine, the young members of the clefairy family could stick around without being potentially traumatized, thankfully.

Cleffa babbled something happily, to which Lily smiled sadly in return.

“It was great meeting you, yeah,” she agreed, thinking she had a good idea of what the fairy type had tried to tell her. “We’ll be on our way soon, but it was awesome to see you and the rest of your family. Even if it did come with quite a bit of work.”

At that, Cleffa seemed to grow confused.

“We can’t stay,” Lily explained, feeling herself grow even more sad. However, that had always been a fact. As it was, she was positively ecstatic that she’d gotten to meet so many members of the clefairy line, to interact with them and all. The whole experience was like a dream come true. It was just a shame that dreams had to end eventually. “Pierce and I, we have to continue traveling, battling, getting better and all that,” she told Cleffa. “We won’t forget about you, any of you, though. We’ll come to visit, I promise.”

A clefairy close by cheered at that, before explaining what Lily had said to the rest that were too far. Everyone seemed happy about that, doing little dances and laughing merrily. Lily didn’t think she’d ever get tired of seeing the adorable pokemon just be.

Cleffa, however, didn’t seem nearly as happy, pouting at her and clinging to Lily’s clothes.

“I know, I don’t want to go either,” she replied. “But we have to. We have lives to get back to and things to do, goals to reach.”

Cleffa mumbled something that she wasn’t sure actually meant anything, she did sound upset still, but it was what it was.

“I know, I don’t like it either,” Lily agreed with a sad smile. “Come on, we have to interrupt Orion or he’ll overwork himself. We don’t want that, do we?” she commented, drawing a nod from the fairy type, even if she still looked sad. “Let’s go. Pierce doesn’t need more things to worry about, does he?”

Cleffa agreed with that too, but Lily could already tell she wouldn’t be returning to her cheery self for a bit now. With some luck, the big softy that was Orion would help her feel better. Unfortunately, her own team members were rather serious in that regard. Talon was more likely to make her cry than anything else. Gem was too stoic. Root might be able to help, but he was a bit too taciturn, Lily thought.

If Orion couldn’t help thought, Lily would risk that. Narcissa wouldn’t be able to help either, after all. Cygnus was another maybe, she supposed, so he’d be Plan C. If all else failed, Lily would have to bother another member of the clefairy family. Maybe she could go with the younger group? That’d probably do the trick.

She’d move that to Plan B, actually.

‘Still, this has been a wonderful time,’ Lily thought to herself. ‘Even if the goodbye is going to suck.’

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Well, it seems we are kind of wrapping up this little arc, huh? Wonder if Pierce will get pulled into another healing arc next or if he’ll get to experience some other kind of adventure. His story is turning out to be quite different from what I imagined or predicted, but that just makes it better in my opinion. What about you?

I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: What do you think Pierce’s next mini or not-so-mini arc will be about?

See you.