Chương 80: 80-Processing

Today has been a long day… Amelia stares at the dark wall of the hotel room from her bed, breathing slow and regular as she tries to force her exhausted mind to slow and let this day end. So much has happened that she's pretty sure the overwhelming nature of it is helping her somewhat, because she's just had to deal with five or six world shaking events, most of them very literal.

But she's dabbled in psychology, so she knows the human mind has a threshold to how much 'stuff' it can process in a given period, and thus a maximum amount she can feel about it all. Because the fact that Chansey used to be a human from another dimension really should be more than a footnote. The Joy glances across the room to the vague dark shape sitting motionless across the room, completely silent aside from the slow and heavy sound of breathing.

The instant after Amelia glances over, 'mon makes a quiet trilling noise she'd never make awake, proving Amelia is the only one aware right now. Chansey never explicitly said she was a human, but the fact that pokemon didn't exist (as impossible to imagine as that is) combined with her description of all non-human creatures as 'unthinking' means the 'mon being a former human is an easy conclusion to make. Which is… odd to think about.

But in all honesty, while surprising it's not as if she cannot imagine the 'mon as a human. Some pokemon, mostly the kind that cannot or don't want to interact with human society all that much, will behave in ways strange or inhuman. But almost all chansey are raised around human society from the moment they hatch, so it's not like her partner is an outlier in that sense. Amelia tries to imagine what Chansey looked like before she… became a pokemon, but she struggles to form a full picture.

A few details come easily, a stern face bracketed in pink hair, tall, broad, built like a weightlifter, but… What would she wear? Chansey's never struck her as one to care about fashion, but is that because of a genuine lack of interest? Or is it just because 'mon dont… wear… The Joy blinks, glances over at the slowly breathing silhouette, then away again, silently mocking herself for the faint tinge of embarrassment she's feeling for how ridiculous it is. …

She might bring up the idea of clothes at some point, but it doesn't seem to bother Chansey. If she had to guess what Chansey actually wore it would be whatever's most practical, that seems the most like her, which matches her stated career as a soldier… Amelia grimaces. Eleven years old, and four out of every five people ordered to fight an enemy, an enemy so terrible the people agreed that this needed to be done. Why else would they allow the government to do that to them?

Chansey was right, she can't imagine a danger terrible enough that everyone needs to fight. People trying to blow up a volcano only took… well if she assumes Chansey didn't get involved, one gym leader? Less than two hundred members of the national guard? She has to assume they would have succeeded at stopping this, they got here so fast. They would have stopped it. Even today was unimaginable to the Joy before it happened, but a world without pokemon is more alien than that. What are the forests full of?

Chansey said that something like pokemon existed there, so some kind of… unthinking meat machines? Why would it be like that? More importantly, how are people healed? How did anyone get anything done? Especially before technology advanced. Even now high order scientific calculations need pokemon assistance to make up for limited computer technology. Even further back, so much of modern technology is built off of replicating pokemon moves, where would scientists even start?

How would people do anything without pokemon? These questions run circles in her mind as the silent night continues on, morphing and changing into innumerable variants, each with no answer. Worse, Amelia knows there can be no answer, not for a very long while at least. Because when Chansey was explaining even that incredibly abbreviated version of her story, and her partner saw the pain and struggle she was going through to say even that much?

The only way the Joy will be hearing more of Chansey's story is when the 'mon decides to offer it herself as their journey continues. … If it continues. Amelia flinches at the recurring thought, pushes the worry down and tries to dismiss it till morning, then closes her eyes and tries to convince her brain to finally sleep.

—-- –_– —-- Tanya's not entirely sure how she ended up back inside the hotel room after dark fell last night, after her conversation with Amelia she'd been practically asleep on her feet, only vague memories of fitting through the double wide door proof of the fact that she'd walked there under her own power at all, rather than being recalled and carried by Amelia.

The human is still asleep, and being frank Tanya wishes she could be with her, but her internal alarm clock has her waking up at exactly the same time, regardless of how much sleep she'd actually gotten, or how exhausted she is. The best she can do is try not to move, half lidded eyes slowly watching the early morning sun move across the floor. Technically they have a shift at the center in one and a half hours, but from waking up to getting to the center can be done in forty five minutes.

But as the morning continues to pass by and just as the sun starts to warm her side, Tanya's half asleep stupor is broken by the sound of talons clacking against the food as Swellow glides to the floor and hops over as quietly as his physiology allows. The 'mon makes his way in front of her in a series of short jumps, ruffles his feathers, then looks up at her and squints.

"... Chansey?" He whispers, flinching back when Tanya exhales and fractionally lowers her head to meet his eyes.

"You are awake!"

"I am." The 'mon agrees with practiced passiveness.

"What is it?"

"Oh. Uh. So… things looked… emotional last night, so I kinda kept my distance so I wouldn't hear anything I'm not supposed to hear." The 'mon chirps quietly.

"You don't have to say any of the emotion stuff again, but I have to know, if you're not seeing the future…" He hesitates, looks down, then forces his eyes to meet hers again.

"... How do you know how to fly so well?" The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Tanya tilts her head at the question. She appreciates the courtesy of not eavesdropping, though she doubts that it was the initial reason he kept his distance, but she's also not in the mood to rehash any of the context needed to explain the answer. Swellow is also being…

slightly rude, leveraging a common courtesy as a kind of social bargaining chip to extract information he just demonstrated he knows she would rather not provide. But at the same time, the social capital he's using is a fair currency… a problem then. Tanya blinks, a faint glow of amusement rising through the tired fog in her mind as she realizes her answer.

"Ah. That's simple really." The 'mon says with her voice carefully kept level.

"It's because I used to be able to fly."

"Wait what!?" The 'mon screeches, his avian syrinx allowing the shocked exclamation to be extremely loud." Gah!" Amelia screams as the noise rips her from sleep, shoving herself bolt upright and throwing her blankets off of her in one smooth expression of surprise. For a moment she looks around the room in uncomprehending confusion before she seems to come back to herself and turn her glare to the small 'mon." Swellow!"

"Sorry! Sorry!" The 'mon loudly apologizes back, positioning his head so one eye is looking at both people in the room.

"But Chansey just said–""Oh shoot! We slept in!" Amelia interrupts, jumping out of bed and rushing over to the pile of pink and white where she'd dropped her uniform after changing last night.

"And I don't have any clean blouses!" Tanya blinks at the problem, glances at the clock, then her eyes flare purple and the pile of clothes floats up into the air. Sure enough, Amelia's outfit is in no way appropriate for work, dirt stains and unflattering creases in the starched outfit make it look unkept even removed from a person. But… Tanya looks over at an increasingly panicked Amelia.

"I think that with current events being as they are a lapse in uniform standard is excusable." The Joy spares less than a second to look at her like she's crazy before grabbing her wallet and throwing it at her partner.

Tanya attempts to catch it with telekinesis, but as she tries something pulls inside her and the flow of energy wobbles dangerously, ending with the clothes dropping to the floor and the wallet hitting her square between the eyes, captured in a psychic glow a moment later as Amelia continues speaking, apparently having not noticed.

"Chansey, this is when it's most important! I need to redo my braids. Hotel laundry is further down the hall on the left, past the fire exit. Could you please–" As she talks, the Joy runs her fingers through her barely coherent braids, dissolving them into an incoherent mess just before she shuts the door to the bathroom, cutting off the last part of her request.

Tanya blinks, processes the request, sighs and stuffs the wallet into her pouch before going around grabbing the uniform from the floor after they flicker purple and a warning twinge has her reconsider. It takes a moment to wedge herself through the door and out into the hall, a little while longer to find the laundry room, a standard looking hall of beige coin operated washing matches, and slowly forces herself through the door there.

Inside the laundry room there's just one other person, a middle aged man sitting by a dryer with a magazine, and from the moment Tanya steps into his eyeline then through the door he's just been staring at her. She elects to ignore the rude behavior as she throws the laundry into the nearest washer, pulls out the wallet, and begins feeding coins into the machine. They're on a timer, so the shortest wash cycle will have to do.

It takes another few seconds to pay for some soap at another machine, but then the washer gets to work with a hum, leaving Tanya to contemplate the… strangeness of today's events. Or rather, their lack of strangeness. Amelia knows now, or at least she knows more than anyone else before. Tanya has kept that secret for so long she'd built it up in her head somewhat, for how core to who she is as a person, it feels like telling someone should change something. Tanya looks around the near-empty coin laundry room.

She'd thought something would be different. But as the minutes tick on and the quiet hum of fluorescent lights fill the air, Tanya's struggling to see any differences. It takes seventeen minutes for the abbreviated wash cycle to finish, and just a few minutes after the 'mon moves the wet clothes to the dryer and feeds the hungry machine yet more coins, Amelia storms into the room with perfectly made hair contrasting to her frazzled expression.

"C'mon! Where're the clothes! We are not letting this volcano business beat us!" Tanya hesitates before answering, looking for something different in the Joy's gaze. But nothing's changed.

"... Wet." She says eventually, stepping aside with a gesture to the machine.

"And neither the time nor materials to properly starch them." Amelia makes a tortured groaning noise, looking around for an iron before walking over to the dryer, popping it open, and pressing a hand against the clothes.

"These are dry enough." She says, pulling the clothes from the dryer and rushing back the way she came.

"Chansey, could you meet me out front? I'll be right there, but we need to hurry." Tanya doesn't have time to respond as Amelia disappears into the hall. Those clothes were absolutely still wet. She looks up at a nearby clock, confirming that they have another ten minutes before they need to leave, then mentally shrugs and starts the slow process of fitting through the door toward the front.

—-- She was right, the clothes were quite damp when Amelia first put them on, but by the time they walked to the center they'd dried out a bit and conveniently the stiffness of the air dried clothing gave a good approximation of starch by the time the Joy was walking through the empty hole where doors should be into the center. Tanya grimaces at the absent doors as she follows behind her partner, walking up to the front desk where the local Head Nurse is standing at the counter.

But as they make it to the counter, she leans in closer with an expression even more severe than normal on her face.

"What did you two do?" She mutters, barely louder than the ambient sound of the room. Tanya blinks, taken aback, the emotion seemingly mirrored by Amelia as she pulls her head back in confusion.

"... What? Ma'am, what are you talking about? And why are you whisperi–""One or both of you did something." She hisses in response.

"The clan doesn't just send–" The sound of a door opening has the Head Nurse stop talking and return to perfect posture in less than an instant almost looking past them as Tanya watches the door open. Out steps a woman, clearly of Joy descent, but instead of the standard nurse's uniform she's wearing an ankle length skirt with dress shoes, and the apron replaced with what looks like a hybrid between a professional jacket and a doctor's coat with a green arm band stitched on the sleeve.

She's followed by a second identically dressed woman, and in almost eerily identical movements each come to stand side by side, one looking at Tanya, the other at Amelia. After a moment the Joy on the left gives a practiced smile.

"Ah. Amelia I presume." She says with a shallow bow of the head.

"My name is Petra Joy, I'm with the clan conduct and inquiry board. Myself and my associate will be asking the both of you some questions."