Chapter Text
Coming back home felt like an admission of defeat, because there was nowhere in the world I wanted to be less than Solaceon Town.
Whenever I came back in the summer while on break until my next semester at Saffron University, it felt temporary. I was back in my childhood bedroom for a few months because campus accommodations didn't run year-long. That was it. It always came with a distinct sense that I was going to leave Solaceon again before I knew it, and that my life still had an upward trajectory to it. What trajectory? Pretty much just out of a small Sinnohan town at any cost, because I saw what happens when you stay in your small hometown for life and don't explore the world. I saw it in my classmates and in their parents and in my own father sometimes before he passed. This abnormal little pocket of civilization paved over a little stretch of opportunistic path carved out in the middle of miles and miles of ranches.
A common story they tell in Solaceon is that once upon a time there was just a road through a clearing. A path between what are now Routes 209 and 210. People and Pokemon began to gather around that road, and slowly, a town was built spontaneously on that spot. Usually it's told with the idea there's something special about this area, that it pulled people in, that something about it seemed idyllic, usually with the implication that it still is. Me? I always understood those stories to mean that a bunch of people gave up, stopped going further, and settled down in the most okay place they could fine. That's all Solaceon Town is, a town for settlers in more than one meaning of the word.
But there I was, back again, feeling like a mopey pop punk song while I returned from exile to the small town that would be my prison, because that had to be all Solaceon Town was at this point. I graduated top of my class and earned a space at Saffron University, majoring in Pokemon care at one of the most prestigious schools in the world, and I was third in my class there, too. I had my degree in hand, but needed to do an internship and two years of field work before I could prove I was trustworthy enough to have a license to practice Pokemon care on my own if I wanted to be able to work on my own. My roommate, Casey, skipped past all that to land an immediate hiring at the Aether Foundation. I was stuck at the mercy of the random assignments, of any organization or business or hospital open to taking on an intern.
If I'd known the daycare center in Solaceon Town was an available option, I would have intentionally thrown my exams just to avoid this fate.
It seemed insane to imagine I'd be the one drawn randomly for this. Not sent to a spot with the Aether Foundation myself. Not helping out at an understaffed Pokemon center. Not being the glorified coffee fetcher for some League bigwig. But there it lay on the docket. "Adam Conlon: Day Care Center in Solaceon Town, Sinnoh". If they had assigned me a bullet between the eyes, it would have been a toss-up. The one in forty chance of this going down was in my mind proof that some nefarious force wanted to shackle me to this awful town and keep me here, wanted me back here. Two years of an internship? No, I could tell I was here for life now. This wasn't just a brief return so I could get my license. This was divine intervention telling me that my only destiny was to rot away in my mother's house, taking pot shots at my twin sister until finally one of us stabbed ourself but made it look like an accident to frame the other.
The daycare building stood on the northwestern edge of town, leading up to a fairly expansive area for Pokemon to lounge in at peace. It mingled in well with all the ranches around town, save for the fact that people had a reason to gravitate around this one. It was just about the only reason some people ever passed through this town, and you could tell; its exterior had a rustic edge to it, but it was a well kept one, freshly painted since I last saw it. Trainers from all over Sinnoh would leave their Pokemon with the elderly couple who had run it so long that no living person alive could remember a time when Robert and Elaine weren't the proprietors of the daycare.
Stepping in through the front door, I braced myself to be met with Elaine. With a woman who seemed to know the name of everyone in town even if you had never met her before. A kind face to at least temper the incredible shame and frustration I felt in being here in the first place; at least they were an nice couple to work for. It would be almost okay maybe, in that regard. But as I opened the door, it wasn't Elaine at the desk. It wasn't her husband, either.
It was a woman about my own age. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed, heavily tanned. She wore an open orange plaid shirt over a white tank top, jeans, and a fucking cowboy hat. Indoors! Who wore a cowboy hat indoors? She was gorgeous and stacked enough for me to almost overlook the hat, but it was distracting. She didn't give me a second look as far as being anyone but another person walking in, offering a polite, "Howdy," like she had actually just stepped out of a cartoon to manifest in front of me like a fever dream. Her voice had a distinct twang to it that definitely was not from around these parts, not that I had any idea how to place it. "Welcome to the daycare."
"Hi, my name is Adam. I'd like to speak with Robert or Elaine," I said, clearing my throat and standing as composed as I could in front of her. I'd tied my blond hair back into a ponytail and dressed with slacks and a button-up shirt, as painstakingly professional as I could look for my first day of work. I wasn't sure I was even doing work, but I didn't want to fuck this up. As much as I didn't want to be here, I wasn't feeling self-destructive enough to ruin everything even further than it already had been.
"You got an appointment or somethin'?" she asked, turning toward the computer at her desk, typing something into it. "I'm afraid they ain't here today, but if you've got somethin' important, you can talk to me about it. My name's Angie, as of three weeks ago, I'm the proprietor of this daycare. Any business you had with my grandparents, you have with me now."
A word got caught in my throat. This wasn't what I was expecting at all, a surprise that really threw whatever my plans were into disarray. "Doctor," was what I finally spit out.
"You need a doctor?" she asked. "Shit, we're waitin' on one who's supposed to be here soon. Hope you ain't havin' a heart attack and he can get here in time for that."
Was she fucking with me? I stared at her with a deep uncertainty, trying to piece together exactly what to make of it, before I finally spat out, "But clown, I am the doctor."
Angie looked at me for a moment with an unbelievably tight gaze, eyes narrowing like she had taken deep offensive to my misaimed joke, before she slammed her hand down onto the counter with uproarious laughter. "I like you already!" she shouted. "Dressed a lil' stuffy for my likin', but that's good. Can't wait to see you tell jokes like that around Bill."
"Okay, back up," I said. "You run the daycare now?"
"Finally talked my grandparents into retirin' after decades doin' this. I'm still learnin' my way around some stuff, but I grew up on a farm, and this is a lot closer to farm livin' than I thought it'd be. It was all very sudden, and I guess nobody thought to tell the school 'bout it, my bad. But it seems like now, you work for me."
It didn't really matter who I worked for. Elaine and Robert were nice. I didn't know a damn thing about Angie, but I was here to help Pokemon who needed it and administer care. That was it. "That's alright by me," I said. "I hope they're happy in retirement, then."
"Arceus willin', they'd better be with how much I had to fight time into it. " She gave me a tired smile. "Now then, Bill'll be back soon from doin' the mornin' feed rounds. He's my boyfriend and the other employee here, and I'll have him give you a tour of the grounds."
"Sounds good," I told her. This was unexpected, but in a boring way. In a fundamentally unexciting and completely bland way that left me utterly certain that even when a surprise happened in this town, it was mundane. The daycare was run by people in their twenties instead of their hundred and twenties now. That wasn't enough to change much about this. I was here, in Solaceon, under divine punishment to continue a cosmic joke I lacked the eldritch comprehension to get the punchline of.
It was just before the silence of the room became awkward that Angie picked up a walkie-talkie from her hip and asked, "Bill?" into it. She waited ten seconds for a response, then did it again. "Bill, you there?" Another ten seconds. She hit the button, but this time simply said, "Fuck."
"Something wrong?" I asked.
"No, Bill is just. Different. I think he's probably fine, but you're gonna wanna go find him, I think. He probably left the walkie-talkie in the break house. If you go out the side door, it’ll be down the path and on your right at the fork. I'll get you all set up with everythin' after lunch. I'll order us some pizza to celebrate finally havin' a doctor on staff."
"Sounds good." I had a lot of things I wanted to ask about. What supplies we had on-hand. How often Pokemon needed medical attention. If there was a space I could keep sterile so that I could treat Pokemon there. Basic professional things. But, assuming nothing was going to go wrong on day one, those were defintely questions that could wait until after lunch. In the meantime, I headed off out through the employees only door into the back lot, a space that you didn't get into unless you were a bored teenager jumping the fence, and most of the kids who did that ended up regretting it. Striding out confidently, I didn't have any worries about the Pokemon around the lot. It would be fine. I knew my way around, and I felt like I had a pretty sharp sense of how not to provoke trouble even with a varied mix around; almost any domesticated Pokemon wasn't going to be a problem. If they had a trainer, they were fine.
Along the path, my head naturally turned to see the weird little pockets of life. There were definitely Pokemon who seemed a bit uncomfortable with the presence of so many others, keeping to themselves or to small grounds. It was a strange but wonderful view of something different than I was expecting, an oddly quaint and endearing look. Some Pokemon, social butterflies to be sure, were happily mingling about much more aggressively. Then there were seemingly wild Pokemon fluttering by the feeders or into the pond. There were troughs positioned around little towers drawing Pokemon in toward them, granting a certain regality to their invitations to all the Pokemon around.
It was as I moved about, lost in thought, that I noticed a sheepish watcher peering over toward me. A Chikorita was walking by along the path beside me, moving their legs a bit hastily to keep up with my human-sized strides. It held my eye as I stopped walking, only for the Chikorita to stop walking, too. That was weird and surprising enough. I took a step back, and they scurried back a bit, too.
"Hi there, little buddy," I said, turning toward them and smiling. All of my most cynical inclinations melted when I was interacting with a Pokemon. Always had. I went into the medical field out of a love for them and an interest in helping them. It was just special. I reached into my pocket. I'd packed a few Pokemon treats away in case I ran into a particularly fond Pokemon who deserved something, and I had found it. "Do you want a treat?" I pulled it out and offered it toward the Chikorita, who began to slowly approach, not quite making eye contact with me. "It's okay, you can have it."
Chikorita inched closer, and I did my best to hold still and steady, offering myself up as a comforting presence, before offering my open palm down low enough for Chikorita to eat the treat out of it. And they did, adorably opening their mouth and grabbing one of the treat pieces, biting down on it with a satisfying crunch. With a pull back, their eyes gleamed, and they dove in for another one just as fast. It was a quick and speedy show of excitement, and I was nothing but calm about letting it happen. Everything was attentive and steady, and all I had to do was keep firm while I let them eat. When the treats were gone, Chikorita nuzzled their cheek into my hand, and I was happy to pet them a moment.
"You're adorable," I told them. "I need to go, but I'll bring you a treat again tomorrow, okay?" Chikorita chirped eagerly at the thought, and I continued on my way down the path.
I couldn't speak for Angie's new regime, but 'the daycare couple' got their beloved reputation for being good to the Pokemon. If they weren't, I would have fought this assignment on some pretty bold grounds, but I trusted them, and if Angie could hold onto my trust, then I'd stomach this whole mess. For the Pokemon. That was something I could do. I did love the Pokemon. It was as I pondered their trustworthiness that I reached the break building and opened the door up, not sure what was going to await me inside of it, but expecting something mundane after all that had already gone down this morning. Why would there be anything unusual going on in the break room of all places?
I walked in on a guy fucking a Rattata.
*************************************
"Dangit, Bill!" Angie's boot slammed down against the ground. "Great foot to get off on, you did an amazing job."
"I didn't get off on her feet, Angie. I didn't even get off."
I sat with my head in my hands at the break table. The same break table where a man was just fucking a Rattata. I met Bill! Bill, the flannel-clad guy with curly blond hair and a red cap worn backwards, whose Aron Maiden shirt and jeans he had hastily put back on only after I found him completely naked. Naked, and, I can't stress this enough, mid-way through having sex with a Pokemon. I was awestruck, and the weird, confused frustration was simply there. I had no idea what the fuck I was supposed to do with this information. All I knew was that I was in no fucking way ready for this.
"If you think this is a good time for jokes, you're even dumber than I thought you were." Angie must have been giving Bill too much credit; I could tell form the first five words out of his mouth how much of an idiot eh was going to be. "This was our doctor!"
"Sorry, Ang. I just couldn't help myself. You know how I get around babes."
"Babes?" I shouted. I couldn't not. "Fucking babes? It's a goodman Pokemon! It's a Rattata! In what conceivable world does a Rattata count as a babe?" I was on my feet suddenly. My hands were flush on the table and I was definitely yelling. I didn't know exactly what about this I was mad at, but I had plenty of good reasons if I wanted to pick and choose.
"Man, don't let her hear that, you'll hurt her feelings." Bill motioned toward the Rattata still sitting off to the side.
All I could respond with was incredulous noise, which led to Angie moving forward. "Please sit down, Adam. We can be reasonable, can't we? Let's talk this out, don't pay Bill any mind right n--"
"You're fucking on this," I said. I wasn't sitting down. "Unbelievable. This is abuse. This is absolutely abuse, and I am going to report this t--"
"Dammit, boy, sit down!" Angie's voice gained a sudden gravity that I didn't know it had, and it almost knocked me right back into my chair, made me flop down to look at her. "Now you listen. We ain't abusin' any Pokemon here, and there's sure as shit no crime, so don't go runnin' your mouth tryin' to stir trouble where there ain't any and do something stupid. Lord knows, Bill already has."
"Ang, she was--"
"Silence," Angie said. Her voice was tense. Angie was far more intimidating than I thought she could have been, and I felt deeply unsure about this now.
"Bogus," Bill muttered, shrinking in his chair.
"I don't care what's illegal and not," I said. I kept my voice firm, refusing to back down too much. "Trainers trusted their Pokemon to you, and you are betraying that trust for sexual gratification? You're taking advantage of these Pokemon, and the trainers who--"
"Nobody's gettin' taken advantage of here. I can promise you that. This is complicated, and it goes deeper than you can imagine, but Pokephiles leavin' their Pokemon here knowin' what we do ain't abuse, and you shouldn't run your mouth on matters you don't know squat about." The word 'Pokephiles' sent a shudder up my spine. This was unbelievable.
I couldn't think. My head spun too much for me to know how to respond to this. Angie was so certain and confident in what she said, and that didn't do much to make me feel good about any of it. It was profoundly nonsensical and left me with a crisis of confidence in all of this. Bill was silent now, but Angie was serious enough about everything to make me understand that this wasn't something I was ready for. I looked at her, trying my best to piece together the weird confusions taking hold of me. What was I supposed to say? What could anyone have said in the face of this? There was so much here that felt utterly amiss, a relentless rush of confusions to try and navigate while I remained clueless about what any of this really meant.
"The fuck is going on here?" I finally spat out, my eyes sweeping up toward Angie with a sense of absolute shock at all of this. "Do your grandparents know about this?"
"You'll spare their poor hearts if you have one of your own." Angie's stern quiet wasn't a whole lot less intimidating than her loud. She stared right through me, hands flush on the table, but as she leaned forward, it seemed to only emphasize a presence and a size that stripped away all the good natured farm girl charm for something far sharper. "There's somethin' special about the bond between a human and a Pokemon. You ain't seein' it here with Bill and Rattata, but back home he's got a Lopunny who loves him as much as I do, and I've got an Arcanine I've known since I was a baby who I couldn't imagine life without. Arceus help me, boy, if you do anything to get in the way of that, we'll get a real test of your medical expertise by seein' if you can fix the damage I'll do to you."
I believed more than anything that these were real threats. Angie carried herself with something absolutely terrifying in just how forward it was, how stark a danger this all felt to be, and I couldn't believe I was letting this happen, but I clammed up. What the hell was I supposed to say? Angie staked a lot on every word she just laid on me, and all I could do was realize I was in way over my head in trying to consider how to handle it. I stared at her. Not to stare her down. Not to make her back off or anything; intimidation isn't me. I don't get physical with people. I much prefer psychological warfare, and right now, there's not much time for that. I'm just declaring my firm intent to not just roll over on this.
"I don't know how to feel about this," I finally said. "You seem fine. And I don't even think th--look, your own Pokemon are your own Pokemon. I'm not going to judge you for that. But I don't know if I can work here if you guys are doing that with Pokemon entrusted to your care no matter what explanations you're giving me for it." What the fuck was I saying? If I stepped away from this, I was losing my two years' placement. The school almost definitely wasn't finding me somewhere else, and my best bet was to attach myself on to an assignment for next year. An entire year stalled out in fucking Solaceon doing nothing anyway. But what the hell was I supposed to say? How could I abide by this?
"I can't make you be okay with somethin'," Angie said. "And I won't. You're a grown man. Make your own decisions. But it sounds to me like your future's ridin' on what you do here, and I'd keep that in mind."
"Is that a threat?"
"That's a reality, sug. I won't ask you to stick your dick in anythin', but we really do need a doctor here with grandma retired. You were just supposed to help her focus on other tasks, but now you're all we've got for that." She softened her stance up significantly. The intimidation portion was over, now she was appealing to something more human. "First thing you did was get mad thinkin' we were hurtin' Pokemon, might sound nuts to you but it means the world to me in trustin' you."
So she was glad I took issue with her abuse of Pokemon. I had to bite down on that comment, knowing it wasn't what she meant. The Pokemon really were what was important to me. I'd known that Elaine handled the medical needs for the Pokemon who needed it, and that she was getting up in age. That I'd be taking over on that front. Now, if I walked, there were just Angie and Bill, neither fit for that role even overlooking the entire situation going on here. If there was no serious abuse going on, there wasn't any reason to run, right? And if there was serious abuse going on, my eye was maybe the only thing that could keep these Pokemon safe, right?
"If Bill puts pants on, I'll stay," I growled. I sounded openly upset with this, and felt like I had every right to be.
"So I can't even finish? Bogus," Bill groaned. "Wanna start over on introductions?" He stuck his hand out, and I could see that it was sticky.
"Let's start over tomorrow," I said with a firm shake of my head.
"Yeah, alright." He wiped his hand off onto his flannel shirt, and I knew that staying here meant that I was going to be in for one hell of a time knowing this guy.
*****************************
The tour was as uneventful as tours of open fields could be. Seeing stuff up front that I had only ever seen at most at a distance through fencing was kind of neat, but not neat enough. It was neat enough, I guess. A storehouse full of food. Feeding centers. The miles and miles of fences reinforced deep into the ground to keep from anything slipping underneath. It was all very normal and bland, and after what just happened it felt like a merciless whiplash of confusion for me to have to navigate, knowing that I had seen something so outrageous and bizarre but had absolutely no ground now to do a damn thing about it. I could only walk around, following Bill through a facsimile of the daily rounds while trying hard to understand exactly how I was supposed to just act like everything was normal now. Nothing was normal.
I sure as hell had to act like it was, though. A big, fake smile. I felt drained just standing around getting a tour. This was an insane situation, and I was going to have to navigate my way around so many weird surprises yet to come. Taking in all the understanding and the weirdness, I did my best just to deal with it, not knowing how much else there was for me to do and what I could handle. My desire to help Pokemon was going to overwhelm my indignance and I knew it, but there wasn't a damn thing I could do to make it through this unpleasantness. This was something I just needed to do, and I felt confident now in it. I just had to go through this all and make the most of whatever fresh insanity came with this.
The medical shack was one of the real interesting places for me. I could tell immediately that a doctor owned the place, because it actually looked well stocked and looked after, like it was actually a priority. I gave a quick peruse through the drawers and the cabinets. Everything was within its use-by date and looked well maintained. Impressive. This job got a lot easier on one front, at least. "Okay, everything here looks to be in order." I drew back from the cabinets a moment and looked over to Bill, feeling like I was about to regret saying it, but, "So what kind of stuff do you do to kill time around here?"
"You mean aside from blasting rope inside of Pokemon?" Bill asked, as if completely clueless to my virulent discomfort with every facet of that hobby. "Mostly just play cards and blast tunes. I'd take naps in the house if Angie didn't think it was 'unprofessional', so I just slap on some shades and nap in the break house when she's not looking. Works every time."
"Aron Maiden, huh?" I asked, gesturing to his shirt. "Good band. I probably won't mind the tunes, so that's nice."
"Excellent!" he shouted. "Aron Maiden is killer."
"You're a real, entire person," I said. Bill came off like someone who stepped off a thirty five year old movie screen with absolutely zero self-awareness. It was weird, but this was a better introduction to the guy than seeing him fucking a Pokemon. I was just unfortunately aware, with everything going on, that he was also the guy I first met balls deep inside a Rattata, which made the entire situation all the fucking weirder for me to try and navigate. "Cards sounds okay though." I took another look at him again. I was overdressed for the job by a lot. Work boots seemed like the only real requirement here, which I presently lacked myself, but that was something I could fix. "So what do you do here, anyway?"
"I just do whatever, man. Angie and I share all the normal responsibilities, but she doesn't let me talk to people much. Last time I tried to use the computer it accidentally went viral."
My brow furrowed. "There was a funny internet video?"
"No, it locked me out and told me to send someone five thousand dollars if I wanted my files."
I stared at him in a vague confusion. He had to be fucking with me, right? Some part of this was an elaborate, weird joke and I was going to wake up from this all and find myself in a normal place again, several weeks in the past, getting an assignment that isn't here. But there I was trying to make some sort of sense of this while he acted like this was all really normal and sensible. It was bizarre, but I had little choice but to move on from it, clearing my throat and preparing myself for the weirdness to come. "Cool, okay." That was all I could say in the face of that. "I think I've seen all I needed to see."
As we left and locked up, I felt something prodding against my calf. I looked down in confusion, expecting it to be a Pokemon, but not expecting it to be the Chikorita, once more seeking affection from me. With an eager mewling noise, it brushed against my leg while its vines reached up toward my pocket. Surely, they could smell the treats still in my pocket, and they wanted one. "Hey, calm it down," I said, gently placing my hand over my pocket and keeping them from getting to it. What I didn't expect was for vines to yank my hand away and another to sneak hastily up into my pocket, which got me laughing my way through being robbed of a treat.
Chikorita took it into their mouth and munched down on it hastily, smiling up at me with a devious flare of knowing glee while they did so.
"You got me," I said, squatting down again and looking back toward them, my hand reaching for another caress along their cheek, one that Chikorita happily engaged with. "What's the deal with this Chikorita? They're very affectionate with me."
"Oh, she's been here a while," he said. "One of the Pokemon we just take care of now. When trainers don't want the eggs that their Pokemon lay, we keep them and try to find them homes, but nobody's been around lately who wants one."
"Oh no," I said, looking down at Chikorita again. She was joyous in the way she rubbed against my hand, and my other reached into my pocket to seize another treat and feed it to her. "Poor thing. I'll bring you more treats tomorrow, okay?" That was a quick way to tug at my heartstrings, and I didn't know what to say in response, but I knew she deserved that attention a lot more firmly. "This is my last one for now."
She made a happy noise and continued to rub against my hand as long as I held it out, before I finally stepped away and started back with Bill toward the break house again. Chikorita watched me go, and I kept looking back over my shoulder to her while she stared. It was a potent yank at my emotions, one that maybe I needed right now. It anchored me much more firmly in my decision to stay here and help out to see a Pokemon in need of affection, one abandoned here and grown up not even with her mother, but just by the kindness of humans who took care of her. It waws a weird situation to navigate emotionally, but I felt the necessity that came with it.
"How many abandoned Pokemon are here right now?"
"Not a lot. Angie's grandparents worked hard to get them adopted before they retired. We only have three right now. She's the youngest of them."
"I respect the care," I said. "Not putting them out into the wild where they won't belong." There was a care for Pokemon here, in spite of everything. "You guys must really love Pokemon."
"Yeah dude, we love Pokemon!" I expected him to say 'especially the sexy ones'. He didn't. "Angie and I picked our lives up to come take over. I love taking care of them."
Bill was a doofus. I had no reason to think he wasn't a doofus. But he seemed like a doofus with a heart now, and that was something I still struggled to fully comprehend while I opened up to these weird surprises. I shuffled my way into the break room feeling like my outrage was losing venom more and more by the second. First impressions were a weird thing like that. The more I carried on, the more it felt like I was learning the hard way that nothing about this was going to be simple or easy, and if I couldn't rely on that easy understanding of things, then I felt like this was all going to be a lot weirder. Whatever comfort I could find in simplicity was gone.
**************************
My first day of work didn't involve much work, and yet it still felt utterly exhausting once I was on the other end of things. Pizza was neat. I headed home after a day's work with a beeper now set beside my bed. I was on call at all times in case of an emergency. It was a reasonable ask, and I was now basically a real doctor, expected there during the day to help in their care and probably have some grunt work offloaded onto me in the process. Even that was pretty okay, my eyes; there were just a lot of questions left hanging, a lot of frustrations to have to contend with that I didn't have even the first idea how to handle as I shuffled into my childhood home.
It was a whole other level of defeat to do that, to slink my way back home after everything that had gone down. I was going to be here two years until my internship was done. I came in through the front door, hoping I could just stealth my way past everything and get upstairs without trouble, away from prying eyes and away from anyone who was going to talk to me. Things weren't stellar with my mom and hadn't been for a while now, and my sister was always out to make up for lost time any chance she got. With my head full of an overwhelming mess of frustrations, I just didn't want to fight with any of it. I wanted some shred of peace so I could sort out the fucked up thoughts all swirling through my head, and I didn't the patience for it.
"I thought they were going to keep you at the daycare," called a voice. "Get some confirmation you're part Pokemon and the doctor just made a mistake thinking we were twins."
"Sorry, unfortunately we're related another day. Should've strangled me in the womb when you had the chance." I turned with a frustrated sigh toward my twin sister, Amy. Almost as tall as I was, pale as the fucking moon, her hair dyed that kind of unnatural bluish black harvested at goth concerts. Dressed to the nines in black and straps and leather and lace, she looked like she had walked off the set of a horror movie where she was the villain.
"Don't be stupid," she said. "If I want to ascend to godhood, I will need to sacrifice your blood in place of my own."
"How kind of you let me keep living until then. I'm going to go hang myself and ruin that plan for you."
"Don't threaten me with good news."
Amy and I had been at odds for so long I wasn't even sure why anymore, I just knew that we were both trapped in an endless cycle of taking shots at one another while both avoiding our mom as much as we possibly could. That was our unspoken accord; no matter what happened, there was a real enemy, and if it came to it, we'd stand together. We'd just do so both holding knives to the other's back. Siblings!
I continued my way upstairs, ceding the last comment to her for this exchange just to get away and give my head time to process things. I needed to think about this all a lot more clearly and maybe find some degree of grounding in the face of this all. Up into my bedroom, still decorated in movie and band posters, cramped full of shelves of books and games, my computer desk that was actually just an old table someone was throwing out one time. Everything was all so expected and normal and familiar, and that was somehow a bad thing as I dropped onto my bed and felt the ways in which life was very much not normal and sane anymore, but was still fucking everything that it used to be. There was no change of pace, no better difference. Misery continued to escalate and I felt myself in a position of absolute confusion now, trying to understand how any of this was supposed to work.
I had a new job. They fucked Pokemon at that job. Their own. The ones left there. Everything sounded so completely baffling and deranged that I felt like surely I was losing my mind. Like I was misremembering what I'd seen and coping through raw trauma. Like I'd stepped into some kind of ritual sacrifice and I was just turning it into sex because that sounded less horrific. But it was just what I had to take on, what I needed to do for the sake of continuing to explore into these baffling feelings. Pokephilia wasn't illegal, but it was seen as highly questionable, to say the least. To see people entrusted to care for Pokemon doing it was surely some kind of ethical violation, right?
"If I asked Bill about ethics he'd ask if I had a lisp," I muttered out loud. Why? I didn't know. I just had to put things out into the world and hope they made sense. I was caught in the weirdest fucking position here, having to wonder how much I wanted to put up with and how strange it all was. What did I do? Quietly accept everything? Look away? Play solitaire whenever they were fucking Pokemon? Countless questions ran through my head so dizzily that I wasn't sure how to process any of them individually. There was too much to keep track of, and my mind kept swirling around through indecisive bursts of weirdness. I had to figure out how I wanted to approach things I had no reason to think I'd have to approach.
Tomorrow was another day. I was going to have to do real, actual work tomorrow, probably, and I had to do that work knowing I was abiding by some pretty insane stuff. Angie and Bill seemed nice. Seemed like they cared about Pokemon. It was maybe all I could really do now to make sense of these things. Weird feelings offered up a view at something different and fundamentally insane, and I had to find out some way to make some kind of sense of all of that now. It was my only option, right?
I'd dreaded coming back to my home town for a reason. Now, I felt like maybe I had a sharper sense that every expectable frontier of wrongness that could have ensued was all a distraction, because the real insanity yet lay in wait for me. Boring small town nonsense? That was nothing. A Pokephile couple featuring a farm girl and a slacker doofus weren't in the plan, and they were maybe the chaos element that this place needed to become more exciting, but in doing so, it gave me a hell of a lot more to carry. But I cared about the Pokemon, and for that, I was going to see this insane situation out. But I'd do it. For the Pokemon who needed help whether things were on the level or not.
For that adorable, abandoned Chikorita who needed someone to care about her.
For the sake of getting through two years of whatever the fuck this was and moving on with my life good and proper. Back out of Solaceon, to literally anywhere in the world. I just had to not put down any roots and be prepared to run the hell away at the first sign anything was going to be trouble. Easy, right?