Warnings: Sleep deprivation, colds
Chapter One - Tourists
Todoroki Shoto was always the first one in to unlock the door every morning. His Vulpix were always the first customers. The entire bakery smelled like malasada by eight. Everything opened at nine on the dot.
None of this happened that Friday morning.
Instead, Todoroki Shoto woke up at seven thirty with a cold and a close to dead phone that was telling him he was absolutely not going to work today if he wanted to survive until morning. He managed the last bit of his energy and his phone battery to text his boss the problem and put his phone on the charger.
Twenty seconds later, he was out like a light, only to wake up to his vulpix whining and licking his exposed cheek.
"I bet it was you who got me sick," he told the owner of the chilly tongue. Fjorm whined her discontent and touched her nose to his, causing him to jump and almost bite his tongue. Her companion wheezed and hissed behind her.
Shoto shut his mismatched eyes. "Laugh. It will only delay food." He tried to keep his voice stern, as Touya had taught him. Alphonse only wheezed louder. He didn't believe him.
Shoto didn't believe himself.
Normally, habit would have forced him out of bed but his lungs protested him even speaking, so it was starting to look like an impossibility at this point. He almost wanted to tell his impossible partners to hunt some rattata and call it a day.
Or a yungoos. The two of them could eat a yungoos and nobody would care.
Then Alphonse bit down onto his ear and he grumbled. "Fine, fine."
Apparently all they wanted to hunt were stationary objects today. Lazy little imps. Shoto pulled himself out of bed, wincing at the stickiness and the sweat dampening his shirt and the white and red bangs sticking to his forehead.
"You'd better not eat it all," he warned them. "That will be all you get until tomorrow." He coughed to prove his point and dislodge the gunk in his throat. How did he even get a cold this early in the summer?
"The tapu are cursing me," he muses. A thrill of pride filled him in the seconds after he said those words.
Fuyumi-nee-san had been correct. He was… adapting, much more quickly than he had anticipated.
If only he could have brought her with him. Seeing as Natsuo hadn't bothered.
He shook himself and sneezed. Wiping his nose with a tissue, he wandered through the kitchen. It was harder than it looked, considering he was dodging his foxes' paws every few steps.
Within minutes, Shoto emptied the last of the food bags into the bowls. For a moment, he squinted at the foil and then rubbed his eyes.
"Stay," he told both vulpix. Both mewed their acknowledgement with their mouths full, leaving him alone to put a mask over his face and pull on actual clothes. By the time he was toeing on shoes without socks (which was making him shift on antsy toes from one to the other), Fjorm was at his side, breathing gentle clouds at his ankles.
"You're coming with." It was meant to be a question, but failed to be one. Fjorm mewed. "That means Alphonse too then." He paused to cough. "Get him before he eats your dinner."
Moments later, the three of them were out of the house. By now, after not even an hour on his feet, Shoto's head was throbbing madly. He added a new box of painkillers to his mental grocery list as he walked down two streets. He constantly sent a separate prayer to the tapu that the malasada owner had no interest in expanding and sending another store to the depths of Hau-oli.
Then he cursed himself. He had forgotten to put on sunscreen. He would be burnt to a crisp when he got home. He had his mother's pale skin and his father's heat absorption.
Neither of which were comforting thoughts, so Shoto proceeded to abandon them.
The cashier at the door clucked sympathetically as he walked in. "You too, dearie?"
Shoto shivered in response, able to blame it on the cold rather than the candid affection that was prone to the Alolan people. Three years of it and it still made him consider diving into the chilly smog of Black City just to escape the sheer good-naturedness of it all. "Me too?" he parroted for lack of anything better to say.
The woman nodded, arms flexing as she reached down underneath the counter. She probably had the cold recovery pack on standby all of the time. Kids were always wearing themselves out and getting sick, he supposed.
"Oh, dear old Hala just told me his daughter was under the weather and went to get him one of these, and same for Ilima's wife and son. They were too long out in that recent monsoon. Artificial they said it was. Good it's over now. Hau's still up and running of course, but a little sniffle would never get that boy down."
Shoto nodded vaguely. He had not been out in the storm for more than an hour total in the runs between work and his apartment. That shouldn't have been enough to get him this sick, but you never knew. Alola and Hoenn did their storms in a similar way after all.
He sniffled behind his mask and the woman tutted.
"Listen to you," she chided. "Go on and get the rest of your things so you can go rest properly young man."
Shoto was more than happy to obey. Vulpix at his heels, he hurried through the aisles with his basket.
The little store wasn't too crowded. Most people did their shopping at the malls anyway, but it was still nice to have some quiet as he browsed for feed and human food and extra supplies. This just had to last him a week or so, except the food. That needed to stretch to two.
It's not like Midnight won't try to pay you more anyway, a little voice reminded him in the back of his head.
He didn't want her to though, that was the problem. She worked him very little and paid him very much in his opinion. But she also said his looks were good business. So it was probably in her best interest to keep him happy, whatever his good business was.
He reached the register and grimaced behind his mask. There was someone chatting with the cashier. A creature padded about on four cream colored paws, climbing up on its hind legs to rub at the boy's jeans. Their head was a mass of green curls, looped about in a mess on their head that eclipsed their ears. The creature at his feet let out a yipping chittering sound and raised itself up on its back paws. Its forepaws clambered to reach his arm. The person looked down and grinned. "I know, I know, we'll go soon."
"What a feisty little thing," said the cashier with a laugh. "Got a lot of spirit, does he?"
"Had to to keep up with my friends," the boy replied. "He's still not evolved yet, so he's gotta keep up somehow."
"How sweet," said the woman. As the person laughed, Shoto couldn't help but think it must not be sweet at all.
That brief moment of not observing gave Alphonse all the opportunity he needed to scoot over to the group of people and bark loudly at them all.
Shoto groaned. Both human and pokemon jumped. The quilava turned and barrelled into Alphonse. And it was clearly a much stronger pokemon because within seconds, his little idiot was crying his eyes out. He coughed underneath his face mask and moved over. Slowly because moving made his head throb, but quick enough that they noticed.
"Sorry," he managed to say. "Alphonse, you idiot… Why do you always have to try and pick on things bigger than you?"
His fire vulpix made a pitiful whine, now buried under the creature's likely heavy weight. Fjorm rolled her ice blue eyes as she trotted over to bark at the quilava. The quilava barked back, ruby red eyes narrowed into slits. Then, he yipped and clambered off back to his human's side. Alphonse groaned with every step. He picked himself off and shook before trotting back to Shoto with his tails drooping down.
The other trainer's face was flushed. "Kat-chan you know better than to answer like that. He was just saying hello, wasn't he?"
Kat-chan the quilava made a disagreeing grumble as their trainer went up to Shoto. "I'm sorry about that, Kat-chan's usually better about these things. Personally I think it's the Alola air, it's really similar to Pallet's, you see and-"
"It's all right." Shoto raised a hand to punctuate his words, voice muffled by the mask. "Alphonse is an idiot who likes picking fights he can't win." He scratched his partner behind the ears as Fjorm returned, smacking her partner with her tails. He barked at her and earned a scoffing sound in returned.
"That's Kat-chan's problem too, if I'm honest." Shoto straightened as the other grinned at him. "I'm Midoriya Izuku. I'm here to explore the islands for a while and hunt down some Alolan pokemon. And you are?"
Shoto hesitated. That was not an Unovan accent. At best, it was Sinnohan. Still, did he want to risk everything on a single greeting? Definitely not. "...Shoto."
Midoriya smiled. "It's nice to meet you Shoto-kun."
"Just Shoto," he said, throat raspy and hoarse. "It's not a big deal, Midoriya."
Midoriya beamed for a moment, the sun coming out and warming Shoto's face pleasantly rather than with prickling overwhelming heat. Then a puzzled look came over his face. "You're sick."
"Thank you for noticing the obvious," he said dryly. The notability of his situation had worn off at this point and now he was tired and just wanted to pay for his crap and go home, which had been the entire plan from the start. But of course he got sidetracked. "Do you mind if I pay?"
"Oh go ahead!" Midoriya scrambled with his things and pulled away, leaving Shoto dropping his own for the cashier. They grinned sympathetically at him.
"The dangers of having pets," she said with a smile. From under the counter came a small zapping sound. The cashier's magnemite likely.
Fjorm and Alphonse made identical cries of disdain at being pets. Shoto merely took solace in the fact that no one could see his mouth and the way it was twitching away from its blank line.
Trainers… he really didn't know what to do with them anymore. And all they usually were just customers anyway. He didn't need to worry his head on it too much. There were other things that he could do and other ways to make money beyond battling. Battling was just both the easiest and the hardest. And his pokemon weren't pets, not really. THey just weren't battlers and that was good enough for him.
"Something like that," he finally said after a while.
Shoto was never so happy to pay and escape in his life.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the boy did not just disappear from Hau'oli. He was sometimes with a tall, stocky boy, stiff to the teeth and with a giant silver bird on one stocky arm. Sometimes a pikachu spun about his shoulders. Other times there was a brunette with a familiar creature overtaking her shoulders with its blue paws.
But they had never stepped into the malasada shop before today either so Shoto had little to no frame of reference to understanding them. Nor had he wanted any.
The girl was gesturing happily at the counter though, so it didn't seem like he was getting a choice in the matter. Reaching the counter, she smiled up at him.
"Hi there!" She sounded that soft kind of bubbly, the kind you associated with cotton candy and oran berry juice. "What do you recommend?"
"Malasadas," he said, brain having gone completely blank at the question as it always did.
Instead of steaming, the girl laughed, and Shoto forced his brain back into cohesion. "My pokemon would recommend the spicy and sweet ones though."
"His vulpix are smart, I'd trust them," commented the familiar green boy, who flashed him a smile of his own.
And Shoto felt no flip flop in his stomach of nerves. But he did feel something pleasant all the same.
A/N: Heyo! It's time for fun! I'll update this one as I finish new chapters. (We're at ch 4 btw) I'm trying to keep Todoroki as in character for his age as possible (unlike phoenix where I'm aiming to keep him as five years old as possible) Please let me know what you think!
Challenges: Poke No Hero Big Bang.
Thank you to sheepy for the cover art!
