Chapter 02 - Care
Castelia City – The Cruel One's Hideout – Medical
An hour I had already been awake for and the pain throughout my body worsened, cuts reopening their wounds, a terrible headache, and with a dry and sore throat that felt with every breath I took shredded my insides. After waking to find Aqua, a female Oshawott with me, the same one who found me at the beach, no one had come inside to check in on us once. I did hear movement outside, but so far nothing yet but footsteps. I would've liked to have known why we were here, why did the Cruel One's bandaged me up and healed up some of the many wounds I had. Where were they, and what do they want from us?
"So you don't remember how you ended up washed ashore, your past or where you came from, but you only know your name?" Aqua asked in the chair next to my bed. We had talked about if I remembered anything else before Aqua found me on the beach, but I did not. Everything before that was just a huge blur and nothing else.
"Yeah, I don't even know how I ended up washed up on the beach covered in so many cuts." Nothing, no memories before I woke up on the beach, who I was or why I ended up like this? In that moment whilst lying on the bed staring up at the stained ceiling visible due to the hanging light bulb above me if anyone else I knew ended up washed ashore or where still in the water. Maybe someone I knew had been brought in by the Cruel One's just like I have. Someone who could provide me with answers about anything I wanted. "So Aqua, was that your home? You know the beach I got washed up on?"
Aqua shook her head. "No, I was just… um, passing by when I found you there." She paused briefly. "I live in this city with my parents… well; I used to live with them but not anymore…" She stared sadly at the floor in silence. Did she mean that being here meant that we were doomed to die, or was it something else. "This city is called Castelia City."
As soon as I heard the city's name, at the back of my head I heard a voice, a different one than to Aqua's repeating the city's name, but welcoming me I think to the city but slightly muffled on some of the words 'Welcome to Castelia City, joining the Sav- are we?' then all of a sudden I was jolted back to reality. "Zack? Zack are you alright?" Aqua asked, placing her paw on mine.
"Um… y-yeah, I thought I heard something…" I lied awkwardly, not knowing how I should handle this. It was a surprise to me, a voice I didn't know if was real or not welcoming me to this city, a voice I didn't recognize. I didn't think it would get me anywhere so I just remained quiet about it. "This city, what can you tell me about it?"
"Well it is a large city filled with many humans and trainer owned Pokemon. There are many gangs within this city; The Cruel One's is one of them, if not the most dangerous of gangs. I was told by my parents that this city have overall eleven gangs of wild Pokemon all controlling different sections, and each gang are all fighting for control of the city-" Aqua and I paused upon hearing a loud clanging noise outside the room we were in, but after that silence returned. "I don't know for sure if my parents meant this leader of the gang or not, but I was told she was a vicious and violent Pokemon once rumored to have killed twenty Pokemon all in one day to send a message to the rest of the city to say that she wasn't the kind of Pokemon to be messed around with during the first month of starting her own gang. But I don't know much about the landmarks or any other notable locations within this city or beyond it; I'm sorry, I wish I could give you more than just that."
Suddenly, the door of the room opened as two Pokemon entered the room, one with a lit candle in its paw; it was an elderly Audino followed by a Metagross. From the candles light, I could make out the other side of the room a lot better than it was in the darkness before. On the other side were many shelves full of boxes and boxes of what appeared to be used bandages and full boxes of empty syringes and bottles all with the 'Pokemon Center' written on the side. I knew what a Pokemon Center was, but I never had any images or past memories of being inside a Pokemon Center pop inside my head; talking to nurse joy about my Pokemon, my Pokemon with me, or anything that might've jolted my memories to reawaken, nothing.
"Ah, I see you are awake already." The Audino approached the bed, setting down the candle on a small coffee table near the side of my bed before placing a bag down at the foot of my bed with medical supplies inside. "Are you in a lot of pain right now? If so I have just the thing to help you." I nodded and allowed the Audino to heal me up; replacing bandages and patches with new ones that weren't soaked with blood from my cuts. The Audino applied some bottles of Potion on me, it didn't get rid of the pain completely, but it was better than nothing.
"I am Audino, I act as the gangs doctor." She greeted with a welcoming smile. "This here is Metagross, my assistant." Audino smiled at him as he grunted and walked off to the other side of the dark room carrying multiple boxes of medical waste. "Don't mind him, Metagross may look scary and act cold at times, but inside he is a cutie." She giggled and continued to clean my wounds starting with my left eye by undoing the patch.
"Is he going to make it? He's hurt really bad." Aqua asked as she leaned up on the bed, watching Audino closely as she applied some medicine onto my eyelid.
Audino nodded and lightly chuckled as she continued with her work. "He'll be just fine. Luckily the cuts weren't too deep, any deeper and you could have bled to death long before young Aqua here found you. However you do need plenty of rest if you want your cuts to heal up quickly." Audino had finished cleaning my wound on my left eye, but she didn't put on any patch this time. Her smile fell as she held up a mirror to my face, and there I saw not only the many cut on my face, from the huge three long scar across my left eyelid down to my cheek, but my left eye was gone. "When we found the two of you out there by the beach, your left eye had been sliced from the scratch you received by possibly another Pokemon of unknown kind. We had to remove your eye. I'm sorry…" Audino then inserted a glass eye into my left eye socket, a strange feeling and somewhat disturbing one since I could hear the squelching that followed as the glass eye slid through my eye lids and into the hollow space which once was occupied by my real eye, and then she put on an eye patch for me; a black fabric eye patch with a yellow outline to it. It was comfy, but a little tight at the strap digging into the back of my head.
"So what now?" I asked the Audino with caution. If the Cruel One's did hurt and kill trespassers, then why were they treating my wounds then? Why was this Audino being so nice to us? Maybe it was there way of keeping the prisoners alive and well so they can hurt their victims again until they get bored of them. That was my first thought on what they could've done. Aqua stood close to the bed after I asked that, staring intently at the Audino as if wanting to know what herself. "Now that you have brought us in, healed me, what do you intend to do with us?"
"To add you to our team of course." But it wasn't Audino that spoke; it was from another that entered the room after bursting the door wide open. Stepping into the light was a female Purrloin with her paws behind her back, stopping at the foot of the bed staring down at me with a bright welcoming smile similar to Audino's smile, but the Purrloin's smile was much wider looking as though she was happy to see me. "But first we had to take care of our injured guest being as you have already lost an eye and have been covered in so… many… scratches… b-blood…" Her voice trailed as she stared at my body, blushing the longer she stared. "So my Dewott guest, how are you feeling? Are they treating you well? Have you been fed and given plenty of water? You water types must like wat-"
"We shouldn't give them anything!" Snapped a male Buizel as he came into the light, readying his paws to attack us with a water type move at the ready. "They could be spies, they could be-" But the Buizel's argument was cut short by a loud smack from the Purrloin.
"They could need many things we don't know about!" She said to the Buizel, giving him a cold glare after she had slapped him across the face to silence him. "Medical as the Dewott needs you ignorant fool. Food, water, a place to sleep, security from the dangers of the outside. A Dewott this injured a spy you say? Hah, how ridiculous. He looks like he has been in battle recently. Oh and by the way Lucian-" She said to the Buizel smiling as she threatened him. "Interrupt me again, disobey my orders and you will meet your end quickly. So be a good little boy and rest up for the night. You'll want to be up and at 'em for tomorrow's feast." Lucian slowly nodded and walked back through the dark doorway but not before coldly glaring at both me and Aqua. Purrloin cleared her throat and turned to us (mostly towards me) and smiled. "You must forgive Lucian's untrustworthy attitude he has most of the time, he is like that with all potential recruits for our gang. Oh! W-where are my manners, my name is Purrloin, I am the leader of the gang most inhabitants of Castelia City have taken a liking to calling us 'The Cruel One's' because of our so-called aggressive nature and rebellion lifestyle we have going on over here, but once you get to know us, and I know soon you will, you will see that we are opposite of 'cruel' and accepting of those who have been cast out by the true 'Cruel One's' that have put us here; trainers who wanted this Pokemon rather than us, clans wanting so-called stronger Pokemon amongst their ranks, parents that want their young to succeed where they failed in life casting aside their troubled imperfect young so the other can reach for the top. So, might I ask what your name is?"
"My name's Zack. I don't know anything about my past before I ended up on the beach or how I ended up with these injuries. But this Oshawott found me on the beach, her name is Aqua." I said pointing over to Aqua. Purrloin followed my direction and her smile fell.
"Oh, the Oshawott is still here… I thought we already gotten rid of it." Purrloin said with a hint of disgust present in her tone of voice. I thought I had seen her scowl at Aqua for a moment. But I couldn't be sure because of my vision in my right eye faded in and out every now and again. Purrloin then walked over and stopped inches in front of Aqua with her arms crossed as she examined her from head to toe. "Let's see what we have here… adult Oshawott, perhaps around the same age as your Dewott companion." Purrloin leaned in and sniffed her head. "Definitely not the same scent as the other, so you two are not siblings or related to the other…Hmm… very well, I suppose you may serve use as target practice assistant or carrying boxes here and there." It was clear Purrloin didn't like Aqua, but the reason to it was unclear right now.
"Well, Zack; I wish you a speedy recovery. So rest until those wounds of yours are all healed up." She chuckled. "Also, whenever you are ready, feel free to come and talk to me about whether or not you want to stay with us. Everyone who does decide to stay will have a home here, we eat together, live all under the same building like a family, and we would love to have our loving family grow into a bigger but strong one." Purrloin smiled once more and turned to walk towards the large open door I could see from a candle someone was holding, watching it flicker in the dark hall outside before the door shut.
Audino waited as she heard Purrloin walk away, her footsteps echoing in the hallway, until it fell silent after hearing another door somewhere close, then Audino sighed. "Well, that was a relief…" Metagross approached her and placed one of his forelegs on top of her shoulder.
"It would seem Purrloin may have forgiven you after all." The aging Metagross chuckled, letting out a soft sigh. Audino sighed and touched his foreleg with her paw and smiled softly at him.
"Either that or she was trying to act 'nice' in front of her guests."
"What do you mean by that?"Aqua asked curious as to what Audino meant by 'forgiving' her. "Is she mad at you?"
Audino nodded her head. "Last week when Purrloin was injured, a small burn on her stomach. So of course I set her on the very same bed you are on Zack, applied her medicine only to realize that the Burn Heal wasn't working. So I applied them again and again, but until the eighth bottle… I then realized I had accidentally applied not Burn Heal, but antidote… eight bottles of Antidote used up."
"Never seen Purrloin that angry before and let her victim's live to see another day." Metagross quickly said, instantly grunted and shied away.
"She said I was senile and some other nasty words here and there I won't say on promise from my mate here to 'never again utter any other foul word ever again so help me I will never be your assistant'" She said in a deep voice at the last part, imitating Metagross' deep voice, only to further increase his shyness. "I guess we kinda got off easy because I'm the only medic within this gang. I know what you two are already thinking; why are we here? Well to answer that question is simple; we haven't got anywhere else to go." She turned to Metagross. "Purrloin took us in when we had nothing, no home, no food, no hope left. We were grateful to be taken in by at least someone." Turning to us with a smile, she clapped her paws together and said with a cheerful tone. "So as for you two, how about we fix you up with some good delicious food to fill you both up, hm?" We both nodded at that, food sounded more than good, I wasn't sure how long I had gone without any food. But looking at Aqua, it looked like she needed the food more than I did for how skinny she was.
Sitting up on the headboard of the bed after the two elderly Pokemon had left, Aqua turned to me and whispered. "What do you think? About this place I mean? I have heard about the rumors about this gang, about the leader mostly so seeing her up close… I just… I have a bad feeling about being here."
"Maybe things will seem better when we finally get out of this room." I said trying to adjust myself into a more comfortable position. "And besides, Purrloin did say we had a choice if we wanted to stay here or not. So until my wounds have been healed up, let's stick around and find out what the gang is really like. The two Pokemon seem nice, so maybe there are others like them here, Pokemon that can help give us a better understanding about this place. And my memory for one thing, I still don't know anything like where I came from or who I knew before I ended up on that beach. Maybe we could ask around and see if anyone here knows if anyone else was washed up ashore besides me."
"That may be, but we should be careful here nonetheless. Hey, how about I help you out on helping you recover your forgotten memories?" She said as she quickly leaned in close to me her paws resting on the sides of the bed, almost leaned on my right arm if she had moved a few more inches, an arm covered in so many unhealed wounds and bruises. "When we get a chance to go outside, I could show you around the city. Maybe you'll see something you might recognize in the city, or maybe you might see someone who knows who you are."
I agreed at that needing all the help I could get in order for me to recover my memories. That night, or whatever time if was inside this dark and windowless room I thought about what kind of Pokemon or humans I knew before any of this, but mostly on asking myself why I was like this all covered in so many cuts and having lost a left eye? Did someone attack me, like I was cast out or something? Leaving me for dead? Perhaps there were evil Pokemon or humans out there who had did this to me, searching for me still? So what if they were outside in this city called Castelia? I didn't know any moves and I would be wide open for an easy mark. I was worried about that, worried that if Aqua was with me in the city she could be targeted and hurt all trying to help me out. Maybe it would be best if I went out into the city alone and try to see if I can at least remember something instead of involving others. But Aqua knew this city, I didn't. If I got lost I may end up wandering down the wrong alley and found by some bad Pokemon or humans and that'll be it. If Aqua was with me she could help provide at least a quick navigation around the streets, she did grow up here.
I wasn't sure why Aqua wanted to help me recover my memories, maybe she didn't want to be alone while we were here in this gangs hideout, or perhaps she was just being friendly. But I was happy that she would be with me during our stay here with this gang until all of my wounds had healed up. We weren't sure what the others may be like, but we were happy to find out this together rather than alone. I wasn't sure how long it would take for my memories to come back to me, not knowing who needed me during my absence, those that mattered, I would only hope that they were alright.
To be continued...
Trivia:
This chapter introduced Purrloin way earlier than I had originally wanted to. She would be introduced as the leader 5 chapters into the story when Zack and Aqua were doing work at the hideout instead of at the start, angry that she was not informed about the two working there with them.