Celadon City
1.2
The remedy is the experience, which is a dangerous liaison.
--Jason Mraz, 'The Remedy (I Won't Worry)'
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Emmett pressed his back against the picket fence of Hoenn's Route 121. The rock in his hand was light and flat—a good skipping stone. He would have put it his pocket and brought it to the beach for that purpose had he not thought that locating another rock in the grassy area would be too much work. He could hear the pelipper swooping casually over the area behind him, occasionally making unintentional contact with the ground. Emmett was not exactly sure what the creature was doing, but he had finally found one and wasn't about to let his questioning distract him from it; he had no intention of giving it opportunity to get away.
He watched the bird's movements through the slits in the fence. The lumbering creature hit the ground once more, and landed to preen. Emmett waited a second, and then threw the rock.
He missed.
Emmett gave the ground an exasperated look before beginning to crawl around in search of another stone.
In short, he eventually found one, after much blood (annoying little zigzagoon), sweat (Lilycove was always warm), and tears (the awful little creature had bit him quite hard). He thought it might be a good idea to find more than one rock, but he opted to instead have faith in his throwing skills.
This rock hit, much to Emmett's delight. He mentally congratulated himself, taking his attention away from the pokèmon. He soon discovered that this was a terrible mistake, seeing as it was not much later that the pelican responded by slamming hard into the boy, sending him rolling several feet.
Emmett rolled onto his back and took a deep breath. The first hit had not been nearly as gruesome as he was expecting it to be, and there was no blood so he christened himself perfectly fine. He sat up to survey his surroundings. Emmett managed to catch sight of the pelipper before it decided its next move, but he froze. It was about then that it dawned on him that he had no idea how to retaliate, and the unconscious half of mind had not kicked in and told him what to do as he had expected it to.
A shot of water exploded in his face, and he fell backwards. He lay on his back for several seconds, staring at the sky as if it would give him all of the answers. Or it could just suck him up right then and there, seeing as if he ceased existing, so would his problems. Yes, that second one sounded quite appealing.
The pelipper swooped down for another assault and Emmett braced himself, covering his head with his arms.
If you don't much mind, we will now backtrack a bit. And if you do mind, well, that is quite unfortunate.
After what was in Emmett's opinion a rather unfruitful conversation with his grandfather, he made it his business to unearth Mishu and Hank.
They were twins, the former named after his grandmother's recently deceased canine and the latter after his grandfather's only childhood pet. They were the obligatory genetic experiments floating around the place, or at least that was how Larissa had explained it to Emmett. In truth, Larissa did not know how they had gotten there. They had been around long before her and anything she said to her little brother about them was speculation. They scared her, the strange little creatures. She didn't much care for all of this talk about 'regular,' 'lesser,' and 'greater' pokèmon, nor did she wish to become involved in Emmett's strange infatuation with her grandfather's job. She preferred her grandma and the business aspect of the place, anyway.
Emmett found Mishu where he always seemed to be, hovering around the heads of the lab's employees. The expression that came over his face when he saw Emmett was in fact that of elation, though it was not something immediately apparent to someone who had not spent many hours trying to figure out how to equate this creature's expressions to those of a human being. Emmett was, in fact, one with a lot of time on his hands. This, coupled with the fact that he had better things to do than his homework, provided for very clear communication between boy and pokèmon.
It was Mishu who, being raised with humans and speaking their language quite clearly, had come up with the idea of Emmett trying to figure out how to handle however much of him was whatever kind of pokèmon.
Returning to our present time, Emmett stumbled into his grandparents' house. He ran shakily up to the guest room that had come to be his own over the years, and stared himself in the mirror.
As soon as he moved his hand from his face, blood ran onto the vanity. He pounded his fist on the now permanently stained wood, agitated. In an act of instant karma, a small porcelain Cheshire Cat figuring dropped from the top of the vanity's mirror onto the floor and shattered. Emmett would have screamed in exasperation did he not fear that it would worsen the condition of his nose. He loved that little trinket and had it since he was young.
Emmett did not know what to do with his injury. He did know that he was either supposed to squeeze his nose to stop it from bleeding, or put his head between his knees. He also had heard that one of them made the bleeding worse, but could not remember which one it was.
He put his head back and squeezed his nose with one hand, while with the other he groped the vanity for a tissue box that had been directly in front of him not three seconds earlier. He located it and tried to clean both himself and the wood up with the flimsy tissues. It probably does not come as a surprise to say that this endeavor failed miserably.
Larissa chose this moment to walk into the room.
Emmett turned around and gave a surprisingly enthusiastic fake smile, "What brings you here?"
"Everyone is looking for you, Em. I told mom you were coming home, and you freaking disappear again! Figures you'd be here." Larissa paraphrased the words her mother had said earlier absentmindedly as she toyed with a flower hanging on the wall in the room. It was a few moments later that she actually looked at her little brother. She knew she was supposed to be the smart, calm, reliable one, but he was just insane sometimes. "What the hell did you do?"
His head still back, Emmett hobbled across the room and kicked the door shut. He proceeded to make a show of sitting himself down in front while his head was craned in that odd position and his hand seemingly adhered to his nose. "I did it," he said hoarsely, tired.
"You hit yourself in the nose?" Larissa took her phone out of her pocket. There was blood still running freely down Emmett's face, and if it didn't stop soon she intended to call some kind of medical authority. She had seen a boy nearly die from blood loss on her school playground, and she had no intention of repeating the incident with her brother.
"No," Emmett said, rolling his eyes, "the pelican-ipper thing did that." He took a deep breath. "The pelipper."
"You got attacked by a pelipper?" She lowered the phone, curious and more than mildly amused. He was notoriously spontaneous, her brother, and this was absolutely going to be a story worthy of recounting to her friends at the lunch table.
"Well, yeah. But, no, see…" he paused and lowered his voice in the most dramatic fashion he could, "I attacked the pelipper." He waited for her response, eyes wide with some strange kind of awe.
Larissa knew what he meant by this as soon as the words left his mouth, but she refused to admit it to herself. She swallowed hard and attempted a ridiculing smile, "What are you talking about?" The sentence came out monotone and without meaning. It figured that Emmett would bring the extra baggage home with him. The whole issue had almost left when he did, and she was looking forward to escaping it entirely when she went away to college.
He took a few deep breaths, excited, exhausted, and in considerable pain that was only worsening as he absentmindedly squeezed his nose tighter and tighter. Every time he felt blood roll down his hand, he tightened his grip and commanded the flow to stop. "Rissa, I did it. I was moping at Mishu--"
"Mishu told you to attack a pelipper? Why didn't you attack, like, a rattata or something?" She sat down next to him, her curiosity steadily overcoming her fears, something curiosity tends to enjoy doing.
"They don't have rattata here. I did get bit by a zigzagoon, though." He paused again. The pain was working its way up into his head, becoming steadily more noticeable. It throbbed as he thought, stunting the mechanisms inside his brain. "He basically told me that we're stuck with this and we should figure it out. Riss, I didn't expect it to work. God, it was so weird." He shook his head and shivered. Larissa wasn't sure if the movement was because the attack had been horrific to execute or if the pain from his nose was horrific to put up with.
"What was it?" Her voice was lowering now, too, as she became immersed in the moment.
Emmett smiled. "Hah. I don't even know! It was the weirdest thing I've ever felt. It didn't hurt, but it almost felt like it should have. I didn't even think about it. I mean, I did, I was sort of aggravated that I couldn't figure it out because Mishu made it pretty clear that I should be able to do something. Which is weird, by the way, that he'd know, but anyway, it just happened, I…" He let his sentence trail off as a sneeze began to sneak up his nose. He tried to stop it.
He couldn't.
Blood flew everywhere, and began once more to flow down his face. He shuddered and then whimpered. Larissa jumped up to get the tissues box, throwing it casually in her brother's direction as she tried to remember where she had put the phone. The box hit Emmett in the side of the head.
"Rissa!" he groaned, trying not to laugh. There was comedy in the situation somewhere, and, evidently, some conscious part of his mind had found it. He was too exhausted to effectively fight it, and who would deny joy when they are in pain?
The small phone had conveniently made its way underneath the bed that sat in the center of the room. How it got there Larissa did not know, but she had found in her lifetime that all telephones had minds of their own and refused to stay where they were last put down. The gadget was eventually located, and medical assistance promptly called upon.
It was, if nothing else, an eventful first weekend back home for Emmett Solvati, complete with broken nose and several stitches. Emmett would always find it an enjoyable story to tell despite the injury, as I assure you, have I.
