Chapter 2: Waking Up Off the Edge of the Map
Yang was never a morning person in the best of times. She tended to sleep until eleven if she had nowhere special to be. And if she absolutely had to wake up earlier than that, it took her about half an hour for her brain to warm up and actually pay attention to her surroundings. Not the best trait for a huntress in training to have, but when your biggest concerns tend to be early morning classes or the family dog diving into your covers in a stormy night, you tend to relax.
Of course this wasn't her normal morning. It wasn't just that her brain refused to really register anything more complicated than "people keep talking too loud" and "the lights are way too bright". It was like her aura was being pushed beyond the point of exhaustion, somehow fogging her brain and leaving her entire body limp. Not a drugged limp, more like she spent all day working out and passed out due to somehow going way beyond what she should have handled in a single day. It was the sort of tired that forced you to wake up regardless of how much you wanted to go back to oblivion because your brain wants to punish you for being so stupid. She could barely muster the energy to breathe, much less open her eyes.
"Temperature a hundred and fifteen!"
"Holy shit, she should be sweating rivers! Who the hell gets that warm and shivers?! We need icepacks!"
"Fever later, the bleeding's getting worse! Come on people, it's not that hard to stitch a hole like that! The cut's so clean you'd think a scyther went through a bamboo tube, not human muscles and bone!"
"It'd be 'easier' if her muscles didn't keep moving around like she's trying to do push-ups in her sleep! I swear it's like the more we help, the more problems it makes!"
"What's taking so long to figure out her blood-type?! We're running out of O positive!"
"She's gaining consciousness. Pentathol, now!"
She didn't have nearly enough awareness to realize they were talking about her. Only enough to notice a needle make a small pinch on her upper arm..and then her entire body seized in pain.
"FUCK!"
"HOLY- FIRE JUST BURST FROM THE STUMP?!"
"Screw that! The gurney's on fire!"
She didn't know where a burst of energy came from. Maybe adrenaline, but whatever it was, it lasted long enough for her to sit up, open her eyes, and scream. Screaming about the pain in her arm, the sight of a stream of blood and actual blazing fire launching from her upper right bicep, the fire seeming to spread all around her. What little rational thought she could muster noticed that she didn't see Blake or anyone familiar in what felt like a hospital room with her, which made her panicking even worse.
And just as suddenly as it came, consciousness slipped from her. The combination of shock and fire consuming the oxygen she didn't use to scream made it feel like she was drowning. She had enough awareness to fight the drop to oblivion, especially since all the doctors, or were some of them nurses, looked too busy being a combination of shocked, scared, and intrigued to do anything more than stare in wonder and talk. Definitely not a comforting si..
"Well, the bleeding's stopped at least."
"Fuck you, my glove caught on fire! I thought we were working on a human, not a magmar! Where did the professor even 'find' this girl, anyway?!"
"I don't know but she's stabilizing now. I'm going to see what's taking so long analyzing her blood. Anyone up for talking to the professor?"
"Definitely me. I trained to take care of people. Pokémon and Pokémon/human hybrids are out of my expertise."
The next time Yang felt like she was waking up, there was no fogginess to her thoughts. It was with a scary amount of awareness she opened her eyes and scanned her surroundings.
The bed she was on was too soft to be a hospital issue. Hell, it was too soft to be her dorm bed or in her room in Patch. Soft enough that her body gave the mattress a very severe dip, about two or three inches, and she had to grab the metal headrest to sit up without different parts of her body sinking further. Her right arm wasn't cooperating though. Probably because it was missing..huh. That probably deserved more attention than her surroundings. She remembered having it when she rushed to help Blake, then..nothing. Why did Blake need help again? Just asking the questions in her head was giving her a migraine. Probably should focus on her surroundings again.
Every part of the headrest was decorative. What she thought were just curved bars with strange bumps turned out to be stylized snakes. Snakes that comically looked like they were hanging onto a tree in the center for dear life. And that tree seemed to have a tired, long weathered expression on its face. Kind of childish but the bed was way too large for a kid.
The amount of detail was too much for it to be from some cartoon she'd never heard of, and that was some very firm material. It 'looked' like gold, but gold would have had at least a little give as she got herself to a sitting position, doing a one handed pull up. Not a loose screw to be felt as she ran her fingers across as much of the surface as she could reach, and it was polished like someone was either trying to sell it or they loved looking at it more than sleeping.
The room the bed was in seemed less like a bedroom and more like one half library and one half chemistry lab. At least if the desk with a microscope and around a dozen vials of different colored liquids was any indication. It's not like she knew the difference between one field of research and another. All she knew was this place did 'not' scream "place for injured people" or "relaxing place to sleep" to her. As much as she wanted to be on edge in an unfamiliar place, there wasn't anything that implied any threat. The lights were soft, the rug was a grassy green, the wallpaper a sky blue. Wherever she was, it wasn't what she imagined prison would be like at all, or a pervert's sex dungeon. The very expensive bed was put intoa random unoccupied room, which sent a rather interesting mixed message she couldn't really translate. What, did a friend of Weiss decide to take her in? No, wait, Weiss didn't have any friends outside of Beacon. Or if she did, none of them lived in Vale.
A constant beeping drew her attention to what looked like medical equipment. Well, like if you only paid attention to the heart monitor at the top. She was used to those having a blue line, not red, but the periodic noise and the way it bounced up and down were similar enough. At least compared to the medical dramas her dad liked to watch. Nice, steady beat that could drive you crazy after a while. There were a lot of other readouts, from six feet up to the wheels, many of them with jargon that meant nothing to her.
More concerning was the fact that they took the half of Ember Celica she should still have from her arm to hook her up to the various machines. She moved to take it off but..right, she didn't even have an elbow on her right anymore, much less anything to unstrap that complicated device from her. How did that happen again? And why wasn't she freaking out? Waking up in a strange place with a missing limb should have made her more nervous than Ruby when something she tinkered on backfired somehow.
More importantly, if she was in friendly territory, where the hell was the rest of her team? Ruby should have been making a moat into the floor around the bed in a combination of pacing and crying.
Eventually she mustered the energy to get to her feet, though she needed to use the readout equipment to avoid falling flat on her face. How much of that was general weakness and how much was her balance being thrown off? Just how much balance did she really need to stand at all? Did something with wheels really offer the kind of balance a cane might? Great, she was wondering about too many things at once with no way to answer any of it. Focus on what she 'could' figure out. Leave the rest for later.
For the hell of it, she checked if the equipment she was using as a wheeled crutch had an aura readout. Ah, there, underneath something with a lot of jargon next to symbols that made no sense. Small red bar that didn't even fill a tenth of the rectangle. Huh. Well at least part of the bar was filled. But that really didn't explain much.
She would have expected more pain than fatigue at that. It wouldn't be the first time her aura had been broken after all. Of course the most serious injury she ever had was being knocked out for a few minutes after being flung into the roof of a train car. Not..
[Cold steel burned through the flesh of her arm instantly. It was like her body was replaced by a plasticine duplicate. No resistance, no time to react. Just as soon as it began the pain began to dull, as did her eyesight. Her aura went straight from full to nonexistent in less than a second and she had absolutely no idea how or why.
If anything, her senses couldn't dull fast enough. The man who just hurt her, who had been hurting Blake, slowly turned around as she dropped limply to the ground. He flicked his sword casually, as if he couldn't be bothered to take the effort to wipe her blood from his blade. And while she couldn't see his eyes behind that mask, his grin wouldn't have looked out of place on a sadistic kid with a magnifying glass.
Her last sight as darkness overtook her was Blake crawling over her body, saying..something. She sounded so far away though. Despite being practically draped over her she felt much, much further away than that horned swordsman. Shit, she could hear his footsteps as he slowly approached. See the fire behind him highlight him like something out of a horror movie.]
The rushing memories made her stomach churn, and while she didn't have any food to puke, she still bent over and hacked, a yellowish liquid splattering onto the rug and dribbling down the side of her mouth, her throat burning with more intensity than her actual injury. An injury that shifted from 'odd' to 'disturbing' in less than a second. She could 'feel' herself clenching that fist, pulling it up to her chin, even felt the sensation on her chin! But there was nothing to 'see', and when she tried to slap herself with her seemingly invisible limb, it was..indescribable. Feeling the texture of the blow without the pressure. The expected sting on her cheek, without..what the fucking..
Any further thoughts of movement, amateur self-doctoring, trying to understand what was with her arm, or reliving recent traumas were cut off by the sound of footsteps. Actual footsteps. Heavy footed, so not a member of her team, and too fast paced to be walking.
The only door she could see in the room burst open, and any small sense of threat died as she saw the winded, gray haired man. He looked somewhere between fifty and sixty, and whatever athleticism he used to have had long turned to flab. Weiss probably had more muscle..and his hairline was a childhood nightmare. Receding and dulling in color in ways that no dye she knew of could really hide. It held the attention just long enough for her to acknowledge there were scarier things, and still hope that never happened to her.
Still, it didn't take him too long to catch his breath. "Ah..you're finally awake. Good morning. Well, afternoon, but the sun is still up. That's got to count for something."
Casual greeting with some nervous humor. Maybe he saw some of the footage from the tournament and didn't want to..no, if he was afraid of her he wouldn't be alone. And she wouldn't have woken up in an expensive bed with nothing but medical equipment and her clothes. She opened her mouth to speak, not even sure what she'd say, and half way through the word 'what' she went into a coughing fit.
That prompted the old man to close the distance and offer her a bottle of a yellowish liquid. "Easy there. You've been asleep for a little over.."
He checked his watch on his other hand. "..thirty six hours. I probably should have hooked you up to something to at least keep you hydrated, but I wasn't sure if that might affect your natural healing. Speaking of, do you mind if I get a better look at those readouts?"
Oh right, leaning against the equipment like a wheeled cane 'would' obscure other people's view. As confused as she was, it didn't feel like she needed to act tough around this guy. Just collapse onto the bed again, preferably in a position someone generous might call sitting, and grab the bottle. Wait, reach with the hand still attached.
At least there was no cap on it. She wouldn't have been able to muster a groan at that. Giving it a tentative sip, she was relieved it didn't taste 'bad'. Not that it tasted good, either. It was like someone put blueberries and pickles in water, stirred them up, and didn't really give a damn how it tasted. While she wouldn't go out of her way to drink it, she wasn't completely repulsed, either.
What 'really' surprised her, though, was how much 'better' it made her feel. Judging from the beeps and how the aura gauge filled to about halfway, going from red to yellow, the stuff was better than any of the aura supplements she'd heard of. Those just let people heal faster, not gave them that kind of boost instantly. Sure, she was still tired but it went from "holding my head up straight is too much effort" to "that was a very intense workout".
Wiping what was left of the stuff from her lips and just feeling 'amazed' as so much fatigue just evaporated, there was no coughing interruption this time. "Okay, in order, what is this stuff and who are you?"
It was hard to tell if his smile could grow any wider or what made him more pleased, the fact that she seemed healthy or the very obvious awe in her voice. "That was what most stores and trainers call a 'super potion'. There is a more official seven syllable name but only the chemists at Silph ever seem to use it."
The way he said that name meant a company. And any company who could make something like this would be rich enough that it'd be just as well known as the Schnee Dust Company. Maybe it was something new? Or at least not something sold in stores yet for some reason? "Well whatever it's called, it's officially become my favorite drink! Seriously, I've walked out of train crashes in better shape and this stuff did what a day and a half of being out like a light couldn't?!"
He chuckled at that. "Yes, it is rather potent. There's a less and a more effective version, a regular and a hyper potion, but that was the only bottle the store had left at the time. Very popular, and one of these days the supply 'should' match the demand. Now, as for your other question.."
The next words from his mouth sounded heavily rehearsed even if there was a good deal of genuine pride behind them. Like a radio announcer who introduced himself ridiculously often and never got tired of it. "My name is Professor Samuel Oak. Some consider me a teacher, helping the next generation of trainers however I can. Others see me as a leading expert on Pokémon biology and physiology. Personally, I just see myself as someone who has fun making the world a better place however and whenever I can."
If anything that just left her with more questions than answers. Of course she'd had nothing but questions since she woke up. "That's the second time you've said the word 'trainer'. And what's a 'poki-man'?"
That outright derailed him. There was a flash in his eyes, surprise and excitement the only things she could read. For a moment it was like he forgot she was there, mumbling to himself. "Oh dear. I probably should have expected that. The strange computer, the odd bracelet.."
The instant she realized what he meant by 'strange computer', she burst to her feet. The poor professor jumped back at the suddenness of her action, and visibly wilted under her glare. The fact that her eyes went from purple to red and her hair started to glow did a better job highlighting her urgency than her now brittle voice. "Where's my scroll."
It didn't take long to get to the other part of the lab. Yang barely paid attention to the odd machinery, various decorations, or the two other people in lab coats. She just zeroed in on the desk that had her scroll and what was left of Ember Celica.
It was awkward opening the scroll up with one hand, especially since it wasn't her dominant one. But at least it was easy enough to type in her password, get to the team aura section and..see that all three of the others were too far to read. Great. Well the burst of hope was worth something at least. And apparently the CCT was down. There was no local map, no long-range communications, and nobody had left any messages.
Sighing, she was about to close the scroll when one of the people in a lab coat made an impressed whistle. Yang spun to face him and he didn't even notice, too absorbed by the screen. Part of her was tempted to shove him away because 'wow' he had little to no sense of personal space. "That is a 'lot' of functionality packed into that thing."
Oak walked a little closer, thankfully his courtesy outweighed his curiosity. "That makes sense. You don't give password protection to a clock with useful trivia in it. Just what does it seem to have?"
His unkept shoulder length hair smacked Yang in the face as he turned. Ugh, this guy smelled 'bad'. Not the sweaty gym kind of bad but built up filth from a 'long' time without a shower. Was brown even his natural hair color or just uncleaned grime? "A lot of it appears to need an external signal to fully work. But she just checked her own health bar, and it automatically tried to check the health of three others. She then saw if it generated a map for the area, tried to make a 'phone' call with it, and then checked if there were any saved messages. Comparing this thing to the Pokedex is like comparing a caterpie to a venusaur. Easily a lot more power and a completely different line of evolution."
That certainly impressed Professor Oak as well. "Ah, that certainly explains her..agitation when she learned we took it. That sounds obscenely useful. Still, if it relies on outside transmissions to be fully functional..probably not a good idea to borrow that particular line of thought. Trainers of all kinds can end up in places where 'any' kind signal will be disrupted, and I'd rather the Pokedex be as useful as possible wherever possible."
Nothing was making any sense, and it was with a sinking feeling in her gut she pulled up a generic map of all of Remnant, holding it up with the screen facing the three strangers. "Please, please just point 'anywhere' on the map! How far am I from Beacon, from Vale?! Am I even on the right 'continent'?!"
The professor looked uncomfortable with that question, as if he was wrestling with all the possible answers and none of them felt right. The third person in the room seemed to shrink into her lab coat, trying not to be noticed but not quite nervous enough to want to leave. The unkempt guy didn't seem to notice anything wrong with the question, he just took a moment to make sure the other two weren't going to say anything before stating, "You're off the edge of 'that' map. So does that make you an alien, or.."
That was when whatever energy that "super-potion" gave her drained. Sure, they 'could' be lying, but everything from the glib way that man said that to the professor's overall demeanor to the weird bed she woke up in..it felt like something out of a bad adventure cartoon. Only there weren't any sugary sweet ponies who could solve all her problems. No ancient king telling her what to do to go back home. She was just a fish out of water.
Great. Fish. If Weiss was here she'd probably use it as a weapon and somehow look dignified doing it. Ruby would try to find an awkward way to make it her friend, they stopped getting goldfish after the fifth toilet funeral. Blake would just eat it. And Yang was too busy letting her mind wander to remember to stay on her feet. At least she didn't just let her scroll drop. She waited until she had dropped to her knees and her arm hung limply before letting go, and it leaned against her thigh instead of slapping the tiled floor.
The unnamed guy quickly snatched it up, excitedly mentioning something about analysis. The woman gave Yang a glance that could have been sympathy before heading to one of the terminals and getting back to work.
The professor, however, slowly walked to the broken down, crippled teen and kneeled to be face to face. "I have no clue what you're feeling or to what extent. This is all rather new ground in multiple ways. Take your time. Gather your thoughts. I'll try to explain as much as I can."
He clearly wanted to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder but stopped himself. Whether that was because he was afraid to get burnt or just the awkward fact the shoulder he started to reach for didn't have much left. Either way, Oak looked like a combination of Ozpin's patience and her father's concern rolled into one.
It could have been thirty seconds, thirty minutes, or any amount of time in-between. He didn't move a muscle until she asked weakly, "Just where am I?"
That was when he finally let his hand gently touch her shoulder. "You're currently in Pallet Town in the Kanto region, and your point of entry was New Bark Town in the neighboring Johto region. An associate of mine brought you here after making sure you weren't going to bleed to death. And Pokemon are the creatures we share this world with. I'm sure this is a lot to take in at once on top of the trauma of losing a limb. Just take your time.."
'Creatures', that implied more than one species. Dogs were the only animals she could think of that could be called a companion. All the other non-Grimm weren't crazy enough get into a fight they could easily avoid. Hell, did Grimm even 'exist' here?
Letting out a breath that failed to expel the mind-numbing number of concerns and ghosts that had been steadily growing ever since her one on one match in the tournament, Yang asked, "Take my time and do what? You're saying I'm nowhere near home, not even on the same 'planet', it's not like my arm's going to grow back, and I don't even know if my family and friends are even alive right now."
Author's Notes: You're off the edge of the map, Yang. Here there be monsters, and not the kind you're used to dealing with. We're talking monsters that can be tamed, befriended, not mindless beasts that only want to exterminate you and everything you love.
I know, kind of a cruel place to stop this chapter, but is there really any 'good' way to answer a question like that? Don't worry, I wrote out three chapters before deciding to post this story so it's not 'that' bad of a cliffhanger. Hope you enjoyed.