Author's Note:

… Nothing to say here. Again. Well, besides the obligatory shout-outs:

Thank you, TheLoneAce, Coral the Leviathan and Devanor, for the Follows, as well as to nyanyanya22 for the Favorite! A bigger than average shout-out to Readerfever for both the Favorite and the Follow! As always, my gratitude for you attention!

Disclaimer:

Pokémon and any other referential materials found in this story do not belong to me. They belong to their respective owners and subsidiaries, and I claim no ownership of them.


Of Children, Men, and Monsters

Chapter Six: Discovery


Marza roused from her slumber with a gasp, startled by Arceus' last words to her. It took her a few moments to process them.

'Well, I'm not one to disappoint. As far as I'm concerned, I'm already doing a decent job of taking care of Oscura, so…'

A shrug.

And speaking of the little Larvitar, she was just beginning to get around to waking as well, doing so, like with the previous days, with a yawn. A glance upward from the Pokémon. A glance downward from the human. They shared that glance for several seconds before Marza slowly got herself up and out of bed, announcing, "Well, it's another day of school for me, Oscura, so I suppose that I'll be doing the usual by this point: cleaning myself up, getting you some stones and water, and then going to school."

She paused in her tracks, as she was already heading for the door.

'The fact that I'm already beginning to consider this normal is rather startling. And disconcerting. Very, very disconcerting.'

She sighed softly after she closed the door, Oscura looking at her with concern as she did so. Her sigh sounded as if she was worried, though the Rock Skin Pokémon wasn't really certain as to what was making her feel such. There wasn't really anything she could do about it, what with Marza being incapable of understanding her, at least at the moment, so she was left with little other choice but to let the issue go for now.

'May as well get out the letters and practice the alphabet…' the Pokémon decided upon, doing so after finally getting those last, pesky flecks of sleepiness out of her eyes.

Marza grabbed Oscura her food and drink and departed for school a couple of minutes later, prepared for another droll day of education and the imminent irritation that is the average human her age.

Unfortunately for her, she was in for a notably rough time on that particular day.

Oh, sure, it started out average enough. Kids talking and, more prominently, yelling at completely unnecessary volumes about the most mundane things possible even after the bell rang was hardly an uncommon occurrence, but nearly half of them coming over specifically to discuss the most overly dubious of rumors (most of which she debunked near-effortlessly) decidedly was.

Several of these instances later, she had had enough, going over to the teacher and asking why she had not yet started class. She answered, in an ire-filled tone not too dissimilar to Marza's, that her computer was bugging out, preventing her from getting the class' current attendance to the super attendant. Marza's teacher got up with a frustrated growl and announced to her class that she would be out of the room for a few minutes to get the attendance to the office physically.

Once the clicks of the door closing shut rang out, most of the children in the class cheered, resuming their conversations with almost twice the previous volume, irritating Marza in both mood and ears. The booming, incessant chattering, in combination with her thoroughly soured attitude at that moment, resulted in a rather dramatic reaction; she near-screamed "Enough of this!" and left for one of the bathrooms. She hardly had to use them at that moment; she just needed to get away from the class, and the resultant pain and anger that it roused in her.

Her variation of autism, commonly referred to as Asperger's, resulted in a higher than average intellect beyond her first few years of life. However, this came with two rather distinctive trade-offs: a large aversion to being social was ingrained into her mind-set, and loud noises resulted in pain of ears of exposed to long enough.

Needless to say, she was not the biggest fan of the two happening in tandem.

She sat on a toilet inside a stall for several minutes, brooding, yet also attempting to calm herself down at the same time. It took around ten minutes, but she succeeded in quelling her turmoil, at least for the moment. She acknowledged that she was likely late to class – if only strictly speaking, as the attendance had already been turned in – but, for the sake of her nerves, patience, and concentration, Marza decided that it was well worth it.

Unluckily for her, the teacher had spotted her walking into the class room as her lecture on algebra began, resulting in a brief scolding about asking the teacher to go to the bathroom before actually doing so.

Marza's response is as follows:

"In case you hadn't noticed, everyone in here gets rather noisy extremely quickly, and in case you've forgotten, I have Autism. Let me give you a quick equation: loud noise plus Autistic people equals irritation and headaches, so I suppose that you'll have to forgive me if I need some alone time in the face of those. And another thing? I don't like being treated as someone half my age."

The teacher, for her part, looked immensely aggravated, but, with a sigh, backed off, simply telling her to sit in her chair, resignation clear in her voice.

A decent chunk of the kids chortled at her come back, but a quick, irritated glare from teacher and student alike sent them into silence once again as she did as the teacher requested.

The class went on as it usually did from that point on, and the bell rang at its usual time. The students rushed out of the room and to their next classes, some more quickly than others. Marza was the last to leave the room, as she had actually bothered to wait to pack her stuff until the bell rang. Unbeknownst to her, the teacher had gave her a worried look as she exited, clearly concerned for her regardless of her previous rudeness.

Before she headed off to her next class, Marza had to stop by her locker and retrieve the things she needed for it – specifically, a markedly large text book. She struggled with carrying its weight momentarily before placing it on top of her binder, and she leaned over to take the remaining things that she required. Before that could happen, however, a duo of boys accosted her. The slightly taller one on her left saying to her, tauntingly, "Oh, that's a pretty big-lookin' book ya' got there, Marza! Ya' sure that'cha don't need some, ah… help with it?"

Before she could even get the chance to answer the inquiry, he took it and tossed it over to his apparent friend, who then proceeded to mock-inspect it.

"Oh, this is one of those history books for you sixth-graders, ain't it? I hope that'cha won't mind if we borrow it for a while!" The pair of bullies chuckled, turning around to leave, book still in hand.

They were really not prepared for what happened next, though.

Marza grabbed the book-carrying on by his long, scruffy locks of hair, resulting in a hiss of pain from him as she tugged him towards her.

"Give my book back." A harsher, more firm tug. "Now."

"Alright, alright! Geez, no need for violence!" He slowly positioned his hand behind his shoulder, giving Marza the opportunity to retrieve her book, and quickly twirled around to face the other bully sneaking up on her.

"And you! I'll do more than give you a tug on your ugly mop of hair if you don't back off!" She raised a fist menacingly, shooting him the nastiest glare she could manage.

Her little ploy seemed to work, as he did so fearfully and with much haste in his steps. The two slowly backed away from the girl before another voice interrupted the three's standoff:

"What is going on here!?"

A sharply dressed, chocolate-skinned woman walked in from the circle of students that had formed around the scene, appearing to be rather agitated by the confrontation. "Have you three been fighting?"

A glare was sent at all three of them, though a second later it was instead directed solely at the two misfits.

"Have you two been going at Marza again?"

Two shaky nods.

"Oh, for the love of – My office! Immediately!"

The two did as she ordered, scurrying off to the nearby stairwell. The woman relaxed once they were out of sight, though she still gave a sharp order to all of the other students in the immediate vicinity: "And why, precisely, are you all still here? Go on! You are all late for your classes by this point!" And right on cue, the bell rang. The circle of students disbanded upon hearing this sound and nearly sprinted to their respective lockers and/or classes.

Once all but a few of them had left, the woman sighed.

"Marza. I know that those two constantly attempt to get at your nerves, but you can't just resort to physical violence, however much they may deserve it. As the principal, I could easily order a suspension for you for your actions, yet I don't. Do you know why that is?"

Marza exhaled loudly. "Because those two delinquents are always starting these encounters, yes. You must understand that I wasn't really given any other option, however, especially in this specific case. They were about to run off my book –" she waved it around a bit for emphasis – "and there were no teachers nearby. You and I both know that words are practically incapable of persuading them away from things such as this, so…"

The principal once again sighed. "I suppose that your actions are justified this time, then. Do be aware that any more cases of violence will result in punishments for you as well as those other two. Now, get to class. I'll give your history teacher an e-mail explaining why you are late." The girl nodded, picking up her moderately sized pile of school materials and heading off to her destination.

The principal, like Marza's teacher for her first period, sighed worriedly for the lass...


A few hours into the future, the parents of Marza were chuckling enthusiastically because of a skit in show that had just finished. It involved a small tiger, a rat, and the former's repeated attempts at catching the latter, which always ended up failing in an either hilarious or spectacular fashion.

Typically both.

"Alright, Erise. Our daughter should be home in about an hour, so do you want to get check out her room and see what's keeping her occupied as of late?"

The mother of Marza thought pensively for a moment.

"Well, our little marathon of shows is over, so I suppose so."

The married couple ascended the stairs, walking up to Marza's door, with one of them knocking once they did so. "Honey, why are you knocking? There's no one else home," inquired Julius, appearing to be genuinely curious. Then, suddenly, the sounds of something crashing to the floor in Marza's room sounded out, resulting in a smug smile from Erise.

"Oh, but how oh how do we know that for certain?" She got a shrug from the man as an answer.

'She always was the impractical thinker,' he reminisced.

Erise opened the door slowly, and, just out of the corner of her eye, spotted a little green blur leap into the closet to her left, closing it hastily not a moment later.

"Hmm?" she couldn't help but let out, a tad startled.

There were plenty of animals that she knew of that were green, though significantly less that were around that hieght, and most all of those were still rather exotic.

'I hope she hasn't somehow managed to smuggle in something that she shouldn't have…' she thought, however ridiculous the notion was considering Marza's age and distinct lack of funds.

Little was she aware that it was most definitely exotic. More exotic than anything she had ever seen before, in fact.

She sluggishly made her way to the closet door, opening it with all of the carefulness she could muster.

A pair of almost comically large ruby red eyes looked up at her from the singular, unlit corner of the closet space. The eyes stared at her for several seconds, not even blinking once, until Erise re-assuredly called out to it: "You came come out. We aren't going to hurt you." The whatever-it-was stood stock-still for another several seconds before it finally came into the light, revealing itself to Marza's mother.

Her first response?

Squeal loudly at the sheer scale of its adorableness.