Chapter 14
After registration, Mark and Maple were instructed to visit the Pokémon Center for Maple's physical. Kim led the way after Lionel announced that he had somewhere else to be and promptly vanished, which was fine by Maple.
Wondering exactly what a physical for a human Pokémon would consist of, Mark nevertheless followed without question or comment.
Kim led them through a set of sliding glass doors into what very closely resembled a hospital waiting room. On either side, trainers and human Pokémon alike sat in sparse groups, talking softly or just staring into space out of sheer boredom.
"Jeffrey Walters," a soft, feminine voice called from the right, "you can head on back with Bubbles, now." Mark turned to see a young boy, roughly his own age, rise out of his seat and head off in the direction of the voice.
Standing by a set of double-doors, Mark took notice of a human Blissey beaming at Jeffrey as he approached. She wore a rather frilly pink and white gown with an unusually short skirt. The sleeves and skirt were decorated with pink hearts. Long, pink hair flowed down her back, and her head was topped with a nurse's cap. Inexplicably, she held a large egg in a pouch on the front of her gown.
"So, what do we do?" Mark asked.
"Just head up to the counter and let them know you're here," Kim instructed, "they'll already have your registration information. It's standard practice to give the human Pokémon of any noobs a physical."
"Stop calling me that," Mark said, more annoyed than actually angry.
Nevertheless, he approached the desk in the back of the room. He found a sign-in sheet and wrote Maple's name under the column labeled PATIENT and his own under the column labeled CARETAKER. Exactly how he was going to pay for this, Mark would have to figure out later.
And so, they waited.
"So, is there any difference between treating a human Pokémon and a regular one?" Mark asked. It was one of the thousand questions on his mind and now seemed like the best time to ask it.
"Well, let's see…" Kim thought for a moment. She had fought exclusively with her human Pokémon for so long that the rules for regular Pokémon were slow in coming. "Have you fought with Maple, at all?"
"Yeah," Mark said, "I had her fight a few of my own. She beat them all without any trouble."
"Okay," Kim nodded, "sounds about right. Did she get hurt, at all?"
"My Infernape hit her with Flamethrower," Mark explained, "but it didn't seem to do much." He glanced over at Maple as he brought up the unpleasant experience. Maple was sitting on her knees, facing backwards and examining the room. The waiting was making her antsy and she was unable to sit still and was also bored by the conversation. She had completely missed what he said.
"Well, did you heal her after that?" Kim asked.
"Honestly, I didn't know how," Mark shrugged, "she's going to be okay, right?"
"Well, sure," Kim nodded, "she probably recovered a bit while she slept, so, she's fine. As long as she's not bleeding, it's nothing serious."
"Wait, bleeding?" Mark didn't like the sound of that, "you mean, fighting other Pokémon could hurt her enough to make her bleed?"
Never in his entire life had he seen a Pokémon shed blood during a battle. He had seen a Gyarados decimate a Pidgey with a Hyper Beam and watched Rock Pokémon get blasted by tidal waves, but never in his entire life had he seen blood, or anything life-threatening. It was simply a fact of the Pokémon world. Pokémon were virtually incapable of dealing mortal blows to each other. As if something in the back of their minds knew what could kill and they simply chose otherwise.
"People think it's a side-effect of turning human," Kim explained, "they lose that normal Pokémon resilience and pick up some of the frailties of a normal person. But, I really have no idea. I don't understand it, and I don't try to understand it."
Blood, Mark thought about it. It did make sense, in a weird way. It was almost as if there had to be a price to pay for evolving into something so drastically different from a normal Pokémon. Human Pokémon were a blend of both humans and Pokémon. Apparently they had the strengths and weaknesses of both.
"Wait," Mark realized something very dangerous, "does that mean that human Pokémon fight…to the death?"
"Huh?" Kim's startled reaction served as something of a relief to the worried trainer, "no, no. Usually not, at least." Mark frowned, "usually" wouldn't be good enough.
"Well, they can," Kim attempted to sound reassuring, "but usually it's just until one side is unconscious. Like, that regular Pokémon barrier of fainting, or whatever, that kicks in first. But if they want to, human Pokémon can push themselves past that. Does that make sense?"
"Not really," Mark admitted, shaking his head.
"Well, the nurse will be able to explain better than I can," Kim shrugged, giving up on trying to answer Mark's questions. She wanted to explain it, but there was just too much that she didn't understand. She didn't know anything about genetics and Pokémon biology. How the hell was she supposed to explain how it worked?
She quickly brightened up, though, as something occurred to her that she had nearly forgotten.
"One thing I can tell you, though," Kim grinned, wondering why she hadn't thought of it faster, "all of the medicines still work. Potions, ethers, and the like. They're just formulated a little differently to specifically help human Pokémon."
"Even if they're bleeding?"
"Even if they're bleeding," Kim nodded, "wound closes right up. It's pretty cool to see, actually. The healing machine is the only thing that nobody's figured out yet. It just registers an empty Pokéball, but they'll have that done before long."
"Wow…" Mark marveled, "that…doesn't sound like medicine. It sounds like magic!"
Kim shrugged, "And Pokémon aren't magic?"
Mark didn't have a response to that. Kim had a point. Strictly speaking, most Pokémon abilities were not fundamentally normal. Breathing fire, shooting bolts of electricity, and the rest of the ever-changing kaleidoscope of Pokémon abilities was more like magic than nature.
Yet, his entire life, Mark had never really thought of it that way. It was just what Pokémon did. It was no stranger than a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Drastic changes like that were just the reality of Pokémon.
Nobody really knew why Pokémon were like that. Scientists and philosophers alike had been trying for thousands of years to explain why, but they could go no further than describing what it was that they saw. Pokémon were just different from everything else, but no less a part of nature. Many thought that they were important representatives of nature. They were its will and power manifested in a whole new way of life. They were creatures of magic, even if it was as natural to them as any other form of life.
And if Pokémon were magic, was any other form of life really any less magical?
But, slow down a second…blood? If blood was common and death was a real possibility, was he seriously going to subject Maple to something like that?
He looked over at the Leafeon-girl sitting next to him. She was swaying her tail back and forth and humming a tune that he didn't recognize. Mark thought that she looked beautiful and adorable at the same time.
"Mark and Maple," the Blissey nurse called their names, "you can head on back."
Maple was so excited she vaulted over the back of her chair in a single motion. Mark followed in a much more subdued manner.
The nurse escorted them back into a smaller room. It was designed like a normal, human doctor's examination room with the standard chest-high table covered with a thin sheet of paper and a small counter-top complete with tongue depressors and sanitation gloves.
Instructing Maple to sit down on the table, she began to do some tests. She started by taking Maple's blood pressure. The numbers never meant anything to Mark, so, he took it on faith that Maple was okay when the Blissey-woman showed no negative reaction. Next, she directed Maple to the scale and measured her to be 112 lbs. and between 5'4" and 5'10" depending on whether or not one counted her ears.
All the while, Mark was learning what it felt like to be on the parent's side of an escorted doctor's visit. Each test the nurse did set him on edge, in case the nurse found something wrong with Maple. Maple, on the other hand, while confused by why the tests were even necessary, did her best to take note of everything the nurse said and did. She found it all to be endlessly fascinating.
After height and weight came an ear and throat examination. This was the point where all three of them collectively discovered that Maple's ears were extremely ticklish.
While checking the inside of her ears for possible infections, the Blissey nurse steadied Maple's long ears by holding them up. When she did so, Maple burst into fits of giggling. Startled and confused, Mark and the nurse exchanged wide-eyed glances.
"I'm s-sorry," Maple squealed, "t-that tickles!"
"Get the hell out of here," Mark gaped, unable to hide his confusion.
While lightly biting her tongue to keep herself steady, Maple made it through the rest of her ear exam.
Maple also passed her reflex, vision and hearing tests with flying colors. She could read every letter on the board from double the distance with either eye. Similarly, the hearing tester couldn't make a noise that she couldn't hear. But the nurse informed them that results like that were fairly standard with human Pokémon.
"Is she going to have to do a drug test?" Mark asked halfway through the vision test.
"Actually, no," the nurse said cheerfully, "steroids and other performance enhancers have little to no effect on human Pokémon. The dosage required to see any real effect is also extremely high and will likely make the user sick before any benefits appear."
"Okay," Mark nodded, "makes sense. I actually have a few other questions, if you don't mind."
"Not at all," she beamed, "what's on your mind?"
"Well," Mark sighed, "just general stuff, really. Like, what exactly are the differences between a regular Pokémon and a human Pokémon? Are they mostly human or mostly Pokémon? That sort of thing."
"Well," the nurse reached into a drawer and produced a few pamphlets, "these should help clear up any questions you have." She handed them to Mark. The one on top had a picture of a young boy trainer standing with his female human Ponyta, both smiling, and was decorated with a gold-colored title. It read: Understanding and Caring for Your New Best Friend.
Mark raised an eyebrow at it.
Still, it was all he had to work with, so he decided that beggars couldn't be choosers and started reading.
Once the hearing test was over, the nurse cleaned and swabbed a needle on the end of an empty syringe. Maple's big eyes doubled in size with instinctive fear.
"It's okay, you won't feel a thing," the nurse recited the standard lie, "we just need to take a little blood to finish the test." Maple started fidgeting incessantly, weighing her options and what might happen if she ran and abandoned going through the tournament.
"Maple, it's okay," Mark was quickly at her side, "I hate getting shots, too. Just hold onto my hand and squeeze, if it hurts." This offer had a profound effect on Maple's demeanor. However, Mark was vastly unprepared for just how hard Maple was capable of squeezing his hand.
"And done," the nurse said much too calmly in light of the pinprick pain in Maple's arm and the throbbing one in Mark's hand, "we'll have your results in a day or two. Then we can tell you exactly how old you are. Won't that be fun?"
"Oh, cool," Maple forgot about the pain in her arm as the nurse wiped the spot where she had stuck her with the needle. No mark remained on her skin.
"Alright," Mark said, rubbing away the pain in his hand, "is that it then?"
"That's it," the nurse declared, "you're all set to compete, Maple. Oh, and if you have any additions to your team while you're competing, just bring them in for a physical and they'll be all ready."
"New additions?" Mark asked.
"Yes, of course," the nurse explained, "it's common for a trainer's Pokémon to evolve around so many human Pokémon. If any of your other Pokémon happen to evolve, just bring them in and they can compete as well."
"Oh, okay," Mark nodded, "does that happen often?"
"It does," she nodded, "trainers have even brought in transition-phase human Pokémon to compete in the tournament with."
"I see," Mark considered. By "transition-phase" she meant those weird in-between stages that Maple had gone through right after she had evolved. Those first few days were well behind them, now, but he still remembered them very well.
"I think it's sad," the almost-creepily-cheerful nurse suddenly became depressed, "some trainers even try to keep a human Pokémon in those stages for the tournament."
"Ohhh," Maple whined in sympathy, "why would they do such a thing?"
"I don't know…" the nurse sighed, "some think they're stronger during those times. They keep them locked up inside of their Pokéballs and delay the transformation."
So that's why, Mark thought, remembering Kim's advice to leave Maple out of her Pokéball during the transition. Without human contact, a newly transformed human Pokémon couldn't see what it meant to be human. But that would mean that that human Pokémon was still more Pokémon than human. Could that really make them stronger? Whether it did or not, it was cruel to force a human Pokémon to stay in that limbo stage.
"Oh," Maple's ears drooped as she became depressed in her sympathy.
"Well, I'll never do such a thing," Mark assured the nurse, "I can promise you that." It felt flimsy, but it was the best he had.
"Thank you," the nurse smiled, anyway, grateful for even his small gesture, "it's really nothing to be too concerned about. It isn't illegal since the trainers aren't hurting them. I suppose that I'm just happy to be human, now."
"Right," Mark managed to smile back and Maple perked up, as well.
"Me too!" she declared, springing to her feet.
AN: don't think there's much to say for this chapter...
so, yeah, thanks for reading!