smash_logs | Hospitals and Visits, Oh My!

Hospitals and Visits, Oh My!

Who: Sick animals and you
What: Hospital visits!
Where: FDC's Pokecenter
When: Anywhere between the 13th to the 21st!
Warnings: Guys being guys. Mons being mons.

For the next few days, everything was a blur for the both of them. Sasha felt sick to her stomach from everything, being unusually quiet apart from the small talks to the people online. But she was afraid no one would ever want to talk to her again after what happened. Guilty didn't even begin to scratch how she felt, especially after fights broke out in school that seemed to imply her attack was the catalyst. It felt terrible.

Most of her days, she spent watching the IV needles run down and drip, looking over at Vinnie but moving her head away before he could look at her and trying to replay the scenario and see what she could have done otherwise.

She could try to learn from this.

On the other hand, Vinnie had no regrets about his own actions. He was convinced that if he'd personally done anything different, pulled any punches, the results of that day would've been much, much worse. Inevitable as it was, it was the consequences that followed which weighed on him, as much as he tried not to show it.

His sister was tearing herself apart. His trainer was disgraced and his family worried sick. And he had disappointed anyone who might've been his friends. Somehow, he had to make it better. In comparison, his own grief felt irrelevant. Maybe even selfish.

It was probably why he was spending more and more time in his human form, even if it kept opening up his wounds. That way, he wouldn't have to be reminded of what he'd lost in Volgin's mutilation. Two leaves, amputated. It was enough to cripple him as a Venusaur.

Vinnie wanted out of this bed. To stop feeling nauseous and weak and get back into action as soon as possible. Maybe then he'd feel less helpless against everything.

[OOC- please post your date of the visit at the start of each log post 8Dc Also Char shows up after the 15th due to a gun shot to the tail. Green team is facing Red Team after that.]

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The flowers were lovely to look at, but bouquets never failed to give Vinnie a sense of his own mortality. Seeing healthy blooms clipped from their roots to slowly die in a vase was actually pretty uncomfortable for him.

Not that there was anything about this situation that was comfortable. It was the last thing on his mind, now.

Vinnie rolled over just enough to take the Aprijuice she brought him. The yellow drink had suddenly become the most interesting thing in the room, from the way his eyes were guiltily fixed on it instead of Lyra.

Look at it. She still brought you get well gifts, even though you're a miserable fuck-up in her eyes.

"...Thanks." He didn't look like he was ever going to drink it. He was just... waiting for Lyra to punch him, literally or figuratively. Lay on all her anger and disillusionment somehow.

Yes, that's right, Vinnie. Gaze upon them and remember your own inevitable passing. Remember you are but a mortal. A flawed and mortal creature that Lyra is forever disappointed in.

If Vinnie had been hoping for a punch, then he was going to be waiting a very long time. Seriously. She took a boxing lesson and she was terrible at it. They knew what they'd done, and they knew why Lyra was so crushed by it. They'd probably been thinking over it since they'd first woken up in the Center. Rehashing it wasn't going to help much of anything.

So instead, she quietly moved over to a chair, sitting with her hands folded. Rui shuffled over to her side, settling down on its haunches. "When I was three," Lyra began, voice low and soft, "I chased a Rattata that snuck into my backyard. It bit me. When I was six, I wandered away from my mom and a Zubat got caught under my hat. It used Leech Life until my mom found me, and I had to go get stitches after that."

She reached down, tugging her right kneesock down and showing Vinnie and Sasha a burn scar along the side of her calf. "When I was ten, Lance and me broke into a Team Rocket hideout. The generator was powered by Electrodes. We had to faint them before we unhooked them, but one of them Selfdestructed before I could help it."

Vinnie could only listen in sullen silence. He had a feeling where Lyra was going with this story, and she deserved to be heard. And they deserved to hear it, too.

Without even meaning to, they had completely shattered this girl's dreams. Making reparations at this point seemed like an impossibility, like there was nothing that could ever patch the rift between them. Back when they were investigating Viridian forest, she was so full of hope and compassion and exuberance to see justice done. But as it were, what made him any different from Giovanni...?

It was hard to watch her talk - he would've preferred to just get punched.

She could see that what she was saying was having an effect. Good.

"I've been hurt by Pokemon before." Not quite to the point that she was in danger of dying, but hurt all the same. "They did it because I'd scared them. I might have been just as scared as they were, but I understood that."

She was at least trying to make them feel better with that much, even if she wasn't done laying on the guilt. Lyra truly did have a soft spot for Pokemon; she couldn't shut her heart to them completely. Still... that sense of justice hadn't wavered one bit. It didn't matter how dear to her they were: she couldn't just look the other way and forgive when somebody was hurting others. Especially not these Pokemon. Not the Team Rocket Kid's Pokemon. Everything she'd ever wanted to be, the kind of person she tried to become... it was thanks to the Team Rocket Kid. Maybe it wasn't fair of her to place them all on such a high pedestal, but... if they had the power to change the world, to keep two entire regions safe... Lyra believed that the kind of behaviour she'd hoped for was well within their reach.

"I don't believe there's such a thing as bad Pokemon," Lyra stated firmly. It was a belief she'd echoed many times before already. "Only bad trainers."

She knew those words would be like a slap to the face of any trained Pokemon, let alone ones who had followed their trainer for so many years. "I already told Vinnie... I'm not mad because you had something to protect. It's the how and the why that hurt so much. If this had happened back home... you know what would have happened. The law would have stepped in. Everything a Pokemon does is a reflection of the way their trainer raised them to be. A Pokemon that attacks a human, that nearly kills somebody... they can't be allowed to stay with a trainer like that."

No. No she had it all wrong! Sasha couldn't let Lyra speak like that and just not do anything about it.

Despite the pain, and the fact her wings would probably get fresh wounds from it, she turned human to look at Lyra, the Charizard hospital gown barely covering her body. Her eyes looked angry. Understanding, but incredibly angry. She hadn't spoken for a week so her voice first came out like a raspy whisper and she didn't even bother to check if her wings were bleeding or not (a little but nothing that would put her out).

She looked down at the bed as if it was suddenly the most interesting thing around.

"Don't blame Red," she warned her sternly. "Everything that happened is my fault. I got angry at Raikov for calling me nothing more than an animal, and arguing how Giovanni should never be brought to prison in our world for his crimes. I had been told a small while ago that I wasn't fit to be called a Charizard either...the two made me think I wasn't fit to be anything. I didn't think of the family I had, the people I cared I just felt...alone. It was a moment of weakness, and something I'll have to live with the rest of my life." She paused and coughed, grabbing the nearby glass of water and drowning it. That felt a bit better.

"I turned into a Charizard to scare him off because I was angry. He couldn't understand me just telling him to go away. Erika is right. This place is not Kanto. I didn't expect him to shoot me and not just run off like most humans do. They have weapons here that no one would rightfully use where we live...even then I didn't want to harm him. I just wanted to get away but then his lover thought I was trying to kill him and..."

She coughed again.

"You know the rest." There was a sudden chill in the air as she added without a moment's hesitation.

"If I have to go to Kanto to receive my punishment, I will do so willingly. If Giovanni can't do it, then I will! B-but don't blame Red, he had nothing to do with this and if anything it's because of him that even in our darkest moment we didn't...we didn't..."

She was crying.

Right there, that was a knife stabbed straight in his gut, then twisted. He felt cold inside. Every cell in his body seemed to rattle, down to his core, crying out a shrill mantra: that it wasn't true, there was no way it was true. He rebelled against the idea as though his very continued existence relied on proving Red to be every bit of the trainer he admired.

"Sasha, turn back. You're gonna screw yourself up." For the second time, he tried to push himself off the bed. It was against Vinnie's nature to just lie around while his family needed protecting, no matter what kind of protecting it was.

"They can take me away if they want. But not cuz Red's a bad trainer. I'm not letting him take the blame for this." He shot a burning glare in the Sasha's direction as well. "And I'm sure as hell not letting you take all of it! We both know I'm the biggest fuck up on this team."

"I've definitely tried to hurt humans before... before I met him. He's the only reason I didn't live my life hating every human I saw, or get put down. But instead I had to be a stubborn fuckhead who never listens to him right. I never got the message through my goddamn head unless I got my ass kicked within an inch of my life first."

Vinnie wasn't sure when his voice started shaking, but there it was. "He shouldn't have to put up with my bullshit, but he does..."

Lyra stood up, taking a step toward them. "You," she pointed at Vinnie, "stay where you are. Don't hurt yourself more. You," she moved her finger to Sasha, "Be a... Charizard... again." Kind of a lame-sounding request, but she wasn't going to let them make their conditions any worse just because of what she had to say. They didn't have to listen to her, but when she spoke, it was in a trainer-voice, one with the gentle but unyielding firmness of someone who had spent a lot of time leading Pokemon.

"Don't say that Red had nothing to do with it. Red is yours. A team is connected at the roots, Sasha! You might as well try to tell me your right hand wasn't involved in what happened. Maybe he didn't order you to hurt anybody, but he wasn't there to stop it." If what Sasha said was true... well, Lyra came from a region where gijinkas weren't the norm: it was completely a trainer's responsibility to rein their Pokemon in if they got worked up enough to endanger themselves or others. She didn't want to say that Pokemon, on their own, didn't know any better; the Pokemon right in front of her had perfectly human intelligence, after all, and they obviously had a sense of right and wrong. But a trainer's job extended beyond just ordering their Pokemon around on a battlefield; a trainer's duty was to keep their Pokemon safe and happy. "I wasn't paying attention" or "I didn't know" wasn't a good enough excuse for anyone's Pokemon to be in a situation where they were provoked enough to be fighting for their lives.

Lyra moved back to her chair, motioning for Rui. The gator lowered itself down, massive head resting on her lap. She stroked its broad head before continuing. "I don't know a lot about Charizards or Venusaurs. Maybe attacking people is just the way you're supposed to be in the wild. Maybe that's who you were before you met Red. But we walk together because we see each other's potential. A trainer chose you because he knew that you could be something better. That hope we have for our Pokemon... that doesn't go away as soon as we're not looking. That's what makes us involved, no matter where we go. Maybe the rest of the world says Feraligatrs are dangerous and will turn on you if you say one little thing wrong, maybe the rest of the world says you're a..." She stumbled over the word, knowing it was bad, but feeling the situation would excuse it just this once: "...a stubborn fuckhead. But that's not what your trainer thinks you are."

He hand faltered a little, halted its caressing. She looked away from Rui, back up to the two bedridden Pokemon across from her. "I won't tell you what to do, but... just think about which one of them you proved right."

"N-not yet," she replied, coughing again. "You said Red should have been there with us. We were...we were going to buy him a present. It was a surprise. He didn't know because we wanted to surprise him." She pushed her knees closer to her body. "It was going to be the first time we would have bought him a secret present..."

And yet Lyra's words in her made her realize something. Something she'd never heard before. She had her team. She had a family. But what about the others? Those that couldn't transform. What did they have? How were they treated...

That didn't change her expectations for the way that people and Pokemon were supposed to treat each other. That didn't change the fact that she was crushed that Pokemon she thought so highly of would have instigated something so horrible. Nothing she'd said about a trainer's hope for their Pokemon always being with them had changed. If Pokemon really did know better, then the reason for Red's absence neither excused nor justified them getting so out of hand.

Maybe other people had already forgiven and forgotten, maybe nobody else thought they had any share in the blame for what happened. Lyra was being far more harsh than two people who were already so unhappy needed, but she'd always been an open book about her feelings, and that was how she felt: the Pokemon that wanted to frighten or harm humans were no less forgivable than the people that did so to Pokemon. Yes, she was upset. No, she didn't want it to happen again. Those feelings didn't change.

What changed was that now Lyra kind of felt like a big dumb jerk for having those feelings.

"...Oh." She wrapped her arms around Rui's head, all but shrinking behind it, her stare dropping back down to the scaly blue hide underneath her arms. Well, that definitely shut her up.

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Hospitals and Visits, Oh My!

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gonna spam this sad icon forever

"only two sad icons" club awww yeah

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