Chapter Text
After living in the abandoned cabin and the cave for several days, walking into an actual human city feels surreal.
L wants to stare at every building he can see. Zygare and Mienshao pull him away from each one and towards a red-roofed building not far from the cave’s exit.
“Mien, mie mie.”
“Zyr?”
“Mien.”
“Zaaa.”
The conversation doesn’t bother him until Zygarde and Mienshao pull him through automatic doors and Mienshao waves at a pink-haired woman standing behind a counter.
“Mien!” Mienshao grabs L’s arm and pulls him down to point at his head. “Mien!”
The woman gasps and claps her hands over her mouth as L blinks in confusion. “Oh my — come this way, please! Chansey, be a dear and run the counter for me?”
“Chan!” A pink blob L hadn’t noticed behind the counter salutes the woman as she steps out from behind the counter. “Chan-see!”
“Over this way, sir, please.” The woman motions for L to go through a door next to the counter.
Zygarde starts leading him towards the door before L has a chance to respond. He stumbles; Mienshao has to catch him before he hits the floor face-first.
“Might I have your name, sir?” the woman asks as he approaches.
“Ah — L,” L replies, now fully upright.
His response gets a confused blink. Then she shakes her head slightly, then leads him down a short hall into a room. “In here, please. You can keep your Pokemon out of their PokeBalls if you need them.”
L doesn’t know how to tell her Zygarde doesn’t have one, so he just nods and follows her in.
The room is small, but not claustrophobically so. The lights are bright. There seems to be a sort of strange…bed? Chair? L isn’t sure how to describe it with the few words he remembers for human things.
The woman motions for him to sit on the strange object, and he does. “Can you tell me how this head injury occurred?”
L shakes his head. “No. I…I woke with it, and without my memory.”
Was this why Mienshao and Zygarde had dragged him here? For a human trained in medical attention?
“Amnesia?” The woman frowns. She looks him over again, then shakes her head slightly. “Who bandaged this for you?”
“Mien!” Mienshao raises a paw. L nods to the Pokemon.
The woman’s eyebrows rise up her forehead. Then a smile crosses her face. “Well, I can tell they are well done, but in a rush. I am going to look to make sure everything is healing well.”
“Mien.” Mienshao nods.
L very quickly finds himself subject to a thorough examination of his partially-shaved head. Well, as thorough as the woman — nurse — can manage. When her questions are met with uncertain answers on L’s part, she quickly learns where his memories end and begin and decides to devote herself to instead making sure that his mind and faculties are as present as possible.
“I can safely say that your injuries are healing nicely,” the nurse says as she finishes looking over L’s head. “What’s unusual is how faint the scars are, considering the field dressing.”
L tilts his head at the remark. “Is that really alarming?”
“In my line of work, yes. Especially with humans — we can’t heal from damage as well as Pokemon can, but even then, something as severe as your hurts should look far worse than they do.” The nurse frowns, folding her arms as she works her lower lip. “This has the mark of…something.”
L blinks. “Something?”
The nurse gives him a long look, then shakes her head. “Nevermind — let’s have a look at your eye. Can you open it for me?”
The question makes L pause. But then he feels Zygarde tug on his arm, and he opens it.
The bright lights sear his eye immediately, and he winces it shut again.
“Ah. One moment.” The nurse moves to a switch on the wall and fiddles with it. the lights dim immediately, although they do not completely go out. “Try again?”
L nods slightly, and opens it a little. When the light doesn’t burn, he forces it the rest of the way.
The nurse is in front of his face immediately, turning his head slightly to stare at his eye with wide ones of her own. “Breath of life, that is…I’ve never seen anything like this. It glows like…but it’s not….Do you know what Mega Evolution is, sir?”
“Mega Evolution?” The words roll off L’s tongue like he should be familiar with them. He feels like he should be. “I…I’m not sure.”
“…I doubt that I will be of much help with this.” The nurse pulls back. L closes his eye again, and she doesn’t argue at the motion. “Your eye looks almost like a keystone, but not exactly. Which leads me to believe you didn’t replace your eye with a keystone, but….”
L’s mind, for reasons unknown, goes to the ring with the darkened stone in his pocket. Was that what that was supposed to be?
Zygarde nudges his leg. “Zyr.”
“Mien,” Mienshao shoots back, annoyance coloring his voice.
“If you don’t remember who you were, sir, then….” the nurse trails off. She looks at his unbandaged head again. “I’m going to keep you overnight for observation, then send you to the Tower of Mastery tomorrow.”
“Tower of Mastery?”
“The people there deal in Mega Evolution. If nothing else, they should know something about what happened to your eye.” The nurse looks down at the two Pokemon. “I would like to check your team over as well, just to be on the safe side. If you were this injured, I’ll need to know if your team was caught up in it as well.”
It seemed to be a reasonable request.
Meinshao looks between them quickly, eyes wide. His grip tightens on the bag. “Mien….”
Zygarde undoes the ribbon from around L’s wrist and moves it to the nurse’s. “Zyr.”
“What—”
Something ripples. The nurse stills, staring at Zygarde.
She gasps abruptly and stumbles back against a counter behind her, skin paling. Her breath comes in bursts.
Zygarde’s ribbon lets her go, then wraps around L’s wrist again. “Zyr. Zyr grar.”
L blinks at Zygarde. What did they just do?
The nurse’s breaths, at first erratic, start to calm as she closes her eyes and forces her chest to rise and fall. After a moment, she nods. “All right. I’ll have Chansey look them over — outside their PokeBalls.”
Mienshao narrows his eyes at Zygarde. Zygarde merely raises their head in response.
“Zyr,” Zygarde says.
That seems to satisfy Mienshao. He nods and slowly removes his and the others’ PokeBalls from the bag. “Mien. Mienshao. Shao. Mien.”
L understands what Mienshao is saying before the nurse can ask. “I-I have a Honchkrow, a Pyroar, and a Gyarados. If they have names, I do not remember them. This one —” He raises the wrist wrapped in green ribbon slightly, getting the nurse to look at Zygarde again. “—is not one of mine, but they seem intent on my well-being, and desire my assistance in turn.”
The nurse blinks. Then she nods. “I-I see. All right. Let me get you settled in a room, first, and I’ll send Chansey up afterwards.”
Since Mienshao nods, that seems reasonable. L nods as well.
The nurse nods again, then motions for them to follow her out of the small room, into the main lobby of the building, then around another corner and up a set of stairs to another long hall. The lights are softer here, and the floor is carpeted, unlike the tile of the ground floor.
“Pokemon Trainers are allowed to rest here for free while they take their Gym Challenge,” the nurse explains as she stops in front of a room. She pulls out a set of keys and unlocks it. “I’m making an exception tonight, considering you don’t remember if you are taking the challenge, or anything else about your circumstances.” She hands him the key, pressing it into his hand like she expects he’ll drop it immediately. “Everything you might need should be inside here. I would recommend making use of them.”
“Mi-ien.” Mienshao mimes holding his nose.
L gets the message. “Very well.”
“I will send Chansey up to collect your team’s PokeBalls.” The nurse nods to him, looks down at Zygarde again, then quickly retreats.
L watches her go with some confusion, then shakes his head and steps into the room beyond.
Perhaps Mienshao showing him around the space will help him remember a few things.
- - - - -
Downstairs, the nurse sends Chansey up after the strange man and quickly checks the PokeDex built into the counter.
The data she pulls up is sparse at best. Mostly legends and rumors about a Pokemon that might exist, but nothing conclusive about abilities the Pokemon might have.
She bites her lower lip and drums on the counter, considering her options.
First Xerneas and Yveltal resurface, and now this mysterious canine Pokemon claims to be Zygarde? When historical documents suggest a more serpentine appearance?
Either she reports this to the Pokemon Lab, or…or she does nothing.
What should she do?
…put a pin in it, at least for now. If anything happens tomorrow, it will become a priority.
In the meantime, she makes notes on the man’s medical state and his room as one for observation.
And then…a message to the ones in charge of the Tower of Mastery. Hopefully they would find answers for the man when she could not.