Chapter Text
Backs against the rear wall of the Safety Guild, Constantine and Amargoro were once again Barboach in a sea of Sharpedo. Their eyes swept the area behind the edifice, opposite to the portcullis facing the guild’s portal and away from the mess halls, barracks, and workshops that pocked the guild’s grounds. It was situated thus to minimize transit from both guild members and visitors alike, for this was where the Rescuers and Lawmons of Nexus Commune honed their fangs and claws. The diminutives were before the guild’s training grounds.
Overhead, only waning twilight lit up the sky, but this was a mere inconvenience for the Pokémon in the arenas. A few had paused their bouts to stake alight torches around themselves; others relied on bioluminescence or flames that coated and danced fiercely across their bodies. The majority, though, fought as though it was plain noon—undoubtedly nocturnal Pokémon.
The arenas varied in both size, design, and material. The simplest one was a mere concrete platform about a foot off the ground, bearing on its surface in subtle relief a circle with footprint runes inside. From each of its four corners, torchlight limned the sweaty bodies of a Throh and a Hariyama interlocked in a fierce match of raw strength and footing. Elsewhere lay an area of turned-up soil and exposed bedrock, revealed to be yet another arena by the Excadrill and Rhydon hurtling and demolishing boulders and stirring the earth beneath them with localized quakes. The skies, though unbounded, were not free from bustle either; Golbat, Noctowl, Honchkrow and more gave chase to one another in awe-striking displays of speed and agility, loosing practiced attacks that did not stray towards the earthbound Pokémon.
As the runty pair drank in the spectacle, their eyes drifted towards each other; hesitation marked them, Noibat more so than Applin. But before Constantine could open his mouth to voice his trepidation, Cordia flew out of the eight-foot-tall back entrance with two lanyards clutched in her claws. “Here you go,” she said as she dropped one of them on Constantine’s outstretched hands; he promptly pulled it over his oversized ears and around his neck. Then, facing the worm, she added, “I’ll keep yours; you don’t exactly have a way to wear it. Plus, I’ll be with you at all times, so I doubt you’ll be questioned even once.”
Swoobat had gone inside to request access to the training grounds for non-members. The badges at the end of the lanyards with which they were furnished proved that they had received leave to use the guild’s facilities under the supervision of a member—Cordia, in this case. She had been asked to sign a document to assume responsibility for the pair, which weighed on Noibat’s mind heavily. He fretted over loosing a Hyper Voice in the wrong direction and hitting something—or worse, someone.
“Where to now?” asked Applin as he looked past Swoobat, towards the many arenas behind her.
“You can’t see well in the dark, can you?” Cordia asked, and the worm shook his eyestalks. “And isn’t one of your moves Grassy Glide?” He nodded this time, and the bat whirled in place to survey the training grounds. “I see the ideal arena, but we’ll have to ask someone to help us stake a torch or two. I’ll be right back.” She then winged it back inside.
Inching towards Noibat, Amargoro gestured at the linen sling across the flying-type’s torso. “Right,” said Constantine as he pulled on the hem. Applin jumped inside, then Noibat lifted with a few strong flaps of his wings. This was how Constantine had conveyed him to the Safety Guild. Amargoro had insisted on being carried thus, for he feared that Constantine’s claws would mar the flawless surface of the new apple Cordia had fetched for him.
Chin pressed against his chest tuft, Noibat asked, “Why do you think Cordia asked if you knew that move specifically?”
Applin craned his eyestalks back. “To hazard a guess, likely to discard arenas that my move could damage. For example”—his eyes rolled to the sumo-like platform, where Throh, his muscles bulging exaggeratedly through the fabric of his judogi, caught Hariyama unawares and began lifting him off the floor—“my Grassy Glide would ruin that arena there made of concrete. The fast-growing grass that comes with the move would drill its roots into the platform and wither just as quickly as it sprouted. In its wake would be many tiny cracks, but these would sow the seeds of further erosion.” Crash! Both diminutives flinched as the judo Pokémon slammed his opponent out of the circle.
“Well, I hope wherever Cordia has in mind”—he yawned protractedly—“is far from any of the occupied arenas…” Both for my sake—and theirs.
Then out flitted Swoobat, followed by a knuckle-dragging Darmanitan holding two torches in one oversized paw off the ground. “Come on, boys!” she beckoned and led the way.
They flew past the sweat-drenched fighting-types, who quit their arena and were chatting about hitting the bathhouse, Amargoro’s eyestalks briefly following them before they disappeared from view. The flying-types stopped in front of an area that could have been mistaken for an unkempt part of the training grounds were it not for the carefully embedded stones bounding it in a square formation. The grass here grew wild, and in the center stood a gnarled, deformed, yet sturdy-looking tree that bore the countless scars of past spars, its venerable roots bulging and obstructing the ground round it. Constantine suspected that it had grown to twist thus by the constant strikes it suffered during its formative years, yet it acquitted itself with pride for the honor of training the Pokémon that would go on to protect and save lives.
As Darmanitan planted and lit the torches aflame on opposite corners, Noibat alighted on one of the thick roots of the tree. He noticed that there were soil and detritus littering the ground, and his eyes rose to look at their closest neighbors: Excadrill and Rhydon. The ground-types, sensing a new light coming from nearby, paused their tumultuous match to stare in the flying-types’ direction. They talked indistinctly, nodded, and Rhydon flashed a thumbs-up, then they resumed their battle in a more controlled manner.
“Well, that was considerate of them,” remarked Constantine happily, his neck craned forward to look at his friend nestled in the sling.
“Alright, boys,” began Cordia as she perched upside-down on a branch. “Who’s fighting who first? Remember, I’m also an option!”
Amargoro wiggled out of the sling and landed by Noibat’s legs, his eyes cast upwards to both chiropterans. “A new opponent should behoove us, Constantine; we’ll be fighting a colorful bunch, after all. Cordia! Grant me the honor of being my sparring partner.”
“Gladly!” Her tail released the branch, and she rolled to land right side up beside the duo. Unbuckling the fanny pack on her torso, she asked, “Constantine, can you hold on to this?”
“Sure,” he said and lifted, grabbing the pack with his paws before rising to one of the upper boughs to spectate from there. Because of Cordia’s nocturnal lifestyle, they had never had the opportunity to spar with her. The pair only had experience fighting each other—and Tufa to a lesser extent, though as an Artisan he was unable to put up much of a fight. The help was immensely appreciated nonetheless, of course.
Cordia waddled to one end of the arena then faced Applin, her wings folded against her flanks. “Ready when you are,” she said chirpily.
Meanwhile, Amargoro had inched towards the other end. He whirled around, his eyestalks angled upwards, waxing confused when he did not see the chiropteran hovering among the branches. He lowered his gaze, stretching his stalks high to see past the rolling roots. “What for are you on the ground?”
“I figured this ought to make the fight fairer,” replied she with an earnest smile.
Amargoro shrank. Despite the shell covering his face, Constantine could tell that the comment had slighted his friend. “I know you mean well, Cordia,” Applin began, “but ferals won’t grant me the same grace. My earthfastness won’t be an issue, I promise.”
“Really?” Swoobat said, expectant curiosity coloring her voice. Lifting off the ground, she continued, “Well, you’ve got my curiosity piqued. I’ll concede you the first move.”
Amargoro grew spirited, his tail wiggling anticipatorily as ferns budded about it. In a spike of energy, greenery burst behind him, like dust getting kicked up by the screeching tires of a starting sports car, and he bolted up a sloping root. Both chiropterans started as Applin moved faster than any worm had the right to. With a grassy trail behind him, he reached the trunk within seconds, speeding upwards in an erratically helical pattern to keep his opponent guessing where he would come next. Cordia mouthed something to herself as her astonished eyes struggled to track the wormy Pokémon. Suddenly, from one of the upper boughs Amargoro reared, dashing towards Swoobat and drifting moments before his body left the tree. The twist sent him cartwheeling towards startled Swoobat, his eyes confident before flashing ghostly white on the last swirl.
Bonk! The fighters were sent falling in opposite directions; Amargoro retreated into his shell, rolling until he hit a root then popping back out, while Cordia flopped on the ground with her wings splayed.
Swoobat groaned and wobbled back onto her feet, grimacing as she rubbed her cordiform nose. When she pulled her wing away, red stood out from the surrounding leathery black, shattering Amargoro’s pride with the mere sight. “Cordia!” he shouted, making use of another Grassy Glide to hastily reach her side. “A-Are you okay? A thousand and one apologies, Cordia, I didn’t measure myself, and now—”
“Constantine!” hollered Swoobat, countenance energized and eyes trained on the startled flying-type. “Fetch me an Oran Berry from my bag, why don’tcha? I need a slight pick-me-up.” Then she looked down at penitent Applin. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen something like that, Applin; you really caught me with my wings tangled in an Electroweb.”
Amargoro’s eyes were blank, as if processing the whiplash of emotions. “Are you not mad…?” he asked cautiously.
“Mad? Pshh, like you said, ferals don’t pull their punches.” She whipped the blood off her wing and shone a wide smile. “I just hope you can handle them, too.”
Constantine then winged it down, Oran Berry clutched on his right paw, which he had thankfully been able to identify since they existed in the human world as well. As he released it onto Swoobat’s outstretched wing, he asked, “Are you passing the baton, Cordia?”
Munching on the berry, she asserted, “Boy, I wouldn’t have…mh…made it this far as a Rescuer…if I cowered at the first sight of blood.”
Noibat stared at her bloodied nose, then at the sanguine spray on the grass, and realized that he was not cowed by it. He supposed that it was serendipitous, given that tolerance to violence and injury was requisite to join one of the Dungeon-delving guilds, but he reflected on what this said about his past life. Humans aren’t naturally tolerant to this, are they…?
“Constantine, do you mind returning to where you were?” requested she, and he obliged. Stretching her neck muscles in a circular motion, she lifted with a mighty gale that almost overturned peewee Applin. “Are you ready to continue? It’s my turn now.” Amargoro nodded firmly, his excitement for battle having returned to him. As he inched into position, she added, “I think your petite size might’ve tricked my motherly instinct into action. Thank you for knocking some sense into me; now I can take this training seriously.”
“That was my hope.” He wheeled around upon reaching one corner of the arena, the greenery under his tail shuddering in anticipation. “Ready when you are.”
Besides the reports and clashes from distant spars around them, the grassy arena was eerily still. Amargoro eyed his opponent quizzically, scanning about him as he sensed a slight tremor. Particles of dirt, engulfed in a mystical, pink-and-purple aura, floated a trifle off the ground, and his eyes widened as they snapped back to Cordia’s—they were fuchsia.
The grass under his serpentine body flared as he barreled out of the zone, barely avoiding a subtle blast of Psychic energy that exploded behind him and sent waves of air outwards. He briefly looked behind; where he had been was now devoid of any vegetation, the earth cracked.
“Eyes on me!” the chiropteran warned as she flitted around stunned Applin. She whipped her wings, sending Air Slashes with each flap. The verdure under Amargoro sprang wild as he started away, but a slash managed to hit his rear, blowing him against a root. The rest of the slashes stirred dust into the air, cloaking the area in a slowly receding shroud of murk.
Cordia scanned the ground below patiently, when Amargoro suddenly exploded out of the veil and up a root. Greenery drilled into the bark as he unpredictably climbed the bole, yet his opponent did not let him ascend unopposed; she buffeted the veteran tree with more Air Slashes, decorating it with proof of the exhilarant battle taking place today. Unharmed, Applin reached a bough leading towards Swoobat and whirled off it to strike her with another Astonish. His pupils wanned pale in determined preparation but widened when he saw her heart-shaped nose glowing pink.
Carapace against nostril, Amargoro’s Astonish was challenged by Cordia’s Heart Stamp, and they were both blown away from each other. Blasted against the trunk, Amargoro’s eyestalks slammed against it as he had not been afforded enough time to withdraw, rolling in his apple until hitting a root. Cordia, meanwhile, skidded against the soil and stopped when her head bumped the stone boundary of the arena.
“Shit, you two, you’re going to give yourselves concussions,” Constantine, his head turning back-and-forth between them, chided as he descended with the fanny pack in his paws. His attention snapped to Cordia when raucous laughter burst from her direction.
“Whoo! I’d almost forgotten how much fun sparring is!” Swoobat exclaimed as she wobbled onto her feet. One wing massaged the fused ears crowning her head while the other cupped her bleeding nose. Without prompting, Noibat landed to rummage through the bag for another Oran Berry; he handed it to her, and she devoured it in two hearty bites. “For someone who’s never been in any Dungeon-delving guild, you sure know how to fight, Amargoro.” There was no answer from the limp worm. “Amargoro?”
The chiropterans hurried to his side. A seed of worry having rooted in his stomach, Constantine gingerly picked Applin up in his wings, turning him around to view his ‘face’. His eyes were swirling.
“Phew, he just fainted,” sighed Cordia.
Noibat, however, felt a warm trickle on his wing. The Air Slash that had stricken Amargoro’s rear, on top of having cut into the apple, bloodied his tail. “Cordia, fetch me the bandages,” Constantine ordered calmly, setting the worm atop a chest-height root. He recalled having seen some while searching for Oran Berries.
Swoobat, having finally espied the crimson, used Psychic to empty the pack of its contents. Among the levitating items were sundry Berries and Seeds, a stout jar of an olive-colored mush, and the roll of bandages. She conveyed an Oran Berry, a golden-shelled seed, and the other two items over to Noibat while storing the rest.
Constantine grabbed the roll, ready to swathe the cut, when he realized the carapace was in the way. He reached for the tail to pull but stopped, worried that it would worsen the wound; then his hands shifted to the eyestalks but paused again, recalling the hit his friend had sustained there.
Cordia noticed his apprehension and said, “Let me handle this, Constantine. I can pull him from his shell evenly with my Psychic.” He sidestepped, and she moved in front of the fainted worm. Closing her eyes, Applin was gradually engulfed in a mystic aura that levitated him inches from the root. His unconscious body was held perfectly straight, and it slowly wormed out through the rear end. When he had been separated from his shell, it lowered as the jar and bandages rose to his level. The former unlid itself while the latter unrolled and tore, then a generous glob of the mush smeared itself against the strip.
“What’s that?” asked Noibat.
“An Oran-Berry-and-Heal-Seed salve; it promotes the healing of injuries.” The bandage wrapped around Applin’s tail, held fast by the tacky substance. With her Psychic, Swoobat then opened his mouth and moved the Seed towards it, which at closer inspection had a green root sprouting from it.
“Wait, wait, wait! Won’t he choke on that? What even is that?” He had his arms outstretched protectively.
“It’s just a Reviver Seed, Constantine; there’s no cause for worry,” she reassured, and he hesitantly permitted the procedure to continue. “It’s a wondrous, little gift of nature, the Reviver Seed. It works contrary to any other plant. It seeks the barren, the spent, the fainted—and roots itself, transferring its disproportionate reserves of energy. A Plain Seed is all that remains afterwards, and those who cannot perpetuate its life cycle with their bodies honor it by planting it themselves.” Gently laying Amargoro down, she faced Noibat and asked, “Do you not have something akin where you’re from?”
“Actually, yeah, just in the form of minerals and herbs.” And in the case of Revival Herbs, fainted Pokémon have no issue ingesting those.
Anon Amargoro stirred from his unconsciousness, swallowing the now-Plain Seed in his mouth. He blearily scanned his surroundings, a chuckle escaping him when the realization struck him. “It seems I was bested.”
Eventually the chiropterans slouched against the tree’s base to rest and talk. Applin, meanwhile, examined his damaged apple; a deep cleft provided a thin view of the hollow inside, and a heart-shaped furrow lay where Cordia’s nose had struck. These scars were far more noticeable than the one Lago had wreaked on his original shell, yet Amargoro acquitted himself with much more poise this time around.
The worm sighed resignedly, nuzzling the fruit before facing the flying-types. “I suppose this comes with the vocation. I must go into this knowing it won’t be the last time my apple is marred thus.”
“I can still fetch you another one,” offered Cordia.
“I could not thank you enough therefor.”
Constantine then commented, “You mentioned how you’d almost forgotten how fun sparring was, Cordia. How come? Don’t you do that for a living?”
“I’m a Rescuer, not a Lawmon.”
“But don’t you battle ferals in Dungeons?” he retorted.
“Not like you’d fight a teammate or an outlaw, no,” she corrected. “Ferals act on instinct, and we’re temporary intruders in their habitats; it’s only natural that they react aggressively. We do not wish to hurt them more than we have to, so we endeavor to deal with them in more peaceful ways—sending them to sleep, paralyzing them, scaring them off. Most teams have at least one disabling move; mine, for example, is Imprison.”
“Oof, that is one oppressive technique in a one-versus-one,” Amargoro remarked, facing Noibat. “It completely prevents you from unleashing any move for a whole minute, and there’s nothing stopping a recast. If you ever find yourself on the receiving end of one, you have two silver linings: items and how exhausting it is to cast it.”
Swoobat continued, “It’s rare that my teammates and I spar—I suppose we’ve just grown confident in our teamwork—although we should definitely get back to it, what with increased Catamountain activity in Diagatia.”
Diagatia—the continent they were in, as Amargoro had once explained to Constantine. The worm had not elucidated one thing there, though, but he promptly read his puzzled expression.
“They’re base caitiffs and scabs, through and through,” he began, waxing indignant. “There is no despicable deed they won’t do for enough gold—poaching, theft, slavery. They mysteriously appeared yesteryear, reaving and strong-arming what and whom they may. There is not a single bone of decency and foresight in those fiends.”
“They are probably the reason that most lawmons are here tonight,” added Cordia, her gaze drifting to the disciplined Pokémon around them. “Not once since Nexus Commune’s inception have we had as much need for their expertise as now.”
Constantine, his mouth ajar, was speechless. Since appearing in this picturesque land, he had encountered nothing but whimsy and kindness, which had been hard to swallow for his cynical mind. Now it turned out that there were slavers past the hills of this city? A feeling of vindication encroached on him, but he frowned and promptly smacked it away. I shouldn’t feel like I was right all along from this.
“Shit…” was all he could muster up. One concern surfaced, however: “Does that mean that, as Explorers, we might come face-to-face with these ‘Catamountains’?”
“My team and I have stumbled across some twice by now, so… Most likely.” In a reassuring tone, she added, “But don’t fret too much. Apprehending them won’t be your responsibility; you wouldn’t be trained to do so, after all.”
He was soothed some, though the prospect of avoiding confrontation with such criminals did not sit right with him exactly. But he still only knew one attack. Even if he could control it now and direct it well, any sentient Pokémon would easily adapt to a one-move Beldum.
His eyes landed on Amargoro. The worm was seething with righteous fury, likely burning to see them behind bars more than himself. He inched forward as if to speak up, seemingly ready to proclaim their stalwart opposition against the Catamountain menace, but an askance look at Noibat tempered his ardor. “Let’s keep our distance,” he told Constantine, a determined smile forming then, “but if we ever build the confidence, let us face them.”
Applin’s determination was contagious; Noibat firmly nodded with a like visage. Cordia then remarked, “I like your attitudes, you two. Since you’re aiming for the stars, Constantine, why don’t we begin our own spar?”
He was taken aback. “After your match with Amargoro? Are you sure?” She had not fainted like the grass-type, but her nose was bruised and caked with dried blood, and violet splotched her fused ears and back.
“I have some fight in me yet.” She stretched in preparation.
Constantine was admittedly daunted by the natural-born Pokémon’s fierce performance earlier, fearing that Amargoro had fired Cordia up overmuch. “If you insist, just…turn down the heat for me; I’m not as experienced or creative as Amargoro.”
“Oh, of course!” Her chirpy motherliness returned. “Would you prefer we spar here on the ground or in the air?”
He chose the latter, for a fortnight of intensive flight training had instilled in him the confidence to do so. They lifted, leaving Applin to climb onto one of the highest boughs to spectate, and began their bout in a gentlemanly manner.
Cordia granted him the first move, but he only had three flavors of the same attack to choose from. If he cupped his ears inwards, as he now did, his Hyper Voice would jet out in a powerful, focused beam of sonic waves; he thus named it ‘beam-style’.
“Woah!” remarked Swoobat as she barely flitted out of the way, the attack disappearing into the dark sky.
If he cupped them outwards, as he did next, it would instead issue in a weaker yet harder-to-dodge cone, earning its name of ‘cone-style’.
“I like what you’re doing with your ears!” complimented she after quickly recovering from the light attack.
If he did neither, of course, it would come out somewhere in between strength- and range-wise. This much he had learned while experimenting in his free time, as discomforting as it was discovering just how much control he had over those oversized disks. He had two comforts, however: the hope that he will hereby regain his humanity and memories, and Amargoro’s heartening commendations.
When Swoobat’s turn came, she first explained how to deal with her offensive techniques: “Don’t be daunted by Air Slash; the slashes are many, but they’re individually weak. It was only particularly effective against Amargoro because of his grass typing, but you needn’t worry about that. The key is in moving quickly and unpredictably, as you saw Amargoro do, and enduring the pain if you do get struck, lest it slows you down. In the heat of combat, though, that comes naturally.
“Psychic may seem like an impossible attack to deal with at first, what with its range and invisible nature, but it does have its drawbacks and tells. First, the attacker must be able to sense you somehow, be it through sight, aura, or other precise senses; if all senses are impaired, it becomes harder to connect—think Sand Attack to the eyes. Second, it requires focus, which is why most wielders use it as an ambush or surprise attack, unless they’re able to make distance between themselves and their opponent during combat. If you close the distance or loose long-range moves of your own, you will deny them the time they need to cast it. But if you find yourself in the middle of one, like Amargoro did during our battle, pay attention to your surroundings. They will be charged with energy, not unlike the feeling of a Dungeon’s threshold, and particles will hover and vibrate about.
“Heart Stamp, despite its psychic typing, is as self-explanatory as a fighting-type attack. If my nose glows, watch out; in that same vein, don’t aim directly for the nose either, as Amargoro learned the hard way, hee-hee.”
She did not bother to elucidate Imprison further than Applin had done, for she would not use it unless they were instead testing his item resourcefulness. And with the tips given, she went on the offensive.
As Cordia loosed her first attack, Air Slash, Noibat weaved and sighed upon noticing just how fewer projectiles were being hurled in his direction. A few had clipped his body, merely shearing some fur off rather than cutting into his flesh, so she was significantly holding back, too. Would she have gone as easily on Amargoro had he not challenged her? Constantine was no stranger to pride, but he acknowledged that he was far from being at their level.
When he noticed that Swoobat’s volley of slashes had driven him back and she had ceased her assault, her words echoed in his mind. Cupping his ears outward, he discharged a cone-style Hyper Voice, hitting Cordia just as he felt the air about him buzz dangerously. The energy subsided as she reeled, then she hollered, “Good call!”
Noibat’s pride showed in the smile unwittingly tugging at his lips, but it quickly let go as some sparse slashes scudded towards him. He flitted out of the way, his attention snapping to the approaching Swoobat once the projectiles had stopped coming, nose aglow. He backed up, his first instinct being to dodge this attack just like the rest, but he bethought himself of the lesson she had taught him with her spar with Amargoro: sometimes the best defense is a good offense.
His eyes set in a determined vee, he stood his ground and subtly cupped his ears inwards, taut as bowstrings. His heart hammered as the other bat closed in on him, eyeing him in a way that bespoke, ‘are you sure of what you are doing?’
“Yes!” he screamed, and jetted a beam-style Hyper Voice that jerked him backwards. In the blink of an eye, the attack washed over Cordia, reeling her and even breaking the focus of her Heart Stamp—but she was still hurtling towards him. Aw, Shit.
Crash!
For a few seconds, Noibat’s wings streamed uselessly as Swoobat’s weight upon his body sent both plummeting to the tree. He grunted as branches and twigs vengefully whipped his body for snapping them, then, like the last hiss of a deflating balloon, he wheezed piteously as the air left his lungs upon hitting the grassy ground. His entire world dark with the weight of a Pokémon heavier than himself, he rasped, “Cordia. Cordia!”
In a muffled voice, he heard Applin remark, “By Dialga, she fainted!”
“Amargoro. Amargoro, help me out!”
“Public?” shouted Constantine, startling his friends and drawing the attention of the Pokémon in the torch-lit hallway they were sauntering down.
After Amargoro had resuscitated Cordia with a Reviver Seed (with Constantine having to bear her full weight in the meantime), the trio resolved to freshen themselves up and relax. Constantine had taken this to mean returning to their longhouse and washing themselves there, as he had done so for the past two weeks, but his friends assured him that there were baths in the guild. Even though everything about this world screamed archaic and fantastical, he was still taken aback by their communality; it was starkly different from his human culture.
Cordia shook her head in bafflement. “You didn’t know? …Where have you been washing yourself all this time?”
Noibat’s cheeks burnt from embarrassment. Was he not supposed to freshen up there? He waited until the strangers around them stopped staring, then meekly answered, “…The sink.”
“You’ve been freshening up there?” Amargoro, shell-less, tactfully exclaimed in an undertone. “I was under the impression you were merely washing your face or wings, not your entire body.”
“I never once saw you leaving the house for a public bath!” retorted Noibat in the same hushed tone.
“Only my tail dirties when I’m in my carapace, hence why I need only wash that.” Then the worm visible cringed. “However, the responsibility to enlighten you in the ways of Nexus Commune was mine. I erred by regarding this feature of our way of life as self-evident.”
Swoobat asked Noibat, “Is the bath being public going to be an issue?”
He closed his eyes. You’re an adult, Constantine, come on. You can handle bathing around others. Despite his psych-up, there was this feeling of ‘wrongness’ or even ‘sinfulness’ in his mouth that he could not quite swallow. Was it the lack of privacy, or the fact that he’d be bathing with Pokémon? That was for sure a one-way ticket to prison and the sex offender registry in his world. But the rules there don’t apply here… Every Pokémon in the bath would be like any human adult.
He breathed in and regarded Cordia afresh. “No, it won’t.”
They anon entered an antechamber with a standing torch in the middle and two parallel backless benches flanking it. Inside were Rhydon and Excadrill, divesting themselves of their mud-caked gear. While the steel-type stowed their soil-free bags into one of the countless cubbyholes honeycombing the left and right walls, the other Pokémon carried their dirty laundry towards the trio straddling the changing room entrance.
“‘Scuse me,” rumbled Rhydon. They quickly sidled away, Constantine sensing the trembling of the floor with each ponderous step of the Pokémon over three times his height. He looked behind to see where the rock-type was going.
As Rhydon entered the room opposite this one and set their wash on a counter tended by a Marshtomp, Cordia pointed and said, “That’s the laundry room; it’s where our gear and clothes are cleaned while we wash ourselves after a mission or spar.” She then led the dragon-types to one of the lower cubbyholes, which were smaller than the ones higher up. “We don’t have much to wash, though, except your sling—and Amargoro’s apple, had he brought it with him.”
His eyestalks wilted, the worm sighed, “I cannot be seen wearing such a scarred carapace. It served me well when it did, but now it shall serve the tree as compost.”
Swoobat continued, “We’ll store our clean belongings here, guest badges included.”
She stared expectantly at Noibat, and he startled upon realizing what she was waiting for. “Right,” he said as he pulled both sling and lanyard off, stowing the latter in the compartment in front of her. She stored her fanny pack next and plucked the sling off Noibat’s hands with her mouth, then winged it to the laundry room.
Constantine moved in front of the ‘locker’ to close it, but was nonplussed when he reached out for a door that was not there. “Uhh, Amargoro?”
He undulated forward. “At your service.”
“Maybe I’m stupid and cannot see it, but how are we supposed to keep our belongings safe here?” He extended an accusatory arm at the hole.
Applin jumped inside, his eyes thoroughly sweeping the cubby before wheeling around and remarking, “Whatever could you mean? I see no faults here.”
He has to be fucking with me. Letting the silence convey his disbelief first, he plainly asked, “How are we going to keep our stuff from getting stolen?”
Level with Noibat’s eyes, Amargoro remained in the cubbyhole. “You needn’t fret about that here,” he assured, swaying his eyestalks in a dismissive fashion. “Mayhap at a non-Guild bathhouse, sure, but only members—and rarely guests—bathe here. Anything in Cordia’s mail is something anyone here already has access to by virtue of their fellowship.”
Constantine perused the honeycombed walls. Many of them were occupied, and there were neither veils to hide the contents from covetous eyes nor watchmen to ward them. The only Pokémon besides themselves in the changing room was Excadrill, but he was likely just waiting for his sparring mate to return. Admittedly, there was nothing of seeming value at first glance, except maybe the crystal-encrusted badges; but his knowledge of city life in the human world kept him ill at ease despite Amargoro’s assurance. He decided to shrug it off, though, upon bethinking himself that this was not his property.
Anon Swoobat winged it back, her flaps accompanied by the stomps of the rock-type behind her. “Okay, we may go now,” she said. “Do you two have a preference for lukewarm or steamy baths?”
“Steamy,” they both replied, and smiled at each other.
“Awesome,” said she, conducting them to the back of the room where two doorways lay.
The left door was wide open, revealing a dimly lit, colonnaded room with a shallow pool in the middle—shallow for middling standards, anyway (Constantine bet he would be fully submerged if he stood therein). Spouts of water arched into the pool from somewhere out of view, and Pokémon huddled in modest groups to not only help wash themselves but also to fraternize.
The right door, maroon and wooden, was shut with steam seeping from a thin gap below. The problem of how to open it suddenly reared its ugly head, but the moment it became painfully apparent, the ground-types dutifully walked up to the eight-foot gatekeeper. “Allow us,” Rhydon rumbled, smiling at the diminutives before pushing the door inward. A bank of steam suddenly flowed outward like a crashing wave, causing Noibat to wince, but before he could adjust, Swoobat ushered them inside. The door clunked closed, and as the ground-types wended their merry way, Constantine was left gawking at the bustling, foggy scene before him.
The most jarring thing about this bath was how full it was in comparison to the left one. Pokémon—some toweled but most naked—massed in shifting knots obscured by the banks of steam billowing from the rock baskets they were circling and dousing with water. Their incoherent conversations, coming from everywhere except behind the chiropteran, forced Constantine to cup his sensitive ears inward to block as much of the noise as possible. The torches, bracketed high on columns and spaced generously, washed the chamber in dim lighting. The atmosphere was simply nothing short of lecherous.
Cordia led them deeper into the room. They stuck to the walls, for this section appeared to be for the Pokémon on the larger end, what with Rhydon dipping into the pool behind the arcade and having the water reach his chest. The thick steam kept them from spotting the other end, but they knew they were making progress as the Pokémon and amenities gradually shrunk in size. With how much they were walking, Constantine was sure a Wailord could fit here!
Eventually they spotted the end of the chamber, and they found themselves comfortably in the peewee area, which was not as crowded as the ones they had passed, to Constantine’s relief. He relaxed his ears, finding the loudness here…tolerable, and walked out of the gallery onto the wet walkway abutting the shallow pool here. Craning his head forwards, he saw stairs leading deeper into the water, which so churned to make it difficult to discern its depth, though he could tell it was about a foot deep from the Patrat scrubbing underneath an arched stream.
Staring ahead, he gaped at three beautifully chiseled facsimiles of Squirtle, each in a different pose and spouting water from their mouths to the left, right, and center. The left statue, its arms stretched by its sides, stood on its right leg as if playing hopscotch; the middle one, demurely withdrawn into its shell, only peeped its head out to shower Patrat in a never-ending stream; and the right one, bracing its feet firmly against the ground, bore the fierce visage of a Pokémon using Water Gun.
“By Dialga, these guild ‘mons sure bathe luxuriously, huh?” he heard Amargoro’s voice by his feet.
“I will admit it, I’m blown out of the water,” said Constantine while looking askance at his friend. “Are all the bathhouses in Nexus Commune like this?”
“To my understanding, chiefly the guild ones. I wouldn’t be able to answer you with certainty, though, for this is the first guild bath I’ve ever visited. The nonguild-affiliated ones tend to be more utilitarian, but do not make the mistake of imagining them as austere. The Edifiers take beauty and their craft seriously.”
“If only I’d known I was missing out on this for two weeks, I would’ve long since abandoned the sink.” He set his left foot on the first step and immediately yanked it out. “Hot, hot!” exclaimed he while hopping in place with his right one.
“Have you no sense? The water is seething.” He gestured at the bubbly surface. “Dip the ungues first and go from there.”
Sitting on the pool’s edge, Constantine gingerly eased his toes in, wincing the moment the churning water lapped them but keeping them from jerking out through force of will. Soon the scalding mellowed into a muscle-loosening heat, and Noibat’s grimace melted into a blissful, closed-eye smile. Yearning for the water to kiss the rest of his body, he proceeded to ease his legs next.
From behind them, Cordia said, “I’ll be in the pool next to this one; it’s more my size. You boys enjoy yourselves. Holler when you want to leave.”
Only Amargoro acknowledged her, for Constantine was too enraptured to say anything. It was as though he was sinking into spring sunshine itself. Before he knew it, he was already mouth-deep in the pool, kept from submerging himself entirely by his need for air. Somehow he even relished the flow of water around the membranes of his wings—something he had never imagined would occur in his stay in this body.
Applin’s voice breached the rapturous swirls of steam coiling round Noibat’s mind: “Help a wyrm out, Constantine. I don’t reckon I’m tall enough even for this pool, and I cannot swim.”
Weighed down by heavy comfort, he lifted one eyelid halfway, realizing that in his transport he had drifted further inside the pool. He waded to the edge where Amargoro stood, straightening up to carry the worm before a better idea brought him to float supinely on the bubbly surface. “Hop on,” he sighed delightedly as his disklike ears were finally licked by the heavenly waves—another body part he never suspected would ever beget him this much pleasure—his eyelid giving to the newfound weight of relaxation. He knew his friend had boarded when a slight weight landed on his chest.
“We should shower first before relaxing,” Applin pointed out.
“Uh-huh,” Constantine replied rather curtly. “Guide me to one of the spouts. I’ll swim us there.”
Noibat worked one wing to rotate in place, ceasing when Applin told him to then swaying his legs to propel himself forward. “You’re my eyes,” said he, “make sure we don’t crash against anyone.” His ears picked up on a harrumph from his chest, but the chops on the water carried it away from his mind.
Once again he found himself wholly submerged in the beatitude of the steaming water. For the first time since appearing in this world, he had no worries—no worries about his identity or past, about learning how to use his new body, about the baleful Catamountains outside the ramparts of Nexus Commune, about the Explorer Guild tryouts two weeks from now… They were all washed away by the churning of the miraculous pool and lifted to the shrouded ceiling by its steam. It could almost make him believe he’d died and ascended to—
He jolted upright as a stream suddenly battered his ears, splashing about until his feet touched the hot floor below. At once he fished for the worm he had dropped in the water, dredging up and nestling him in his wings. He apologized profusely as Applin shouted a barrage of unwitting oaths, which he had hitherto never heard him utter, alongside exclamations about the infernal heat of the pool. Many of the bathers stared. At least we won’t be working in this guild…
When the burn had subsided, Constantine helped Amargoro grow accustomed to the temperature by gradually lowering him in his cupped wings. He was relieved when his friend, too, grew to enjoy the water eventually. With both ready, he got under the spout and helped the worm scrub.
“Sorry, again, for not paying attention,” Noibat uttered lamely. He was holding Applin with his right wing while his left one rubbed his wormy body.
“I must apologize, too,” said Amargoro, the bliss on his face clashing with the guilt in his voice. “I foresaw this yet held my tongue. I wanted comeuppance; I just failed to consider how wildly you’d react thereto.”
“If I’m being honest, I don’t think I would’ve heard you even if you had warned me.” He did not hold Applin’s deed against him too much. After washing his friend, he balanced him in the crook of his ears while he scrubbed down his own body. As showering is wont to do, thoughts and questions wormed themselves into his mind. “Do you know how they get the pool to simmer like a hot spring?”
“Fire Stones,” moaned Amargoro, suspended limply in the vee of Noibat’s ears, the drops seeming to massage his body like tapotement. “From Tropics Oasis, whence Tropius hail. They’re underneath the flooring.”
Constantine’s eyes shifted downwards, then to the rest of the steam-shrouded pools to his right. He wondered how many Fire Stones took to ‘power’ this bath. His gaze then focused on the familiar Swoobat chatting with two more guild members by her pool’s edge, and a huge concern—baffling how it had eluded him until now—finally resolved itself in his mind: “Wait, there aren’t separate women’s baths?” He scrutinized the Pokémon around them to determine whether she or—heaven forbid—they were the intruders here, but he quickly realized he could not tell the sex of anyone.
“Hm? No,” the worm replied, but Noibat insisted that he elaborate. “Have you finished?” he asked instead. “The spout, relaxing as it may be, is not conducive to conversation for someone of my size.”
“Yeah,” answered Constantine, physically restraining himself from nodding out of instinct lest he toss his friend off. He sat on one of the steps by the pool’s edge, chest-deep in the water, with his arms bolstered on the walkway behind him.
Applin landed on the topmost step with a tiny splash, his head comfortably above the waterline. “I suspect your world segregates bathhouses by sex?” he astutely asked. Noibat nodded, so he added, “Then humans must possess a significant degree of sexual dimorphism. We, Pokémon, hardly do. For example…” He searched about, then slanted his head as if pointing. “That Bidoof swimming there. Can you tell what sex they are?”
Constantine scrutinized them, pretending to stare into space any time they turned in their course and their gazes met obliquely. Was there something about them that gave away their gender? Larger buckteeth on men? Lither swimming from women? He was no biologist, and guessing would defeat the point of the question. “No.” He surrendered finally.
“Bidoof are actually one of the few ‘mons who bear telltales.” Amargoro waited until the normal-type was swimming away to continue. “That one is female; you can tell from the three curls on her rear instead of five. Now stop staring, lest we exude the wrong impression.”
Mortified, Constantine snapped his attention back to the worm and submerged his arms. “Sounds like it’d be a nightmare to find a partner as a Pokémon,” he observed. Thankfully, that was the last thing on his mind.
“If your wish is to couple outside your stock, indubitably. It’s actually facile to tell apart members of your own stock by their scent; you’re born with the faculties to do that, after all.” Then in a thickly wry tone, he added, “Who’d be foolish enough to pursue the former, amiright?”
“…Is that why you know the tells for a Bidoof’s sex?”
“That, and many more.” He cast his eyes down bitterly.
“Why do you want a girlfriend outside your, erm, ‘stock’?” He knew of interracial and interethnic human relationships, but he doubted those could translate cleanly onto this—or at all. Hm… Now that I think about it, I wonder what race I used to be…
Amargoro cringed, though there was a dash of humor on his countenance as well. “That’s a conversation for our longhouse,” he said lamely, but added in a chirpier tone, “Although you’re mistaken; my predilections lie in men.”
Applin’s clarification tugged on the former thread of thought to reveal yet another: And what of sexuality? He had assumed that his friend, a man, wanted a woman for a partner, so perhaps he was straight? “Sorry,” he said, wearing an empathetic smile. “I’m sure we’ll find someone for you soon enough, maybe when we join the Explorers. …Do you have a type?” He tried to lift his friend’s spirits, given his erstwhile self-deprecation.
“At this point, frankly all I ask is patience and an open mind,” he laughed, shaking his eyestalks.
Noibat frowned. “Problems with homophobia?”
“Homophobia?” asked Amargoro, puzzled. His eyes wandered as he seemingly dissected the word for its meaning. “People fear those attracted to the same sex?”
Constantine requited the confusion. “It’s more hatred than fear, but—You’re telling me you don’t have that here?”
“I mean, someone with homophobia must exist somewhere, but such a phenomenon is as outlandish to me as the hatred of tailed ‘mons. How would you call that… Kerkophobia?” Then as if having digested the implications, he asked in shock, “That permeates the human world?”
The tone almost sounded accusatory, and Noibat felt himself bristling, for Earth was still his home. “I-I mean…some places. B-But we’re working on it.”
“Hopefully it gets resolved by the time we discover how to return you there. Homophobia notwithstanding, I’m curious about the human world; I’d like to visit it.” These words were a balm for Constantine’s secondhand pique, shown in his relaxing muscles. “At any rate, what about you? Your sexual preferences lie where?”
He appreciated the change of topic. Tapping his chin with an unguis, he answered, “I think I prefer women, though that wasn’t even spared by the amnesia,” and shrugged.
“We could take turns acting as each other’s wingman at the Explorers, eh?”
Noibat grimaced, even though he understood this to be his friend’s way of requiting the favor. “No, please,” he declined promptly. The cheer in Applin’s visage faltered, so he elaborated, “I don’t want to date Pokémon, Amargoro, is all. Where I’m from, this is extremely taboo and illegal. For all intents and purposes, I’m interested in neither in this world.” His friend’s expression still did not inspire confidence, so he added, “Pokémon are feral in my world. I don’t suppose mingling with one like that is looked upon favorably here, right?” Please say no, please say no.
He sighed internally at Amargoro’s distasteful reaction. The worm murmured, “I had forgotten about that crucial detail…” Then in a calm voice: “I think I understand now, if I am to wear your carapace. Well, I’ll endeavor to get you where you belong, so you won’t be doomed to a life of romantic solitude.”
Constantine patted the worm’s torso. “In the meantime, let’s find you a man, shall we?”