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What did it say about Lumiose that the local government had a worse sick policy than a doom-worshipping death cult? The one and only time Mable had gotten sick-sick during her time with Team Flare, Lysandre himself had sent her a card. And look at her now. Stricken with the flu and trudging down the street at 5:00 in the morning to report to the lab because the mayor didn't trust her lab assistants.
Didn't trust her, more likely. Thought she'd gone to all the trouble of faking a fever and a cough just to flee for greener pastures. Like being a fugitive wasn't a lateral leap at best.
She sniffled, pushing her safety glasses up to rub at her eyes. It was fine. She could ride out a day dozing at her desk, answering whatever questions came in about Bibarel dams or Excadrill tunnels or whatever. Business as usual, with maybe a few more naps in her desk chair. It was fine. She'd be fine.
Except that someone had left a box on the front steps of the lab. Well! Maybe it was a bomb and this would all be over soon. She'd gotten her fair share of death threats, after all, same as those Team Flare Nouveau ingenues. But bombs didn't usually squirm, as far as she knew, and they certainly didn't mewl.
Mable stopped right in front of the box and looked down at it, sniffling when gravity made her nose run. A little tan paw came out of a gap in the flaps and felt around, followed by a plaintive meow.
Fucker. Someone had left a box of kittens on her doorstep.
Because she wasn't a complete monster, she unlocked the lab doors and stooped to pick up the box. It was heavy, which meant it was probably a litter, and the weight made her muscles ache. Yeah, number one advice when you had a fever: lots of heavy lifting. What a fucking day this was going to be.
The kittens didn't like all the moving. She set the box down heavily in the elevator, wincing at the thump, which induced a chorus of meows. A corner of the box began to smoke.
Mable leaned back against the elevator wall and sighed. Litleo.
When the elevator reached her office, Mable dragged the box just over the threshhold and then collapsed into a chair, breathing heavily. All the guaifenesin and acetaminophen she'd tipped down her throat before leaving was putting up a good fight, but it didn't change the fact that the number one prescription for a fever was rest. Well, and hydration. Rest and hydration, the two number ones.
The box mewed. Mable coughed at it. It wouldn't be long before the kittens learned how to get out and started crawling all over the office, so she'd have to do something before then, but she also had to log into her computer and do her job, and answer the 8,000 emails the mayor had probably sent her, and report her daily death threats to the police (for all the good it would do). All the normal things, really. Oh, and find some way to hydrate and rest, of course.
The meowing continued as Mable hauled herself over to her computer and began her daily ritual of logging into 400 different websites, then faded into the background as the sight of her email inbox spiked her usual morning fight-or-flight response. Her heart was already pounding because of the fever, so it made her have to close her eyes and lean against the back of her chair, feeling the world rotate around her.
Who knew how long she sat there like that, just trying not to die. She just sat there, completely still, until the smell of smoke sparked another wave of adrenaline— Fuck! The kittens!
The box was on fire, and confused Litleo were starting to emerge, batting the flames and jumping through the smoke. Coughing, Mable dashed to the bathroom and snatched up the watering can she used to keep her sad little ribbon dracaena from withering away. Flames had only just started to lick the side of the elevator. She tipped the watering can sideways, and the cascade of water doused the fire, the kittens, and her own shoes, which made her jump and shudder.
Oh, fuck this day.
The Litleo, not liking being wet, all began to cry. Mable groaned. She had some towels somewhere, didn't she? Maybe on the second floor? And of course, her useless assistants weren't in for another hour at least. That was off the table then. She now had no box to keep the Litleo in, and no way was she leaving them up here unsupervised.
"How many of you are there, anyway?" she asked the little yowling, dripping lumps on her floor. Speaking made her throat burn, and she had to cough again. Four kittens, by her count, and also, why hadn't the smoke alarm gone off? Didn't they have fire sprinklers in here?
She looked up. The smoke alarm blinked placidly, surrounded by fire sprinklers like silver flowers. Useless. So that was another thing she'd have to deal with.
"You are so lucky," Mable told the kittens, shrugging out of her lab coat with a shudder. "You've landed in the lap of the nicest, kindest, most selfless woman in all of—" The shrill ring of the phone cut her off. She scooped all the kittens into her lab coat and brought them over to her desk, where they began to mewl and struggle and leak water onto her lap.
"What?" Mable said into the phone. Who made phone calls these days, anyway?
"Death to all Team Flare scum!"
"Oh, shut up." Mable slammed the phone down just as a set of claws popped through the fabric of her lab coat. "I get it, okay?" She shook the kittens out onto her desk and dried them off in the rough material of her lab coat one by one, intermittently shooing the others back from the edges of her desk. Though her lab coat had been a meager comfort against the fever (which medicine had only lowered) it had been a comfort. Now she was cold and wet, and her head hurt, and her office was filled with smoke—
Wow, the kittens were cute.
Four little baby Litleo, newborns by the looks of them. They'd be self-sufficient soon if they weren't already, but they hadn't exactly had a warm welcome to the world.
And, as crappy as she felt, Mable couldn't help but smile at them. One had an extra long tuft of hair on its head. Two had speckles on their paws, one with more than the other. And the last one had tan markings that extended unusually high up its legs, like darling little stockings. They all meowed insistently at her.
"Right," Mable said, her voice rough and fading. "You're probably hungry."
She did keep Pokémon food up here, at least, though only had three bowls. She had to dump the other serving into a coffee mug. The kitten with little socks didn't seem to mind.
The Litleo fell asleep after they ate, giving Mable the opportunity to slog through some work (emails, emails, and more emails; she was in no shape to write papers or edit spreadsheets). Work sucked on the best of days, but this was a new level. Her eyes began to blur. She took off her glasses and rested her head on her desk, which was cool under her burning forehead. The kittens would wake her up if they got bored, right?
She drifted in blackness for a bit, trying to ignore her wet socks.
A sharp pain and a ripping sound drew her back to wakefulness. She sat back as the pain traveled upward and one of the speckled Litleo crawled into her lap. It cooed and advanced on her, claws out to climb farther.
"Ah-ah!" Mable picked it up under the armpits, and glanced down at her leg. Rivulets of blood made stripes down her nylons, which had been punctured by those sharp little claws. "Oh, you little shit."
The Litleo looked unrepentant. It even seemed to smile.
"I need to get rid of you ASAP," Mable said. Where to even start? Who did she know who would want a Litleo or four? Who did she know period? Really only that kid who was knocking out all her research tasks.
Because nothing in Mable's life was capable of going right, Harmony shunted her off to Urbain, who tried to shunt her right back off onto Harmony. At some point, two of their little friends joined the conversation, and then somehow Mable was on a conference call, hacking into the speaker and covered in Litleo, who were treating her like a jungle gym.
"How are all four of you too busy to come pick up these cats?" she said, more to her desk than anything, her eyes hidden behind her palm.
"We don't want them," Naveen said.
"I think what Naveen is saying," Lida jumped in, "is that we can try to help you find owners for them, but we can't just take them off your hands."
"Well, there are four of you," Mable said, and coughed.
"Sorry, but I have enough Pokémon!" Urbain said cheerfully.
"Are you okay?" Harmony chimed in.
Mable coughed again, and one of the Litleo perched on the back of her neck. "I'm sick, I'm on the clock, and I have four kittens climbing all over my office. No, I am not okay!"
Urbain sighed. "Okay, we'll see what we can do. Just.. Hold on, okay?"
"Thanks," Mable said sardonically, and jabbed her finger into the hang-up button.
She might have been dying. By the time afternoon rolled around, all she could do was sit there and shiver. The kittens roamed the lab with abandon, but at least they hadn't caught anything else on fire, except for a brief catastrophe that had resulted in a scorchmark in her dress. So. That was fine. They had ruined everything else, might as well take her dress, too.
When the elevator doors trundled open, Mable couldn't move. Even at the sight of Team Flare's little upstart golden boy and his perpetual hanger-on. She was probably hallucinating, anyway.
"Pardon the intrusion," Grisham said with a small wave. "The cavalry's here."
Mable coughed. All her thoughts ran dull and slow through her usually brilliant brain. "There's four of them," she said at last, gesturing weakly at the office.
"Huh." Griselle ignored the cats, turning instead to look right at Mable. "Harmony said you weren't feeling well, but I think she undersold it. You look terrible, Auntie Mable."
"I thought we agreed," Grisham said, bending to pick up little Chausette, then scooping up Canelle when it came to attack his pants leg.
Though he gave no more elaboration, Griselle sighed. "Right, right." She collected Mouchette and Filou with ease, cradled in the crooks of her arms. "It smells like smoke in here."
"They're Litleo," Mable said into her palms. "You do the math."
"Did you happen to give them any names?"
"Yes." Straightening a little, Mable pointed to Filou, Mouchette, Canelle, and Chausette in turn: "One, Two, Three, and Four."
Griselle snorted. "Well, that's easy."
"I don't mean to overstep," Grisham said, right on her heels, "but you seem to have a fever. Should you be here?"
"Huh." Mable peered at him over her fingertips. "Look at you getting all sentimental. Just get these kittens out of my hair, okay?"
"Looks like they got into more than just your hair," Griselle said, looking around at the office. "Hope that lab coat wasn't expensive."
Mable put her head down on her desk and groaned. She was going to kill Harmony— Nope, couldn't joke like that anymore! "Well, I'm doing very important research here, so..."
"Understood," Grisham said, with a smile in his voice. "Do excuse us."
Mable lost a few moments to the headache in her skull and the blackness of her desk, and came back again at the sound of something rasping against her desk.
A mug. With a teabag. And a bag of chips from the corner store.
"We'll take care of the kittens," Grisham said. "Get some rest."
Mable closed her eyes again.