Searching Far and Wide - 47

Teams:

Pierce Lawson:

- Narcissa, Beedrill

- Orion, Onix

- Cygnus, Abra

Lillian Dale:

- Root, Bulbasaur

- Talon, Spearow

- Gem, Geodude

- Star, Cleffa

Cerulean City VIII

“Ah, I missed this,” Lily said, smiling contently.

Pierce couldn’t say he was having as good a time himself though.

“You will let go of me or there’ll be no pokeblocks for you, mister,” he threatened, giving the ekans he’d been talking to a look. Immediately, the snake pokemon deflated a little but it didn’t seem to want to give up. Thus, Pierce gave it a raised eyebrow. The pokemon lasted a few seconds before letting go. “That’s what I thought. Now, apologize to your sister.”

The ekans then gave him a scandalized squawk – ‘Didn’t know they could make that noise.’ –, rearing back as if he’d personally insulted him. In turn, Pierce just looked at him, unimpressed. They held the look for a long moment before the poison type slumped down.

“I remember the days when this kind of thing surprised me,” Lily commented, still smiling peacefully.

“Your journey must be wild,” the farmer they were helping that day said. To that, Lily started laughing. Pierce was a little concerned though. She sounded a little out of it there.

“You have no idea, George. No idea whatsoever,” Lily told the man then, shaking her head.

“Anyway,” Pierce started, rolling his eyes and turning towards the second, slightly smaller ekans. “You okay there, girl. Come on, don’t be shy. You want some pokeblocks too, right? I can guarantee that they are ekans and arbok approved,” he commented with a smile, picking up some of the aforementioned pokeblocks and offering them to the snake pokemon. Her brother had already gotten a few, which was why he was so “eager” to actually listen to Pierce. “After that, I can help you and your brother get out of here and to a more peaceful place, yeah? My team and I will help you get settled and all.”

The ekans hissed something hesitantly.

“Promise,” he said, smiling. A gesture that widened when the snake slithered closer to him, if warily. “That’s it, come on. You seem to be a little bruised. Got into a fight or was it just this brute here?” he asked, pointing with his finger towards the brother. In response, the sister pointed with her tail away from them. “One of the other pokemon? Come on, once we get out of here, I know a nice place with some spearow that would be happy to have you and not cause trouble. You just need to give them a fight once in a while so that they can get stronger. You could get stronger too,” Pierce suggested, something that immediately got the attention of the brother. “You like the sound of that, buddy?”

The brother hissed something, nodding enthusiastically.

“Great, so, we have a little meal here and then we can go over there, have a chat with them, what do you say, guys?” he asked, receiving a quick nod from the brother and a very quick nod from the sister
 after she ate a pokeblock, at least.

Soon enough, Pierce had Cygnus teleport them all the way over to the Clark’s farm. He had to make a call to make sure it was fine, but the old couple was more than happy to bring some more pokemon close by if it meant the spearow flock would be less battle hungry. They even offered to pay him more than they already had, which he tried to talk them out of. He was already getting paid for doing this for someone else and he’d already gotten his pay from their job but


“None of that, young man,” Martha told him over the pokegear. “You’re getting paid and that’s that. Now, what’s this I hear about a girl?”

“For God’s sake, woman, leave the poor boy alone-”

“Shush you, John-”

“Did you just-?”

“Pierce?”

“Just a friend I’ve been traveling with, Martha, that’s all,” Pierce replied, a little amused. It was getting a little out of hand, how many people were calling them a couple. “And that’s very kind of you. I’ll be sure to give you some pokeblocks for your pokemon. It’s the least I can do.”

“You’ll insist, won’t you?”

“Sure will.”

“Now, just like Kent, isn’t he, Johnny?”

“Bah, comes more often, that’s for sure.”

“You know Kent is busy with his job-”

“I’ll see you later then, Mrs. and Mr. Clark,” Pierce said, a smile on his face and a chuckle wanting to escape his mouth. He’d happily have stayed on the phone, but he had a job to do and other things to take care of afterwards.

“Take care, Pierce. And remember to come by for a meal, ok?”

“Wouldn’t miss it, Mrs. Clark.”

With the call ended, Pierce turned towards Lily, who was looking at him with a very amused expression. He just rolled his eyes at her with a smile as he walked, Narcissa taking her turn to hang from his shoulders. The girl then started giggling behind her hand. From the side, both ekans siblings looked between them, clearly confused.

“Don’t mind her, you two. She’s crazy,” Pierce told them, making circle motions next to his temple as he started walking. “If you stay too close to her too long you might get it too.”

“Hey, I’m not contagious!” Lily protested from behind him. “And I’m not crazy.”

“Sure you aren’t, Lily, sure you aren’t.”

“I’m not!” the girl whined. “Tell him, Star!” Unfortunately for her, the fairy type just gave her a comforting tap on the shoulder from where she was being hugged against Lily’s chest. “You are supposed to be on my side,” Lily whined some more.

“There there.”

“Why did I miss you again, Pierce?” she grumbled as they continued walking. “I should be traveling by myself.”

“Please, you love me and my pokemon encounters too much.”

“Shut up.”

[}-o-{]

“Hm,” Lily moaned as she bit into her burger. “Gosh,” she mumbled with her mouth still full. “How I missed some junk food, Pierce. This is great.”

“I know,” he commented, a little amused but also finding that reaction to junk food oddly cute. Then again, he had reacted mostly the same way when he’d arrived at the city and had his first taste of a meal he hadn’t prepared himself nor Lily. No offense to the girl’s cooking, but it was nice to have something different once in a while and junk food certainly hit the spot after spending so long out in the wild.

Thus, he leaned back on his chair and brought the straw of his drink to his lips while he watched the girl reconnect with civilization through her meal.

“So, you’ve been leaving your team with the tutors? Anything I should know? I might do the same while we are here,” she asked, picking up some of her fries. “Which will likely mean we’ll have to stay here for longer after you are done with your training with the tutors. You can probably tackle the Gym right now, nevermind then. So, if you don’t want to wait, I can save the tutor vouchers for-”

“Lily,” he interrupted, raising an amused eyebrow at the babbling girl. “It’s fine, we can stay a few days more.”

“You sure, because-”

“I’m sure,” he interrupted again, giving her an amused and bemused smile. “What’s up? You are acting weird.”

“I just
 Did I ever tell you? I didn’t like traveling on my own when I started my journey,” she started, deflating on her seat, picking a fry but simply staring at it for a long moment before nibbling on the tip. “My mother warned me about traveling alone, about how dangerous a journey could be and that it was always better to have someone watching your back. And I wanted that, so I talked to my friends about it and all but
 They left without me. They wanted to challenge themselves, prove that they were the best on their own and all that.”

“They sound like assholes,” Pierce commented, drawing a chuckle from Lily.

“Yeah, they are,” she agreed with a nod, her mood still down. “But I guess I was really happy to find you and start traveling with you. And that was before you started dragging me into these crazy encounters and
 just making my journey better, I guess.”

Pierce felt like saying something, honestly, but he also felt like it was better to just let her talk. Lily was obviously speaking a lot more seriously than usual, looking down with her meal all but forgotten now. It seemed that either he’d touched on something there or she’d been waiting for a chance to talk about this. He wasn’t sure which one it was, or if it was both.

“Then I was by myself again, just me and my team. And they are great, don’t get me wrong but
 It’s different, you know? To know that there’s another human being watching your back,” Lily told him, finally looking up from her plate. “So I guess
 Yeah, I missed you a lot
 Sorry if I got a little emotional there.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Pierce replied with a soft smile
 before reaching over and taking one of her fries.

“Hey!”

“That said,” he commented, taking a bite out of his recently acquired snack. “There’s no need to worry, you know? You are stuck with me now. Who’d I tease if you aren’t around? Narcissa? She’d stab me.”

“That she would,” Lily replied, smiling at him and looking more grateful than amused. “Thanks for agreeing to travel with a stranger, Pierce.”

“Lily
 I think you know I don’t have many people in my corner,” Pierce told her then. Maybe he felt like he had to, after she opened up like that. Or maybe he just wanted to tell someone. Regardless of it all
 Pierce found that it wasn’t so difficult to get started, nor continuing. “Right now, you are the closest person I have and that’s because this crazy girl decided to ask to travel with a stranger, so
 I think I should be the one saying thank you.”

“Guess we both were lucky, huh?” she said, picking up a fry herself.

“That we were.”

“So, leaving that aside
 broke any hearts?” she asked, making him groan. He couldn’t help but grin at her though as she started laughing. “Come on, there has to be something you can tell me. It can’t all be training and playing with pokemon, Pierce. Even for you!”

“What do you mean even for me?”

“I’m waiting!”

“No, Lily, I didn’t break any hearts,” he told her flatly, already growing bored with that conversation. “I’ve barely talked with anyone but the Sisters at the Gym. And it’s all professional,” he added quickly, before she could say something dumb.

“One would think you’d be more friendly, Pierce.”

“I’m friendly, I just don’t make a lot of friends,” he corrected with a shrug. “I mean, we’ll be leaving in a matter of
 What? A week?” he asked, leaning back and taking his drink in his hand. “Doesn’t seem worth it to get close to someone when we’ll just be away real soon and who knows when we’ll be back here.”

‘Doesn’t sound worth it, when you can just die at any time,’ he added in his mind, remembering the red, the pain and the glint of meta- He shook those thoughts off. ‘I just don’t feel eager to make new connections. Maybe it’s not healthy but
 I’ll just give it some time and see.’

“I know, but still
” Lily said, very clearly a little concerned. “You don’t have to be alone, Pierce.”

“I have you, don’t I?”

The girl raised an eyebrow.

“Fine, be that way,” he grumbled, rolling his eyes and bringing his drink’s straw to his lips. “I’m just saying that it’s fine that I don’t make friends that easily. Besides, it’s not like other people are throwing friendship at me, you know?”

Lily raised her eyebrow even more, which Pierce hadn’t known she could even do.

“Those girls don’t count,” he muttered, looking away.

“I guess it’s not friendship that they are throwing at you.”

Pierce just groaned.

[}-o-{]

“Place is getting a little empty,” Pierce commented, drawing a subdued response from Vaporeon next to him. That day, instead of just one of their group members being taken away, it was a whole bunch. Quagsire, Goldeen and Tentacool had gone now. “Just you and me from the starting group, huh?” he asked, placing a hand on top of the eeveelution.

Magikarp swam in a circle in front of him.

“I guess we can add you too, huh?” he said, smiling as the fish pokemon gave an excited wiggle at that. “I’m happy for you, all of you. The ones that already left and you too. I want you to know that,” Pierce told them then, letting out a long drawn out breath through his nose. “Just in case you had any doubts. I’ll miss you, of course, but I’m happy you are cared for now, either here or wherever you end up going.”

Magikarp approached him then, rubbing against his leg. Even Vaporeon did the same where she laid by his side, pressing her head on his thigh. As they shared that moment though, a tentacool – a different one from the one they’d been spending time with – approached them curiously. Pierce smiled at it, remembering that there were, indeed, other pokemon around and that all of them needed cheering.

“How about we go swimming, yeah?” he asked. Both of his current companions agreed, if not quite enthusiastic. That was fine though, he was fairly sure that some exercise and a meal afterwards would help their moods. He certainly hoped so, at least. “Let’s go then.”

So, that’s how he spent the next hour or so, swimming and sharing food with pokemon. A very good use of his time, at least in Pierce’s opinion. As usual, he did also play with some of the other pokemon around, but ultimately it always ended up being mostly Magikarp and Vaporeon with him. All the others had their handlers, or were still wary, or just didn’t want to get close to someone when they were all being sent to different places and such.

Pierce could certainly understand all those reasons, so he didn’t feel too bad.

“And then when I turned to look at them, the little shits had already eaten like, half of the berries we’d been given, can you believe that,” he narrated, lying sideways on the edge of the pool, with one foot inside the water and dropping one hand in occasionally. “I swore that I would never let her live that down and I’ve held to that promise so far. They deserve it.”

His audience of tentacool, magikarp and Vaporeon nodded their agreement.

It was nice to be in the company of like-minded individuals.

Idly, Pierce closed his eyes. He was a little tired, between the job in the morning and all the stuff that he’d been doing with his pokemon companions at the Gym to keep their mood up, nevermind the goodbye with most of the group. It had been a very active day, that was for sure. On top of that, he was also very emotionally drained once more.

‘This is just really taxing. I can’t imagine working doing this,’ he thought to himself. He really didn’t want to know what it felt like to be the people that did this as a full job, encountering suffering pokemon all the time and having to deal with the inevitable heartbreak that came with it all the time. Pierce loved helping pokemon, but what he didn’t love was pokemon suffering.

A bit of a contradiction, some would say, but he didn’t think so.

If a pokemon needed help, he’d be the first to go for it. However, he’d rather no pokemon ever needed him for anything. That was his ideal world. One that was impossible, but that was how it was for him. Just because it couldn’t happen didn’t mean Pierce had to stop wanting that to be how things were.

A deep sound made him drop his head to the side to check the pool. Sure enough, there was a new pokemon peeking at him over the water level. Now, Pierce would admit that the sight made him a little nervous, but he didn’t let it show. This was a pokemon that was surely under someone’s supervision. If a sharpedo was allowed to swim free
 Well, he trusted the Sisters and the Gym staff.

“Hey there,” Pierce greeted as the rest of the pokemon gathering around him made way for the shark pokemon. “Say, are you hungry?” The sharpedo stopped then, but Pierce didn’t know if it was surprised or interested. “I can get you a pokeblock or two if you are interested. Then you can stay here and listen to me speak nonsense for an extended period of time. This lot seems to like that for some reason.”

The sharpedo approached him instead of answering, getting closer and closer until it was right next to Pierce.

At the sudden closeness, the man extended his arm towards the pokemon slowly.

“Do you mind?” he asked. When the water type didn’t express anything he placed his palm on top of the shark’s head and started patting it. “I guess we can stay like this for a bit longer,” Pierce commented, looking up at the ceiling once more as they got comfortable. “Which story to tell next
 Oh, how about this one where an arbok got inside our camp one night?” he asked and he heard Magikarp swim enthusiastically. She was the only one that reacted that strongly to his stories, after all.

So, he started another narration.

[}-o-{]

[Narcissa]

She was tired.

She was sore.

She was also
 proud.

Narcissa was getting stronger. Maybe it was a slow – agonizingly slow – process, but she was progressing. She was a little irked that she had to learn with someone other than Pierce, but she could understand the idea of having someone more experienced teach her. She had learned from the other members of her line back in Viridian Forest. She learned from Pierce. Pierce learned from Lily and his books and the computer thing.

Her trainer knew a lot, but he didn’t know enough to teach her the move she was learning fast enough. Her tutor, as Pierce called him, spoke from years of experience and training other pokemon. He had other pokemon that could teach her more carefully in a way that no human ever could.

All in all, she could see the wisdom in the decision.

That said, Narcissa would admit that she wasn’t as much of a fan as one would think. She didn’t like, after all, having to be away from Pierce for extended periods of time. The man had been with her for a relatively short amount of time, but it was still longer than she’d been alive before he appeared. He was a huge part of her life now, the one that was helping her get where she wanted to be.

They’d get there, she swore, all of them would. Pierce, Orion, Cygnus and Narcissa, all four of them would be there, together with whatever other members their team got. Speaking of which, she still wasn’t very sure how she felt about the whole team thing, even after so long since the other two members joined.

Orion was fine, she supposed, if childish. She could appreciate his desire to grow stronger so that he wouldn’t be weak and fragile anymore, that’s for sure. He could also be really annoying, especially in spars since he held the advantage. Narcissa refused to lose to a child though and she hadn’t
 but it was annoyingly difficult to get those wins.

Once she had Giga Drain ready though, then they’d speak.

Narcissa couldn't wait.

Then there was Cygnus who was
 there. The abra wasn’t the most sociable pokemon around, that was for sure, but that was fine with Narcissa. She’d rather that than a hyperactive thing like Star. At least Cygnus allowed privacy and personal time. Other than that, she didn’t mind the psychic too much, really. He kept to himself, just like she did and just like Orion did
 for the most part.

They were Pierce’s team first and friends second, or so she felt. Which is far from saying she didn’t care, but she was sure they wouldn’t have been anywhere near each other if not for their trainer. Now though, now they were a team, a swarm of their own. Thus, Narcissa would look out for them just like they would look out for her.

“Come on, girl,” Pierce said, making her turn her attention back to the outside world instead of just thinking. That was one of the many changes she’d experienced while traveling with Pierce. She thought a lot more now, she realized.

Then again, when in the wild, she’d always had to keep an eye out for any other pokemon that might threaten her or trainers looking for a fight or capture. Now, she didn’t need to worry about that, since she was safe. And even if she wasn’t, she’d trust her team, her swarm, to protect her.

“There, much better, right?” Pierce told her, setting her on his lap and starting to rub her with the special wipe he’d gotten. It was
 glorious. Especially after a long day of training. Her everything was sore and she was too tired to even fly all that much.

Maybe insisting on those battles after training hadn’t been a good idea.

Still, if she got Pierce’s massages with the wipe, it might as well be worth it, even without the promise of future strength. It was that good and she was not at all surprised that Orion was very much a sucker for it himself. Cygnus, the poor unfortunate psychic that he was, didn’t have an equivalent for it found just yet. Narcissa could only pity him for that.

He rolled his eyes at that thought of hers, but she was positive that he was envious of them.

Truly, such a sad existence, the one of her teammate.

“Are you guys being mean to each other again?” Pierce asked, and Narcissa stiffened.  â€œI did tell you what would happen if you didn’t quit it, didn’t I?”

He had.

No pokeblocks for a night.

Narcissa couldn’t have that. After much trial and error – quite a bit of error, really – Pierce had struck some absolutely amazing combinations of berries for the snacks. Furthermore, Pierce was also going to start training himself in the art of making something called poffins.

Narcissa had seen some pictures and she wasn’t impressed. They looked
 soft, not very appealing, but she could be wrong. Strange, that was, but it could happen.

Besides, Pierce made it sound like they were better than pokeblocks and that Narcissa needed to see. If that held true, then she definitely didn’t want to miss out. Even if the first batch turned out to be like Pierce’s pokeblock learning experience, she still wanted to be part of it. Just to be sure that she’d get to eat the good ones too.

No way she’d be missing out.

Especially because Cygnus would be insufferable about it if she didn’t. The abra could be a little shit like that too. And Orion likely would do the same thing, if unintentionally. The amusement she felt coming from Cygnus was all the confirmation she needed and the abra knew it.

Thus, they’d have to play nice with each other.

“That’s more like it,” Pierce said, continuing what he was doing. Narcissa could ignore the obnoxious abra. She had Pierce and she was getting massaged with the wipe. She was getting stronger every day and she was soon to prove her strength against the city’s Gym. She needed to focus on all that and she’d be in a great mood for a while.

Things were good for Narcissa and she was definitely very happy with her decision all the way back when she was a Kakuna.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Hey, another Narcissa PoV! Don’t ask me why I felt like adding that there. I just thought it’d been a while and wanted to do some different PoV stuff. So, that’s what happened
 that’s it. You shouldn’t expect grand planning thingies from me by now.

Anyway, there’s also some more water type quality time as usual and also some Lily quality time. Nothing much to point out there, but always nice to have, I think.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: Gold or silver? I prefer silver, personally. (This isn’t a pokemon question, btw. I mean literally a preference between gold or silver, be it the metals or the colors.)

See you.