It’s after Chansey got bored of pulling the people working at the local gym up to what she considered acceptable that the duo left and had an abbreviated lunch before getting back to the center. After they got back, Chansey was almost immediately called to the back room, leaving Amelia alone to zone out staring at the weather channel on the lobby TV while tending the front.
She’s not sure why her partner was called to the back, but she does know that the ‘mon was very pleased to even be able to go through the narrow door and hall in the first place with only minimal trouble.
Even with all the work Chansey has been putting into learning minimize, with every spare moment being spent either trying to push herself smaller or keep herself at a smaller size, the speed at which she’s figuring out the move would be impressive for any ‘mon, no matter how much time they dedicate to practice.
It’s a testament to Chansey’s skill and Amelia’s desensitization to that skill that some small part of her is remarking on how slowly the ‘mon is figuring this out in comparison to other stuff.
It’s a good thing that she is figuring it out, because –now that Amelia is thinking to look for it– she’s pretty sure her partner is still growing, despite a few offhand remarks to the contrary from the ‘mon about ‘reaching her plateau’ even when comparing to the day before yesterday, when she forgets to minimize and thuds into a door, it feels like a bit more bulk squishes out around the doorframe than before.
The sound of the front door sliding open has Amelia snap out of her weather channel based fugue, looking to the front with a professional smile.
A smile she struggles to maintain at the sight of the group that’s coming in, because she recognizes them.
They’re the friends she made just outside of Lavaridge, while her hair was covered, chatting amongst each other they walk in accompanied by a new dark brown haired boy she assumes is the grass type trainer they’d mentioned.
She liked it when they looked at her as Amelia and nothing else.
They haven't appeared to notice her yet, but when they do…
Amelia winces internally as they continue to approach.
Sam, Marshtomp’s trainer, shoves the new person in the shoulder with an exasperated expression.
“Tyler, my oldest and bestest friend, you need to give it up!” He says with a laugh that adds some ambiguity to her serious he’s being right now. “If you’re that set on a full badge run, save it for later, find some partners who aren't at a type disadvantage, catch a corphish and you’ve got this!”
“No! I almost had her this time!” The trainer, Tyler, glares. “I just need to help Grovyle figure out how to beat that stupid fire tornado thing.”
“Flamewheel. You know, the move everyone knows counters close range grass types?” Kate chimes in as she steps up to the counter and looks at Amelia. “Good afternoon Nurse Joy.”
The Joy hesitates as she realizes there’s no light of recognition in their eyes, the fact making her simultaneously grateful for them not recognizing her and the twinge of the very old grievance that no one can differentiate a member of the family.
It’s not that hard!
“Hhhello, and welcome to the Pokémon Center.” She slips out, dipping her head just like she’d practiced in the mirror since she was six years old. “Would you like me to heal your Pokémon back to–”
“Yes Nurse Joy, thank you Nurse Joy.” Kate interrupts with a nod, placing three pokeballs on the countertop where Amelia picks them up and plugs them into the pokecare machine.
A few seconds later the machine does its work and she returns the ‘mon to their trainer. The instant the balls leave her hand the next person in line is doing the same.
As she works down the line, Amelia gets into the rhythm and she slowly builds the shallow hope that, just maybe, they won't recognize h–
On the periphery of her vision, the nurse in training sees the door to the back room open to reveal a wall of pink. The sight has her new friends stop and stare in fascination as Chansey drags herself through the doorway and wobbles back to full size with sound and visuals like some strange cross between jiggling pudding and inflating balloon.
There’s a moment of silence before Sam opens his mouth.
“That’s a… big…”
He looks back at Amelia.
Ah, there’s the recognition.
“Amelia!? You’re Nurse Joy!?”
The words, accompanied by the shift in their eyes from recognition to the exact same expression she sees in every person on the street, feel like they’re tripping some kind of mental switch inside Amelia’s head with a snap.
“No.” She says calmly, reaching out for the next set of pokeballs. “My name is Amelia, trainee nurse and registered trainer. Next please.”
Everyone looks as if they were knocked a touch off balance by her clarification.
Then Sam opens his mouth.
“So… are you a–”
“Shhh.” He’s hushed by a member of the group who never gave their name, and the room falls to silence again, Amelia staring at the group while they look back.
It takes another few seconds before Kate takes a half step forward.
“Sorr– I mean I didn't know–” She tries, cutting herself off each time, then takes a breath and gives a smile. “…Hey Amelia, we’re going to a hike-in hike-out hot spring place tomorrow night if you want to come with, hang out?” She says with a tinge of desperation in her voice.
Group hot spring?
Amelia cocks her head to the side half a degree as she processes the offer, before her smile widens and she clasps her hands back at her waist.
“Sounds like fun! I get off at five tomorrow so I’d love to. Where should we meet up?”
—--
–_–
—--
The rest of the day was the same as the last, three minor house calls –only one of which Tanya attended– and an evening of training minimize. But soon enough the next day dawns and the ‘mon watches her partner fuss with every aspect of her appearance in the mirror before heading out.
Of course it has nothing to do with the fact that Nurse Lilly is supposed to be coming back today. Amelia doesn't care what the old curmudgeon thinks.
Or so she says.
“Where’s the blanket!?” The trainer shouts, rushing out of the bathroom. “Why didn't we find it last nigh–”
“It’s under the front desk. Remember?” Tanya answers with the faintest shade of amusement in her voice. “From the first time we tried to deliver it and she was gone?”
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Her partner comes to a stop in the center of the room, looks at her partner, then closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
“Right… Right.” She says on the inhale and exhale. “Let's get going then.”
Tanya nods, gripping the door handle with a flare of psychic and pulling it open.
“After you.”
—--
Unfortunately, when they get there, Nurse Lilly is nowhere to be seen. A turn of events that seems to be driving Amelia up the wall. The ambiguity has her constantly making sure that every aspect of her appearance and the pokecenter is as perfect as possible.
It’s a few hours into the shift, during Amelia’s third trip giving the back exam room a deep clean, that the phone rings. Tanya, being the one on desk duty, picks up the handset and reaches for the cassette for talking over the phone. But before the phone even makes it to the side of her head, let alone getting the cassette, she hears the familiar voice of the absent nurse speaking quickly over the line.
“Have Chansey grab the spare jug of type-a dialysis fluid and get up here as quickly as possible. I need a translator” She says, followed by a dial tone before Tanya has the chance to say anything in response.
Tanya blinks, then takes the handset from the side of her head and looks at it.
…Concise.
Unfortunately Chansey is on a house call right now and Ambrette was the one who picked up the phone, so only she knows where he ‘mon went.
Placing the phone back in the cradle, Tanya opens the door to the back room with a flare of purple.
“Amelia?” She calls out, continuing after a second with the assumption she got her partner's attention. “Could you tell Ambrette that Head Nurse Lilly instructed us to have her partner get some type-a dialysis fluid ‘up here?’”
Amelia pokes her head around the door.
“What! Aunt– Nurse Lilly called you?” She asks, then blinks as the rest of the words process and nods. “Gotcha. Hey Nurse Ambrette!”
With instructions relayed, Ambrette is quickly walking out of the back room with a large jug of clear fluid and a worried expression on her face.
“I phoned where Chansey’s doing a house call but they’re not picking up, I’ll keep calling but…” She trails off, adjusting the hair of her wig out of her eyes. “If the Head Nurse says it’s urgent I think you should take it, both of you if she said she needed a translator.”
Amelia makes the face of someone attempting to suppress a questioning mature as she grabs the offered jug.
“Where am I going?”
Ambrette winces at the question.
“...Ok I’m only telling you this because Head Nurse Lilly said this was urgent, because if Ninetails is still up there she’s already staying longer than she normally does–”
“Wait there’s a ninetails, here?” Amelia asks in shock. “Outside of Mount Pyre? She has to be uncaught, I would have heard if someone caught–”
The synthetic Joy makes a shushing noise.
“Shhhhut! This is exactly the reason no one knows, she needs medical help and if trainers and scientists start nosing around she’ll disappear and she’s not going to get it. So zip!” Ambrette hisses, ripping a scrap of paper from a notebook and writing down some directions. “And never say ‘catch’ in front of her, in fact, leave any pokeballs here. Ninetails is old. Very old. Old enough that catch means something else to her and she does not like it.”
Amelia blinks at the harsh tone from the normally reserved and cheerful woman, then takes the note with a nod.
“Understood, we’ll be there as soon as we can.”
As the note is handed over Tanya scans it to memory before her partner folds it and stuffs it into a pocket and they get going without another word.
Exiting the pokecenter, the instructions have them walking in a direction Tanya’s never been in. As they keep moving further and further toward, then up. the walls of the small flat area between steep cliffs that the majority of the town it built on, fake touristy stuff and new construction gives way to more shabby but honest looking buildings and old roads.
They keep going, through older and older neighborhoods until they follow the last direction with a street name that has them going down a narrow road, hemmed by old growth trees and houses that look even older.
Looking around, Tanya searches for the next landmark for their journey, something the instructions only described as a wooden arch in front of some stairs leading up a steep hill further into the forest.
It’s a bit further down the road when the ‘mon spots what is unmistakably what she’s looking for, but even if it wasn't the sight alone would have caused her to stop in her tracks and stare.
…It’s a torii, unassuming and unpainted wood framing cobbled steps that disappear up into the dense old growth of the forest.
Tanya walks up to the gate and tilts her head.
She’s not sure why the existence of the torii is surprising to her, so much of the rest of the culture here is an eerie mirror of Japan, but for some reason seeing the gate is…
“You think this is it?” Amelia asks, investigating the old wood with a careful eye before answering her own question. “Yea this is it.”
With that, she adjusts her grip on the large jug and starts hopping up the steps two at a time, Tanya following shortly behind as she struggles for a moment to squeeze herself small enough to get through the torii without touching the wood.
Traveling up the steps it’s clear that they are both old and cared for despite being largely unused, a single line of construction leading further and further up the mountain and deeper into the forest before the sight of a shrine breaks the monotony. A small building sitting in a clearing barely larger than the building itself, it looks similarly old and unused, but with clear indications that it’s been maintained despite that.
As Amelia was first up the stairs, she’s already standing a few steps away from the top, staring at the building.
“Well… we’re here. I guess we go in there?”
Amelia steps forward, but stops as Tanya doesn't follow, looking at the shrine with an awkward feeling tugging at her gut.
If there’s anything she has in abundance a healthy skepticism to the divine and spiritual. Not a skepticism in their power of course, she’d need to be a fool to doubt that after… everything. She knows what a ninetails looks like, so she suspects she knows where their patient is going to be, and entering the honden is one of the big things not to do at a shrine.
Not to mention she was raised Japanese, even if she wasn't at least slightly worried about being cursed by the spirit of this shrine, that deep part of her that’s never really stopped being Japanese would still be banging a drum in her head warning not to do what she thinks she’s about to.
Looking for an alternative, she glances at the shrine office only to find it completely boarded up, so with that last avenue to not be forced to do what she’s about to removed, Tanya sighs and trudges forward.
As they approach and Amelia climbs the steps, walking straight past the bell deeper into the worship hall, it’s clear that she has none of the cultural hesitation Tanya has, sparing the ratty rope only a slightly inquisitive look before catching sight of stairs at the other side of the hall.
“Hello?” She calls, coming to a stop. “Nurse Lilly?”
At her voice there’s the sound of shuffling, followed by the familiar voice of the wayward Head Nurse.
“Trainee? What are you doing here– Agh! Ninetails! Dont–”
Tanya blinks as there’s the sound of a struggle.
“Intrueeres! Y-chosen! Releasen me from tis blod-letenge deuyse!”
There’s a clatter, followed by the thudding of paws on wood before a kami appears at the top of the stairs, teeth snarling and tails swirling in agitation as the spirit seems to glow from within with power.
Then Tanya blinks, the moment is gone, and she realizes she’s not looking at a spirit, but a patient who probably just ripped themselves free of a dialysis machine if the quickly spreading patch of brown on her right foreleg is any indication.
A patient who’s staring at Amelia with an expression and posture that says she’s an instant away from leaping across the space separating them to rip out her–
The ‘mon blinks as if seeing Tanya for the first time when she reflexively steps in front of her partner, the smaller human releasing a squawk as Tanya shoves her fully behind her bulk.
The two ‘mon lock eyes, and for an instant that feels as if it stretches into minutes as the enraged ‘mon appears to be sizing Tanya up, locking eyes with a violent and rage fueled challange burning within them, pushing for her to drop her gaze, to flinch.
She doesn't blink.
After an eternal instant, the ninetail's posture eases from an aggressive crouch to something more suspiciously inquisitive.
“Wardeyn of thine kynrede? Ich ne have yseyn thine kynde sythen myn youthe. Of the kynrede of the ychosen? Twies rare of thine lyne to haven the fyr.”
Tanya doesn't relax her own posture.
“I apologize, I cannot understand you. But we were called here to help, and you have injured yourself.”
The ninetails gains a frustrated expression, then follows Tanya’s gaze down to the still growing splotch of brown on her leg.
“Verily. Ich will trien to speak in thine moderne tunge, Wardein.” She grumbles, glancing behind her at the sound of rustling. “Y-chosen, ne cower nat. Hit is nought but a wardein of thyn y-mirrored ilke and a y-chosen doughter.”
There’s silence after that, followed by Amelia carefully stepping out from behind Tanya and holding up the dialysis fluid.
“Sorry Nurse Lilly, Chansey couldn't make it, but I brought what you asked.
There’s another, even longer silence, followed by the sound of rustling cloth and a very disheveled pink haired woman coming into view, carefully ensuring to not startle the ninetails as she comes to the top of the stairs.
“Well…” She says, running a hand through her hair, causing an already ruined braid to finally collapse. “Bring it up here then.”
A/N: Ok this is on odd one. But some people seem to think I should add a translation to Ninetails's words. I dont exactly think its necessary, but it's pretty unanimous, so here.
Intrueeres! Y-chosen! Releasen me from tis blod-letenge deuyse!
Intruders! Chosen! Release me from this blood-letting device!
Wardeyn of thine kynrede? Ich ne have yseyn thine kynde sythen myn youthe. Of the kynrede of the ychosen? Twies rare of thine lyne to haven the fyr
Warden of your line/kin? I have not seen your kind since my youth. Of the kin of the chosen? Twice rare of your line to have the fire.
Verily. Ich will trien to speak in thine moderne tunge, Wardein
Truly(You are truthful). I will try to speak in your modern tongue, Warden
Y-chosen, ne cower nat. Hit is nought but a wardein of thyn y-mirrored ilke and a y-chosen doughter
Chosen, do not cower. It is nothing but a guardian of your mirrored ilk and a chosen daughter.
