The Other Side of the Coin

"Finally, Febas Ferries has issued a press release stating that Rangers are on the scene and delays shouldn't extend past the hour mark. Back to you Kristine."

The camera swung away from the Local Events desk, returning to the main stage of Jubilife TV. The two figures sitting there could not have been any more different. The woman on the left was almost painfully sunny, bright golden hair riding the line between natural, dyed, and Inherited. With her baby blue suit and glittering earrings, she looked almost like a summers day come to life.

"Thanks, Ako. Well, no one likes being delayed but who among us hasn’t been swooped down upon by an entire flock of Staravia looking to teach a girl or 20 how to sing, isn’t that right Precious?”

The figure on the right looked like she'd just crawled out of bed, or was beckoning you back to it. Her sleepy grey fur and half lidded yellow eyes promised mischief... if she could stay awake long enough to see it through. She barely seemed to be paying attention as she examined her claws, deep purple suit almost blending into the background.

"They're always so confident, so cocksure" She purred, "Almost as bad as Wingull, but just get a hand around their throat and two fingers in their..."

Neither flinched as a red light and accompanying siren went off above the catwoman's head but the smirk on her face showed she didn't regret it at all.

"Ah, yes, quite Precious, but flurries of feathers aren't all that's happening in Sinnoh. In five we'll go to our on-the-ground corespondents Leana & Kit as they ask YOU: Clowns, hot or horrifying? Plus, you won't want to miss part one of our new series on new subcultures, Neo-Primitivism, fad or here to stay? And of course our interview with Professor Pine on this years predicted migration patterns.”

"Shame she's not in studio for this one." Precious languidly interjected, "Last time, when we met up in the dressing room I swear I cou..." The overly frisky feline once again failed to finish a sentence as the alarm went off. Judging by the blush on Kristine's face, she was to lost in old memories to really rib her costar as a ticker on her side of the screen counted up.

The big screen mounted on the side of JTV's headquarters then flashed to some ad for a gimmick watch. Hailey didn't care, half the reason people even tuned into tv news anymore was to see which of the two racked up the most alarms. Standard odds put it at about 13.7% Kristine, 86.3% for Precious. Honestly if you wanted the news just look it up online.

Hailey wasn't interested in the news, never had been, but the Station Plaza was a pretty convenient place to catch her breath. Plenty of shade, close to Route 204, and full of chattering ladies and Pokémon, all distracted by the screen or each other. Kept them from focusing on her.

She had known she would stick out from the moment she first started planning this stupid thing, but not by how much, not really.

Sure, the wheelchair wasn't exactly inconspicuous. Decked out with a uncomfortably rigid blue hospital seat, and heavy stainless steel frame, plus all manner of cheap plastic bags hanging from it? She had to look like some crazy hoarder and there weren't exactly many of those out roaming the streets in broad daylight, at least not around here. But it wasn't just the conspicuous form of locomotion (that was also murder on her shoulders) or the old white and blue blanket that covered her legs. It was.... her.

If you went just by the bare bone facts, there was nothing unusual about her. Brown hair, brown eyes, not as common as they apparently used to be, given the spread of inheritance, but still. Dig a little deeper though, and the cracks (literal and metaphorical) started showing. Her hair might have been nominally brown, but dried mud was a better descriptor, dried out and stringy, uncombable because even light pulling yanked out the fragile roots.The rest of her wasn’t in much better state. Eyes, permanently bloodshot and sunken. Skin with a grey, corpse like pallor, the highly visible veins. Despite years of hospital meals specially formulated to contain everything a body needed (aside from taste and texture) she’d stubbornly refused to put on any real weight.

Next to the masses with their vibrant colours and near perfect health, why wouldn’t she stand out?

Despite not having what most would call a "traditional" education (or much of any at all), envy and boredom had made her something of an autodidact on the end results of Inheritance, if not the mechanisms. That strange force that had been shaping Humanity like clay for centuries if not millennia at this point.

Strange hair, unusual proportions, resistance to heat, cold, even crushing pressure, and that wasn’t even the wildest stuff. Once someone hit Professor tier you started getting woman would could literally shapeshift, walk bare into the utter darkness of the deep sea, or use an active volcano as their own personal hot tub. Big and flashy, the humans that now only existed as archaeological record were almost unrecognizable compared to their descendants. Every young girl carefully watched for signs of what they would inherit from their Poke-Mom to manifest. Would it be parts of their ability? A unnatural hair or eye colour? A stereotypical personality?

No one but the experts paid attention to the parts that had been slowly changing the entire species.

Despite their love of all things physical, Pokémon were creatures of energy first and foremost. Even the bluntest Rock or Steel among them retained an air of the ethereal, defying the laws of physical matter that humanity was tied to, that humanity borrowed bits and pieces of. They were uncanny, to oversimplify it. They ate only when they felt like it (or if really wiped out). They slept more to pass the time than anything else. Their battles could tear open the landscape, but they were just for fun and to impress mates. They were otherworldly in everything but their carnal appetites.

Not Hailey though.

Search all you liked and you would not find a hint of the miraculous in her form. Just by looking at her, you could instantly tell, Hailey was a material girl.