The Other Side of the Coin

Despite living most of her life at Our Lady of Healing Moonlight, Hailey wasn't much for dreams, not anymore at least. As a kid she was always drifting off, usually when someone was talking to her. In dreams she could escape not just the physical pain of her entire existence, but the mind numbing boredom that ripped at her psyche more than a thousand spasmodic attacks did at her body.

In dreams her endless series of aches, pains, convulsions, and coughs could be cured. She could actually go to school with other girls, or just strike off into the woods like some modern day Crystal, ready to meet all the Pokemon who'd surely want to be her friend.

Even her early teenage years didn't completely kill the dreams, despite all her books telling her that teenage years were ones of angst and unrequited love. Sure, perhaps they were less grand, simply gilded, but they were still better. The fits would subside enough that she could live without round the clock monitoring, she’d be allowed to move into a share house or something. Actually, thinking back on things, it was around this time a particular fascination took root in her for several years, unclear where it came from really.

Absols.

It wasn't that strange. From her limited knowledge of other teenagers it seemed a lot of them had a liking for the quiet, mysterious ladies. She wasn't dreaming of a cure at this point, even in her dreams she was still in the chair, but at least not bed bound. She'd be let out of the hospital and one day, while rolling around the city, or perhaps a quiet forest cottage, she'd drop something, or have an attack, and a great horned woman with shockingly soft fur and piercing red eyes would swoop in out of nowhere. Absols could sense disaster they said, and many thought they could also sense more general things like pain and loneliness.

All without being a prying psychic.

Finally, she'd have someone who understood, who needed no words to pick up on her deep and profound teenage angst. Someone she wouldn't have to beg for help because she just... knew.

Of course, dreams were never eternal. Even thinking back on it now she could feel only disgust at wanting to be cared for, be coddled that way, it made her sick. She'd had quite enough of people pushing her around, deciding where she went.

Mercifully, her sleep was pretty blank these days.

That didn't make the sudden transition out of it any less jarring though.

"-ceus, that's no piece of junk Thảo, someone's there! Is that a wheelchair?" Despite the urgency in the call, the voice responsible was still low, almost sleepy in it's relaxed nature, quite unlike the one that followed.

'Someone? Do we need to get your eyes checked again Bri? You know how squirmy you get when they do the eye puff thing. Looks like some steel and plastic junk some kids dragged down here for.... some reason I'm sure." A voice like that should be illegal underground, it boomed like the bass at a sold out concert, shaking little bits of dust free from the ceiling to rain down in a parody of precipitation.

"My eyes checked?" A note of irritation had crept into the soft voice. Hailey knew what was happening here, this needed to be nipped in the bud, but she was still dazed from the sudden awakening. Joints as stiff as a Rhydon's horn, it hurt, everything hurt, inside and out. She went to take a breath, but her throat caught, maybe on some dust falling from the ceiling, maybe on nothing at all.

The fit came on hard, radiating from her core outward, till she was popping around like a deranged parody of a Hoppip. It wasn't bad enough that her condition had to utterly control her life, it had to make her look stupid and pathetic to.

"Oh! Oh jeez! Are you ok there? Hey, hey Thảo, some focus here! Give me a Sunny Day, I need more light!"

"That's not you making that noise is it?" The booming voice echoed again, Arceus this one was thicker than usual. "Sure, watch your eyes though."

Hailey couldn't, she had no control over hers for the moment, which meant she briefly saw a long and thick limb, dark brown, reach out before what must have been a miniature sun burst into existence. Then it all went white.

"Hey, HEY! Stay with me! Water? Do you need water? CPR?" The voice was no longer so slow, so gentle, a manic twinge had crept into it. Still warm, but the cadence had changed, words now tumbled over each other. "Thảo I swear to Dialga AND Palkia you get over here before she throws herself over the edge!"

Oh yeah, all the twitching and spamming was probably not a good idea on a narrow ledge, shame that wasn't under her control.

"The chair? Oh the chair! There is someone in it! How did I miss that? Hang on."

The rocking abruptly ceased as a great weight came down on the chairs handles. Ok, one problem solved, now for the other one. Judging by the rustling of plastic, one of them was rummaging around in her bag, probably looking for water. Wouldn't help. Nothing really did, and they'd tried so many things over the years, she just had to ride it out.

Struggling, she tried to get her breathing under control first, the rest would come later. Gulping and gasping, she couldn't help but notice how strangely clean the air tasted? Fresh and with a light hint of citrus, it was.... pleasant, even if hard to appreciate. She hadn't even noticed how stale the air down here had gotten.

As her breathing slowly came back under control, the limbs slowly followed, Arceus, they'd probably be bruised all to shit now, the old ones had just been fading to. Plastic touched her lips, looks like the lady, almost certainly a human she guessed, had found a bottle. It may not stop the symptoms but some water was always nice to help her throat after an attack.

"Come on, stay with me. Take a drink, what are you doing here, are you lost, how did you get down here, is your partner around?" Well, they were either panicked to hysteria or naturally bossy, lovely. One thing at a time lady.

Slowly, the world came back into view as her body remembered how to blink. The once near pitch dark cavern was blazing like a PokeStar Studios backlot, all from a shocking small orb now hanging somewhere near the roof. It was… smaller in the light, the once unimaginable vastness reduced to a few dozen meters. The once imposing ledge now looked to be only five or six feet high, not great to fall down sure, but not a uncharted abyss. On the far side the blue glow was shown to be a small waterfall emerging from the wall, pooling on the ground, running off out of sight. It sparkled in the sudden Sunny Day, did it glow in the dark?

More immediate were the figures surrounding her. On the left was the figure still holding a bottle up, genuine worry plain in her deep brown eyes. Surprisingly, the woman only had to bend a little to look Hailey in the eyes, she wasn't used to adults so close to her own height. Her olive skin was mostly hidden beneath what looked like a slightly to big green cardigan, her hair almost, but not quite, buzzed away in a close crop.

Quite the contrast to the figure that now had one hand on her chair, the other scratching a bright yellow… beard? No, wait, that was fruit.

What was a Tropius doing underground?

From stout but trunk-like legs, the Pokemon's body kept going up, up, up till her head almost brushed the top of the cavern. Almost half of that was pure neck extending out of a sturdy body, comical really but the confidence that glinted in their black eyes made it work. Hardened leaves formed a swift looking helmet and four great fronds fluttered idly behind her.

Big, in every sense of the word.

"I, ah, I-I'll be ok, I just need a minute, to, calm down." One hand massaged her throat, it didn't really help but it always felt right to do. More importantly her mind was already running, this was just about the worst way for someone to come across her, she needed to play this carefully.

"Alright?! You need to get to a Centre, or maybe even a hospital! I've neve-" The nervous rambling was thankfully cut off by the woman's partner, heavy hand landing on her soft shoulder. Didn't seem to be out of concern for Hailey though, she was pointing across the cavern.

It was still hard to focus, but there did seem to be dark shapes detaching from the ceiling. Oh right, there had been Zubat, probably, in here. They… likely didn't appreciate a nice sunny day.

"Shame, looks like I riled up some little ladies, Brigit, get behind me hun, I'm not having you carried away, only I get to do that." The loud cracking of knuckles was probably more of effect than need as a smirk slid across the leafy ladies face. Pokemon, always so dramatic.

"Me nothing, they'd probably try to grab… sorry, still haven't gotten your name? Anyway, just… blow them away or something Thảo, there's no apologizing to a hoard for ruining their nap."

"It's… W-Wendy." Hailey lied as easily as she coughed, right at the same time Thảo said "Huh? Who? Oh, oh right. I'll do something, but never say you're nothing when I can hear… OW! Hey!"

The Zubat ladies, must have been eight to twelve of them, hard to tell. Even in the light they were a mass of blue and purple, their hair uniformly cut to cover their eyes. Did they even have eyes? Something about the Sunny Day had to have bothered them, maybe the heat. They were certainly making their displeasure felt as horribly buffeting winds crashed into the three.

Thảo caught most of it, on purpose. Hailey didn't know that much about moves and types but some things were just osmosis, it said a lot about the Tropius that she stood firm against all that wind. In fact, the cocky look didn't leave her face.

"Sorry gals, but the missus specifically said blow you away, nothing personal."

Sanctioned bouts were never something Hailey watched much of on tv. They were so artificial and stiff for one. Pokemon love a good fight sure, but fucking and fighting was basically the same for most and they liked to mix them, liberally. Take one half of the equation out and even someone like her could tell the spice was missing, even if she had little desire to taste it.

Apparently, they also didn't even come close to transmitting the shear intensity of moves. The first sign was how, for an instant, all the volume seemed to drop out of the world. The batty squeaks, Brigit breathing at her side, all of it.

Second was the darkness. The Sunny Day was still burning bright up at the ceiling but it seemed to fade to nothing even as nothing about it clearly actually changed, the power just… drawn away.

Third was the glow, a tiny point of light, no bigger than a seed, hanging right beyond Thảo's outstretched finger. The shadows it cast were stark, sharp only slightly diminished by her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth.

Then, Brigit clapped a hand over her eyes, and the world exploded.

A crackling ZZZZZZZZZZTTTTZZZ echoed around the confined space and Hailey would have sworn she could have seen right through the palm on her face. It lasted only a fraction of a second but the spots still took a bit to blink away. By the time her vision came back for the second time in only a handful of minutes, she could see the Tropius standing in what she probably thought was a cool pose, blowing on her finger.

And all around the room, dazed or unconscious bat girls were laying across the room, one was even partially slumped over the wheel of her chair. Close enough to see that they weren't wearing clothes.

Who knew you could get then sun and a full moon down in a cave?