A Saga of Tanya the Chansey: 39

(EDIT) A/N: whoops. Forgot the rest of chapter 38. Here you go! It's also at the end of 38 if you wanna read it like that. Sorry!

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Amelia squints at the examination room countertop, still slightly damp from the cleaning product she’d used under the careful watch of Aunt Vee’s partner, then glances up at the ‘mon for confirmation.

“...Like this?”

The nurse adjusts her hat as she leans closer, taking a few long moments as she slowly moves her head back and forth so every part of the table is caught in the reflection of the fluorescent light. 

While the ‘mon inspects the work, Amelia catches sight of her partner as she finishes removing the tools from the ultrasonic cleaner, rinsing thoroughly in water with gloved flippers and psychic energy, then placing them in the adjacent UV bed.

As she closes the lid to the UV bed and turns it on, Amelia’s attention is drawn to her own work as the nurse gives a consternated hum.

“Ch chansey.” She sighs, pointing at a wet spot that didn't evaporate with everything else. “Chansey chan chan, ansey.”

Squinting, Amelia doesn't need to know exactly what the ‘mon is saying to understand the meaning of the message. The first pass of silica disinfectant wasn't removed by the second pass of the carbon based one.

The nurse in training nods and picks up her cleaning tools as she walks back to the start of the workstation.

“Right. I’ll start again.” She states, keeping the burning embarrassment and self-recrimination out of her voice. “Anything else I should be aware of?”

Chansey shakes her head, and as Amelia starts again, she tries to keep her irritation from swinging to the judge for her assessment, reminding herself of the necessity for such exacting specifications.

Calcium hydroxide is toxic, but necessary to sanitize the silica and fluorine based chemistry of both a rock type’s biofluids and the diseases therein. As such, while she’s quickly learning how difficult it is to clean up the oil based suspension, it’s the only method to neutralize and clean a workstation with certainty.

From behind, she can hear the nurse walking across the room and making a pleased noise.

“An! Chan sey!” She cheers as she inspects the work. “Chansey, chan cha an ansey?”

“Chan.” Her partner agrees, and a few seconds later Amelia sees her walk up beside her out the corner of her eye. “Chansey chan cha ansey an chan.” She says as she adjusts her safety goggles with a purple glow, inadvertently giving a precise translation of the nurse’s instruction to come help.

Amelia tries to repress a small flare of jealousy as she nods.

“Alright, you start at the other end, we meet in the middle, then we check over each other’s work on the second pass.”

Chansey nods back, turning to walk to the other side of the table without another word.

Amelia doesn't watch her go, instead focusing on carefully applying exactly as much disinfecting oil to the countertop as instructed.

In all the books she’s read, interviews she’s watched, and interactions she’s seen with older trainers in years past as they stopped in her town on their own journeys, she knows that most ‘mon don't behave like Chansey. It’s clear that, for the large part, her partner doesn't need her. She’s mature enough to admit that to herself. 

Normally when a pokemon refuses to listen to their trainer it’s because they have a bad temper, or dislike the human, or simply don't respect them for one reason or another.

But from what she can tell, Chansey does respect her, when talking about medicine they talk like equals, same with team compositions or theoretical talks on future move utility. 

Just not… in-battle.

The trainer has been useful, her callouts in the fight with Gym Leader Wattson are just the most recent and most visible. But Chansey only started listening to her after she’d been hit by confusion effects and still would only accept any guidance afterwards if it was given in the form of information for the ‘mon to decide and act on herself.

Amelia squirts more oil on the metal countertop.

She’s alright with that, it’s those traits that make her partner such a good battler. That self-motivated initiative means a trainer barely needs to convince her to work, but every time they’ve battled together it feels like over half of Amelia’s mental energy is being spent trying to figure out what winning strategy her partner figured out in the first few seconds.

She just didn't realize exactly how much she was doing that until the fight with Wattson.

How, when he spoke he didn’t speak to her, he didn't even speak to them.

He spoke to Chansey, and only in the back half of the fight, when Amelia actually figured out how to make even the smallest contribution to her partner’s skills, did he address them as a team.

Amelia blinks as the application squeegee squeaks as she presses down a touch too hard, creating an arc of minimal oil that’s hastily corrected.

It’s fine.

The nurse in training twitches as the thought stirs up bad memories, then corrects herself.

No, it’s not fine, but this isn't Wattson’s problem, or Chansey’s. It’s hers, and she already knows the solution.

The reason she’s feeling how she does is simple, they’re supposed to be a team, and she’s not pulling her weight.

She’s not working hard enough. 

The ‘mon started with a strong physical position that’s only gotten stronger as she quickly developed an almost instinctive understanding of her opponents decision making, combined with a tolerance to pain almost unheard of in her line.

Amelia dragged her partner into this, and while the ‘mon took the task with just as much vigor as in nursing, they’re here because of her. 

But Amelia Joy does not give up. 

The nurse in training looks at the oil she’d just applied, and sees tiny veins of distortion indicating an uneven coating, which is carefully corrected.

All it means is she needs to prove that, however far she gets, it’s not a result of luck and circumstance by partnering with Chansey,

It means she needs to work harder, study how her opponents think and what tells give that away. 

It means she’ll replay every fight, command, and decision over and over until she knows exactly why everyone chose to do what they did. Then she’ll do it again until she knows not just how she could be better, but how to improve her teammates, and how to avoid the flaws she saw in her opponent.

Until together they build a team so strong no one can ignore her.

Amelia comes to the middle of the workstation a few seconds before her partner, behind her a thin film of oil that looks exactly like the example image she’d seen. 

And as Chasney catches up, the trainer looks down at her with a fiery smile.

—--

–_–

—--

Tanya wipes her hands across her front for the fiftieth time this hour, trying to remove the memory of the feeling of nitrile gloves pressing and rubbing against the fuzz covering her arms.

It was… unpleasant, but she assumes she’ll have to get used to it, considering the line of work she’s training for. Either that or try to avoid anything that needs to be handled with gloves, which is obviously untenable.

Venessa lets out a triumphant couplet of hums as she finds her housekey, just before her success is undercut by the door opening to reveal an unimpressed looking Sylveon, who quickly looks from the key to the nurse’s face.

“...I put the right key on the front of the ring, and wrapped it in pink tape.” He says with a meaningful stare.

“Well I– I had it.” The nurse defends herself, trying to step around the ‘mon only to be blocked. “The only reason it took a second was because you moved my keys around!”

Sylveon stares up for a second, then steps aside and waves them in with a ribbon.

“Get in then, I taped your shows on channel two and dinner is in the oven.” He sighs, before muttering under his breath a second after, so softly that Tanya could only hear it because she was right next to him. “Billions of humans… and it just had to be her didn't it?”

Squeezing a little to get through the door, Tanya suppresses a huff of laughter at Sylveon's comment and the misfortune it suggests.

Perhaps he’d appreciate her offering some help finding a different roommate, though her own research into the subject on the legal protection of this strange partnership did show that many of the initiatives tasked with helping ‘mon leave an unhappy partnership were closely linked to the Joy family.

Tanya tilts her head at the budding realization of this new avenue of control the family she’s attached herself to has over the fabric of the society it rests in, linking with newly lived experiences of exactly how ubiquitous the family is to form the seed of a question of exactly how powerful the family is.

But the thoughts are shelved for later as Amelia taps her on the side and gestures toward the low table where Chansey is already setting out bowls.

“After dinner, we should break down the fight with Wattson, run it over to figure out how to improve.”

Tanya nods as she lowers herself to the table, remembering Taillow after a moment and setting up the perch with squinted purple eyes.

As she does, Chansey claps her hands together and giggles.

“Oh I’m so jealous!” She grins, waving a stubby limb in a wide circle. “I can't tell you how many times I wished my arms were longer.” 

Tilting her head, Tanya lifts her bowl in psychic energy to demonstrate the skill.

“...Is there something stopping you?” She asks. “Myself and several of my sisters have learned the skill for that exact reason. I could explain the basics if you want.”

Chansey’s smile turns softer as she shakes her head.

“Aw… Thank you. But it’s alright, I get along just fine.”

Tanya nods, dropping the topic as Venessa sets a large pot in the center of the table with oven mitted hands.

“Alright! I hope you’re all ready for dinner!” She says removing one glove as the other removes the lid and using her bare hand to scratch behind Sylveon’s ears. “It looks delicious Sylveon.”

The ‘mon seems to melt slightly at the touch, then quickly bats the hand away with a ribbon.

“S– Stop that!” He stammers. “Less touchy, more serving!”

The nurse laughs as she nods, and as she picks up a large serving ladle, Tanya reminds herself to not eat more than appropriate and supplement the bulk of her calories from the pokechow.

Then the ladle deposits a thick, spicy smelling soup in her bowl, and her stomach rumbles even as the first spoonful is shoved into her mouth.

No matter how delicious.

—--

With dinner is finished, the dishes are put away, and the offer from Venessa to watch their ‘shows’ together are gently refused, Tanya sits in the guest room and jots down her report of the fight into a notebook as objectively as she can while telekinetically manipulated pokechow floats into her mouth in a steady stream.

Concluding the objective portion, she goes back to the top, annotating certain sections and making subjective assessments on the next page.

Amelia will be doing the same in her notebook after she gets out of the shower, then they’ll cross-reference each other’s reports and conclusions.

Taillow is excused from this portion as he cannot read or write, and Tanya taking dictation would bias her own recollection of the events, so he’s exempt.

For now.

Across the room, the avian pauses in his preening, holds still for a long moment, then continues.

Thankfully Tanya is very familiar with after action reports, so much so that she had to consciously stop herself from switching back to germanian grammar structure at several points. Finishing her report, and hearing no change in the steady noise of the shower from the other room, the ‘mon places her report next to Amelia’s notebook and hops over to the computer.

Powering it on and opening the internet browser, she quickly navigates to the news and scans the headlines.

To her surprise, the front page of the local news is reporting a ‘Historic crime wave!’ impacting the city. A headline that provokes a much more significant reaction than if it were said in almost any other publication.

Another cultural difference here, she’s barely seen any alarmist or sensationalist headlines, so the use of such heavy language carries significantly more weight.

Clicking on the article, she scans it over, then snorts as she processes exactly how ‘historic’ the crime is.

Apparently there’s a first time for everything.

According to the article, a ‘gang’ calling itself Team Magma –which the uniforms make look more like some kids pretending to be criminals than an actual enterprise– have been doing a wide variety of crimes. If the paper is to be believed, they’ve singlehandedly pushed the crime rate from 0.01% to 0.05% over the past month. Both the 

Tanya snorts as she closes the article and moves on to the financial news and, finding it equally unimportant, moves on. Opening her email Tanya finds, to her surprise, her inbox flooded with messages. 

Scanning down the list of addresses, the ‘mon notes the educational domain at the end of each, then that there are exactly twenty seven emails and the titles have… an excess of punctuation.

Opening one and scanning over its contents removes all doubt, her sisters got their own email addresses, and each sent an email to her.

She huffs in amusement as each message blends into the other, written in breathless tones they’re still completely distinct from the other, the author easily recognizable despite the uninformative email addresses and signoffs.

But as she approaches the bottom of the list of emails, Tanya blinks as she’s hit by a wall of text. Scanning it over, she realizes appears to be talking about some kind of… financial plan?

The ‘mon leans closer and her eyes flare purple as the paper copy of her portfolio flies across the room, landing next to her.

It is some kind of scheme, playing dominoes with no less than eight separate economic levers to gain virtual leverage outsizing investiture. But it’s not assuming the risk? No… it’s offsetting the risk by…

As the email turns into reverse engineered code for automated trading algorithms and statistical breakdowns of how each market responds to short term fluctuations in each other, Tanya’s eyes flare purple again as a pen and notebook flies over as well.

This is… a lot.

She needs to work it out longhand.

An unknown amount of time and several pages of math later, she’s startled out of her focus by Amelia’s voice. 

“What’s this?” She asks leaning over the back of the chair and scans the documents littering the desk, then up to the mess of tabs on the computer. “...Stock prices?”

“That’s part of it.” Tanya nods as she looks back down at her equation ridden pages, flipping around to recapture the mental thread she’d dropped. “I got an email from Chansey. It turns out that she, Chansey, and Chansey think they’ve figured out an infinite money glitch. I’m trying to figure out where they messed up.”

Or where the value is actually being taken from. Because she’s not seeing the flaw from the top down, aside from the fact that this delicate arrangement will disappear the instant after it’s exploited.

They claim its skimming from the general noise of the market, the keystone of which being the acceptable loss margins of the automated trading algorithms used by large investment firms.

There’s a long pause.

“...What?” Amelia asks, reaching out and picking up a few documents, Tanya’s portfolio on top. “Wait, you have a stock portfolio?”

Tanya clicks her pen and looks up to her partner with a sigh.

“I did say I had illiquid assets gifted to me, same as my sisters. It’s not like I’m carrying bars of gold aroun–”

She’s cut off as Amelia hurriedly picks up more documents, scans them over, then looks back to her partner with a dumbfounded expression.

“No! Hold on! What!?”

CH39 (REAL)

“–So I told Magnemite to thunderbolt with everything they had! But it didn't work!” A young boy says, holding his singular pokeball barely above the awaiting tray as he continues his story of how his partner got injured. “So there I was, no idea of what to do, but then –get this– Roy starts monologuing! So I…”

Tanya tunes him out as she finally manages to gently coerce the human’s hand into depositing the ball as Amelia continues to smile and nod, passing off the tray to her partner equally subtly for the ‘mon to place it in the pokecare machine.

Doing so, Tanya notes a small pause in the verbal noise as the boy notices what had happened, but it quickly picks up again.

In just the few days they’ve been working at the pokecenter, the regulars have already made themselves known, the most regular being this boy. A person who, despite not leaving a gap between talking for longer than five seconds, has never given a name or released his singular magnemite within the premises.

Pressing the button to activate the machine, the ‘mon watches as the ball retracts into the machine before it is bathed in a gentle yellow light.

Though it looks complicated, and has a great many bells and whistles in the form of safety features and moving parts, the core of the machine is simply a method of replicating a healing move. At first templated off a chansey, the move template was slowly modified over endless updates and iterations to reduce power consumption and better heal status effects or specific kinds of damage.

Though it’s all still built off of one of the original templates, the theoretical ‘move’ has ballooned in size and complexity to the point of being impractical for anything but a machine. Something Tanya had looked into after realizing the potential utility of being able to heal as effectively as a pokecare machine anywhere, but quickly realized why it’s not done.

After a moment longer the machine gives a cheery chime and lifts the balls back out of their slots, quickly snatched away and placed back in the tray by Amelia as she spins around to the boy and holds it out.

“Thank you for waiting.” She says abruptly, cutting him off as she forcefully places the ball in his hands. “We hope to see you again.”

There’s a beat of silence as the still unnamed boy seems to mentally switch tracks, then smiles as he reclips the ball and powerwalks toward the exit.

“Thanks Nurse Joy! See you soon!”

“Sir, I’m not a–” She starts, voice resigned, then stops with a sigh as he exits the building before she can finish. “...Not a nurse.”

Tanya grabs the pokeball tray and spritzes it with some basic disinfectant before placing it back where it belongs.

“If you want him to stop calling you a nurse, you should probably tell him when he enters, before he can get going.” She suggests, placing the antibacterial spray back on the hook it’s supposed to be on.

Amelia groans, rubbing her eyes with her palms.

“No…” She sighs. “That’s not how it’s done.”

After a moment Tanya’s forced to agree.

Not for any logical reason, but because it’s clear that the opening little speech she gives to everyone is some kind of tradition, and traditions can make people do silly things. Though in this circumstance it seems to be harmless.

“Fair enough.” She muses, smirking as Amelia splays her whole body above the hip across the countertop.

“Ughh. My feet hurt…” She groans, then abruptly seems to catch herself, quickly pulling herself back to an upright posture with her hands clasped at the waist. After a moment longer she glances back at her partner.  “...Please don't tell Aunt Vee I did that?”

Tanya doesn't respond, straightening some things behind the desk to keep herself busy and try to figure out what she’s supposed to be doing.

This is the first time they’ve been assigned to the front counter for longer than a few minutes, typically relegated to cleaning duty under Chansey’s watchful eye, doing basic maintenance, or acting as an extra set of hands during checkups.

But this time, when a distressed woman ran in carrying an egg, followed by an equally distressed looking delcatty, Venessa and Chansey quickly told them to man the counter as they herded the newcomers into the examination room.

That was over half an hour ago.

As if sensing her thoughts, Amelia frowns as she looks at the door they’d left through.

“How long does it take to check the health of an egg?” She sighs. “The delcatty looked fine, she was running at least, but… I hope–”

She’s interrupted as the door opens and an irritated female voice heralds the previously panicked humans entry.

“How can you not know!?” She shouts, staring down at the ‘mon who looks up with a mirrored expression. “What in the world are you doing when you’re in that–”

“You’re one to talk about ‘not knowing’ Clare! You didn't even know I was female!” Delcatty yowls back, eyes flicking between the human’s face and the egg, now swaddled in a fluffy white towel. “How many years have we lived together!? How could you have not–”

“I’m not about to check!”

Their argument continues, but Tanya’s attention is drawn to a haggard looking duo of nurses as they follow behind, and as the arguing partners are muffled by the doors shutting behind them Amelia’s attention catches on the nurses as well.

“Oh. Aunt Vee you… What happened?” She asks.

The nurse gives a tired smile as she fixes her uniform slightly.

“Delcatty’s partner thought she was male, so when the ‘mon laid an egg in her bed the human assumed it was stolen.”

Tanya blinks as Chansey chimes in.

“Her species are generally quite protective of their eggs, more so than the average ‘mon at least.” She says, subconsciously placing an arm on her own egg. “So it was… aggravating for both parties getting the egg here.”

There’s a collective silence as the senior nurses try to make themselves presentable, broken as Amelia opens her mouth.

“Well I’m… sorry?”

Venessa scoffs as she adjusts her hair and hat, frowning at a trio of tears on the hem of her skirt as she brushes it down.

“Oh no, I’m just glad it wasnt…” She starts, then pauses as she glances up at Amelia and grimaces. “Glad there weren't any complications.”

Amelia doesn't look amused by the obvious self-censoring, but before she can say anything, the nurse continues.

“Do both of you mind cleaning up the exam room? It’s a bit of a mess in there right now.”

—--

–_–

—--

“Taillow! Break off and get height!” Amelia shouts, waving her arms upward as if to lift the bird herself.

The ‘mon complies, abandoning his continued attack after successfully raking his claws across his opponents back. Swooping up and pumping his wings higher just as the maril opens his mouth and fires out yet another stream of bubbles.

Taillow cuts his path in a tight arc around the beam as it chases him, only to dive back in as soon as the beam cuts off and the opposing trainer cries out in alarm.

“No Maril! Dodge!” 

The blue ball tries to jump out of the way, but Tanya tunes the fight out before she sees the result, looking back down at the instructional training booklet on how to perform the move ‘minimize’ as she sits on a nearby park bench.

They’ve worked it out to do three and a half hours in the morning and evening at the pokecenter, largely helping set stuff up and deep clean before the night shift comes in respectively, leaving everything from ten in the morning to seven thirty at night as their own time.

At least a few hours of that time is spent where they are now, at the largest public battling grounds in the city, located just outside of Wattson’s gym.

There are others, but each public space has its own ordinances, but this place draws the most trainers and has the fewest restrictions.

Though even here Tanya’s restricted from using her egg bombs, if only to avoid unacceptable noise levels.

The ‘mon turns the page of her book, carefully looking at the technical description of what the move looks like when viewed in an Auragraph.

In their breakdown of the battle the evening after the fight, the need for something to make her harder to hit was quickly identified as a must. It didn't take much longer to narrow it down to minimize, as it’s something her line has been known to learn.

Additionally, the move will hopefully also solve her developing… volume issue.

Tanya squints down at the tabbed chapter describing how to teach the move, starting from the top and carefully reading each word for the hundredth time since they got the book yesterday.

The rather thick book actually has a large variety of training instructionals for various moves, sometimes several separate methods to get the same result, tagged by ‘mon typing and general temperament. Though intended for the trainer, the book has provided some valuable insight on where to start, though unfortunately there’s only one method described in this book.

And that method is proving… difficult.

The ‘mon sighs as she closes the book, hops off the bench, and closes her eyes.

She’s not sure why she keeps reading the thing, she’s already memorized it, and the advice just isn't helpful.

According to the book, she's supposed to think back on an embarrassing memory that ‘made her want to shrink in on herself until no one could see her anymore.’

Unfortunately, while understanding the idea and the abstract, Tanya can't think of a time when she felt embarrassment strongly enough to ‘want to shrink in on herself.’ Which poses a problem to her ability to learn the move. Unless she figures out an alternate method, or somehow manages to recall a moment where she was that embarrassed, she's stuck.

Gathering power in her core and trying to compress it down to her center like the book described, her eyes flick across the black of her eyelids as she scans her long and slightly faded memory for anything that might match the criteria.

She has felt incredibly embarrassed before, at times when she misinterpreted an instruction or made a major mistake in one thing or another. Though at those times she felt more shame and self recrimination than embarrassment, making her want to push harder to solve the issue rather than hide from it.

Her most extreme memories of embarrassment come secondhand, cringing from the background as she watches someone do something incredibly foolish or stupid, then watching them crash and burn. But even in those moments, she feels more of an impulse to walk up to them, give a slap to the face, and correct the unfolding disaster rather than run away. 

Perhaps…   if she looks at the suggested emotion more as a method to simulate an effect rather than something more literal, she could translate it to something she’s more familiar with… maybe–

There’s a flare of energy from her left, approaching, uncomfortably hot like sitting too close to a roaring bonfire. 

It’s familia–

“RIVAL!”

Tanya’s eyes snap open.

Clawed hands swiping in a half scratch-half punch.

Backstep, then move in to counter overextension and negate the opponent's reach advantage.

Opponent carries momentum forward, through the hips and efficiently transfers the energy into a kick.

Compress bulk out of the kick arc, feathers crackling like a burning log and leaving a trail of sparks in its wake. Capitalize on unbalanced posture by going for a grapple to the wing while telekinetically pulling the dirt away from under the remaining foot.

Not wings, arms, which pull away as the other leg leaps off the ground before she can get a grip on the soil and sends out another kic–

Block!

Tanya strains to keep her feet as the kick has her sliding backward and singeing her arms, for what little good blocking did with them being so short. 

Coming to a stop, she shakes out her arms and tracks her eyes along the furrow in the grass until she sees its source.

“...Combusken.” She says simply, watching the ‘mon seem to almost vibrate with pent up energy as he stares back at her. “How nice to see you again. How have you been–”

“What are you doing here!?” He squawks, grass around his feet blackening as Tanya notes his partner sprinting at them from behind. “Why aren't you at your– your chansey thing!?”

Tanya blinks, a realization forming as she watches the bird struggle to wait for an answer instead of leaping across the space to continue the fight.

…he’d left before they’d decided to go on a journey. Didn't he?

“...Ah.”

This is going to be interesting.

---

A/N: GOOD NEWS!
TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE COMMISSIONED ME!
MY LIFE IS BACK ON TRACK!

EXPECT YOUR WORK BEFORE SUNDAY! THAT IS MY PERSONAL MAGE GARUNTEE!

GOOD NEWS FOR BINARY ENJOYERS! BECAUSE (assuming a few things work out on both IRL and writing fronts) THERE'S A GOOD CHANCE WE'RE GETTING STUFF FROM THAT TOO!

I. AM. PERFECTION!!!!!!

TA-TA ALL!