Cobalt in Red - Chapter 10

The good news was that they didn’t have to backtrack all that far. Cobalt and his new… friends spent about twenty minutes going back to Cerulean’s pokecenter, not having made it far down the route in the first place. 

The problem for Cobalt was that he had to wait in the lobby for an hour for his new fishy friend to get looked at. Not that he was salty about the procedures, or anything - no, he was just bored out of his mind. 

The group made for an interesting sight when they walked into town, mere hours after they left. Riddled with cuts and bruises, waterlogged and miserable. There were no gatehouses between the city and the routes surrounding it, so they weren’t stopped at any point between the devastated riverside, and the center. Not like they would have been in Saffron, or Fuchsia. 

Wild pokemon attacks needed to be reported so that the guards and Rangers could actually do something about it. If the gyarados had gotten away, that’s the first thing Cobalt would have done, but as it stood the thing was dead and wasn’t a further danger. 

In the games, the gatehouses seemed to be nothing more than a buffer between areas. Like a sort of loading screen that broke up the scenery. In reality, they were guard stations, and Ranger outposts. Placed so that the people inside could respond to any type of local issue. 

Saffron, and Fuchsia were really the only two cities in Kanto that needed them as checkpoints along the routes, though. With the dense forests surrounding Saffron being home to some of the more volatile l pokemon, and the need to protect the Safari Zone in Fuchsia. Both cities had an inordinately high Ranger presence compared to places like Cerulean - which just had a single outpost, built off of the pokecenter. 

That was only because Cerulean - and the others besides Pewter, for that matter - was tiny in comparison. It most definitely didn’t live up to the ‘city’ tag, being more of a small town, and only had one large building in the form of the Gym. Pewter was the only larger city in Kanto that didn’t restrict route access in any way, but that was only because the surrounding pokemon left it alone. 

The guy who invented Repels lived there, and was one of like, four people in this world who hated pokemon. He had a deal with the mayor, apparently, and lived there for free so long as he supplied enough to coat the whole place. Cobalt’s dad tried to tell him about it at one point, but he had stopped listening when the large man got sidetracked, complaining about how much of a dick the guy was. 

Surprisingly, this was Cobalt’s first time in Cerulean - well, second, if he counted that morning before he left. He had been to Saffron a few times, though. His mother had brought him a few times when she had work to do (probably state-sanctioned murder). He hadn’t really been able to wander around, but they saw the sights. 

In his ten years, he hadn’t left his home much at all. That’s not to say his parents kept him locked up, or anything. In fact his father had tried to drag him around Kanto on multiple occasions, but Cobalt wanted to save all the exploration for his journey.

Still, Cobalt didn’t really bother looking around yet. He was still pushing off the experience for when he passed through again for his second badge, but he wasn’t blind. It was hard not to notice the freaking stadium that took up Cerulean’s skyline. From a distance, even over the surrounding trees, the water gym was pretty much the only thing that denoted a human presence. The rest of the town was pretty basic - just some simple houses and local shops. 

He had ignored mostly everything on his way into the city the night before, and been power-walking for his sanity that morning. So it was only now that he was stuck waiting for Pokemon’s magic healing to finish up that he picked up any details. 

There really wasn’t much to pick up, considering how he was saving all the interesting details for later. So instead of walking around town, he decided to plop himself down in the pokecenter and watch the clock.

The almighty timekeeper held no answers to his dilemma, and mocked him with its monotonous ticking. 

Valerie and Easton had followed him without a word, collapsing on the - weirdly - comfortable chairs that the center provided. 

Well, Valerie and Cobalt both collapsed onto the chairs bruised, battered, and exhausted as they were. Thankfully, technology in this universe included the magic of indoor plumbing, so they were all able to step into the hostel part of the building and take a shower. But after dropping off Kong, Magikarp, and Sabie with the nurse, cleaning off, and getting a change of clothes, he had nothing to do. 

He didn’t even feel like grilling Easton for more training tips, as the boy’s recently discovered idiocy threatened to give him an aneurysm. Oh, he would still totally take advantage of the boy’s knowledge, but he needed like… a day to cool off, or something. In the meantime though, he was stuck on the baffling image of Easton yelling at the nurse.

He had been stupendously offended when she asked him if he wanted to get his magikarp looked over. To be fair, neither he, nor his thick-as-a-brick fish were even touched by the gyarados, so they were probably fine - but Cobalt really couldn’t wrap his head around the blow-up.

In the end, he settled on ignoring it entirely. Same with the angry glances the lady had been sending the boy from across the room for the past hour.

As for his other traveling companion, he was hesitant to poke Valerie with a ten foot pole, let alone spark up conversation with the hexed hedonist. Thankfully, she had passed out on her chair minutes after sitting down, giving him some blessed, boring peace.

Cobalt let his head loll to the side - happily allowing gravity to turn his gaze for him in lieu of actually moving his eyes - giving him a better view of the nurse behind the counter.

The Joy clan was as mysterious as it was effective. Each and every one was identical - at least in Indigo, but even then the only thing that really changed was their clothes and hairstyles. They could be found in just about every human settlement beyond a certain population.  And to top it off, any information on them consisted of the most classified, censored, and redacted files that the regions had under lock and key. 

The Jenny clan was basically the same, just with a different job. Keeping the peace, rather than healing the injured. 

Yet another subject that decorated Cobalt’s bedroom walls, and one of the primary reasons why he thought humanity was just another species of pokemon. The Joys and Jennys just took that theory to the extreme with their near-identical lineage.

This particular Nurse Joy, however, was almost exactly what he had expected. She seemed to be a kind, caring lady that took her job seriously. The Chansey that stood behind her appeared to be the same as well, even discounting the glares she was sending Easton. 

Initially, Cobalt had been somewhat surprised to find that the magical, six-slotted healing machine from the games didn’t actually exist here. Instead there was a fully supplied hospital that opened up beyond the front lounge. The connected hostel was located on the second floor, but even with that the building seemed deceptively small.

Most of the hospital was actually located underground in a multi-story complex of magical healing. Construction hurdles for underground buildings didn’t really exist in a world with ground-type pokemon. There were apparently a whole slew of rooms down there meant for long-term patients, and such. Which begged the question of how many doctors and such they had on staff. Especially for a small town such as Cerulean, as he knew the pokecenters in larger cities were much bigger. 

Cobalt had seen six different chanseys usher injured ‘mon around since he sat down, but only the one Nurse Joy. He wasn’t even allowed to go back into the hospital section to stay with Kong, either, so he had no idea what the human (or human adjacent) presence looked like here. 

He knew there were at least two Joys that ran the Saffron center, but that was the extent of what he had been able to figure out. 

The only reason he was stuck contemplating the politics and function of the pokemon world’s magical healing facilities was because he was bored out of his goddamn mind. He had already spent the past ten years mulling over these details, and was far too excited to get into magical cockfights with other children. 

The hour-long wait wasn’t even entirely for the healing process. No, he was forced to wait because this was the first time he had checked into a pokecenter, and it was apparently standard procedure to run a full checkup on newly caught pokemon. 

Both Kong and Magikarp were back there getting poked and prodded, and he dearly hoped that Kong was knocked out for it. Otherwise the punch-monkey would come out of there looking for a fight. And at this point in his boredom, Cobalt might give it to him. Wanton destruction and broken furniture aside.

Valerie had gotten Sabie back in under ten minutes, in comparison. An egg from the chansey, and a cursory check-over was pretty much all that she required. 

She and Cobalt themselves had just been slapped with a heal pulse, and sat down in the lobby. 

This was a pokemon center, not a human hospital, afterall. There were only two of those in Kanto - one being in Pewter, and the other in Saffron. Smaller doctor’s offices were dotted around the region, and most included something that he would equate to an ER, but if the problem was less than a broken bone, a heal pulse, or soft boiled was enough to fix most issues. 

Which could be solved in the pokecenter lobby when the injured ‘mons were brought in. 

“Mr. Kent?”

Cobalt was in front of the counter before he could process his own movement. 

The Joy gave him an amused smile. “Your pokemon have completed their checkup, and should be out in a moment. I’ll need you to sign a few things before you leave, though.” 

“Can do. Gimme.” He made a grabbing motion towards the pen in her hands.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you going to actually read what I give you, or are you going to just sign it all without bothering?”

“The second.” He replied without hesitation. 

“That is highly irresponsible.” She frowned at him.

“I’m ten.” 

“You-” She gave him a vaguely confused look. “You do know how to read, right?”

“Nope.” He lied. Blatantly. Hell, he had even learned how to read braille and Unknown - Latin-adjacent characters they may be, but the words they formed were not English. 

His mother knew both, courtesy of her absurdly ancient froslass, and was absolutely ecstatic to share her love of archeology with him - further confusing his thoughts on her profession. A couple members of her team were older than anyone could really guess. Dusknoir in particular was likely tens of thousands of years old, and his mother absolutely refused to tell him how she caught the creepy fuck. Her gengar was her starter - evolving up from a ghastly when she was still a Lavender Town gym trainer, and Haunter was actually Gengar’s mischievous spawn.

She also had a polteageist that she would serve tea with whenever she met with Agatha, and a mismagius that Cobalt knew was on her team, but hadn’t seen in years. Froslass, though, was basically like… his grandma, of a sort. She mostly just stayed in her pokeball, content to sleep the days away, but she had helped raise him. She was the one left in charge when his parents had to step out for any reason, and even Poli listened to her obediently. 

Oh. And she could talk. Did he forget to mention that?

There was a legend about froslass being the reincarnation of a woman that died on a snowy mountain. Cobalt had thought it was just a legend before he met her, considering he knew what the evolution chain looked like for the species - but the stories that she was able to tell him painted a strange picture. 

Her voice itself was a haunting thing. Light and airy, and sounded as if it was coming from miles away - but beautiful and mesmerizing all the same. She seemed excited to teach him her ‘native tongue’ when he was younger, and he could happily claim to be conversational with it. Both written and spoken. Braille was easier, as it was basically just a coded form of English. 

His father hated it when his wife and son held full conversations at the dinner table that he couldn’t follow. The man also tried to learn, just so that he could participate, but his attention span fell short. 

He could recognize when they were insulting him now, though.

Nurse Joy’s expression flattened. “Mr. Kent, please take this seriously. I will not release your pokemon to you until I judge it safe to do so.” 

Cobalt deflated, lowering his forehead to the counter with a sigh. “Fine. What do I need to sign?”

She looked at him a moment longer before nodding, and slid a slip of paper over to him along with a pen. “This one’s just a summary of the visit. The next few outline potential future health risks and base nutrition requirements for their species.”

Cobalt blinked back up at her. “You guys supply that info?”

“Of course.” She said, looking a bit taken aback. “Without it, how could we expect ten-year-olds to take care of their teams?” She asked pointedly. 

How had he never heard of this? Had he just assumed that the people of this world were too impulsive to think up a system that actually made sense? This was supremely helpful, and also vexing. If he knew he could get this type of thing for each member of his team, he might not have spent so much time researching. 

… Who was he kidding? He still would have gotten lost in it all - but that wasn’t the point!

“Huh,” he intoned. “Well alright, anything I need to pay particular attention to?”

The nurse smiled at him before walking him through the paperwork.

__________

Valerie had apparently woken up with his race to the front desk, so he didn’t have to do more than wave at her and Easton before walking out of the Center, both rolling off their chairs to follow suit. 

It was still in the early afternoon, and Route 4 honestly wasn’t that long of a trek, so they could feasibly make it to Mt. Moon before sundown. Now that Cobalt had accepted the crazy and wasn’t running from Valerie anymore, he set a much more sedate pace.

Easton walked in front of the group, holding Magikarp by the tail and swinging him around like a club - batting foliage and stray rattata aside absently. Cobalt noted it for later training, but was more preoccupied with making sure Kong’s current routine was accomplishing what he wanted. His new fish would get more attention tomorrow since Nurse Joy advised to let him rest for the remainder of the day.

For her part, Valerie seemed mostly content to watch Kong’s agility training as they moved. But that didn’t stop her from poking at Cobalt. 

She peeled in front of him and started walking backwards, hands clasped behind her back. “So when do I get to meet your parents?”

Cobalt squinted at her.

“I mean,” she continued, “it’s the next step in our relationship!”

“We are not together, you delusional pervert.”

She took a skipping step backwards and stopped, her hair’s gravity-defying undulation wrapping around her face slightly before slowly whipping back behind her. “But we’ve been through so much already!” She complained.

“The threat of bodily harm, death, and danger do tend to bring people together,” Easton nodded from ahead of them. A swing of the fish knocked a divebombing pidgey out of the sky. 

Cobalt ran his hands through his hair, and turned to the sky as if to ask, “Why?!” 

Kong laughed, and was promptly glared at, which only made him laugh harder.

“What kind of partner are you?” He asked the puffball accusingly. “If you’re not going to protect my purity, at least don’t laugh when it’s being murdered in front of you!”

“Mankey man?” What purity?

“What do you mean, ‘what purity?’” he mocked. “I’m a goddamn angel!”

The slightly glowing lintball (he was still practicing with agility) huffed. “~Key man. Mank mankey-man mankey.” That’s rich. You’re one step away from joining a love cult.

“Oh you sarcastic little shit- wait." His brow scrunched. "I understood that. How did I understand that?”

Did he get protagonist hax? Did he finally develop his latent psychic ability?! He knew it! He was a secret badass! Once he figured this out, he would-

“The threat of bodily harm, death, and danger tend to bring people together.” Easton repeated, glancing backward with a raised eyebrow as if it was obvious. He then punctuated it by slapping a meowth into a bush.

Neither Cobalt nor Valerie had been attacked by wild pokemon, yet Easton was batting them aside left and right - as if nature itself was trying to delete him from existence. Cobalt would have asked about it, but he was honestly afraid that he already knew the answer.

Best guess was that he was in the wrong reality, and the world had activated its immune system - like it was trying to kill a virus.

“The hell does that mean?” He asked, glancing at Valerie who just shrugged, just as interested in the answer as he was. Even Kong seemed thrown at the fact that they could now seemingly communicate. 

Easton sighed and turned around fully, Magikarp slung over his shoulder like a sack of laundry. “You have grown closer through battle, obviously. What more do you want from me? It’s quite simple.” 

Cobalt frowned. “If I start being able to read Valerie’s mind, I’m going to commit seppuku.”

The other boy tilted his head and studied him for a moment, and Cobalt felt distinctly uncomfortable - as if it was his soul that was being looked at, rather than his physical form.

“What’s seppuku?” Valerie asked, but was ignored.

“I doubt you’ll have that problem,” Easton assured. “You’re more attuned to the Distortion than the mind.”

“Don’t go putting that shit on me!” Cobalt pointed at him. “I’m not a degenerate!" At this point he was equating ‘ghost’ with ‘deviant,’ and with the Distortion world being the spawning point of ghost types…

“Distortion, not degenerate,” Easton corrected, not addressing the root issue. “Your soul is tainted by the Warped Lands.”

“We’re a match made in Hell.” Valerie nodded, her constant cheshire grin morphing into something whimsical and mocking. 

“Seppuku.” He pointed at her threateningly. 

“But that’s boring,” The other boy interjected, bringing both of their attention back. “The experience of battle has elevated you, and is a far more interesting milestone!”

“That makes no sense whatsoever- wait,” Experience. He said, ‘experience?’ 

Did…

Did Cobalt level up?