Story Notes:
I enjoyed writing this one, it's a little different to my average 'damsel in distress' plot that I've gotten into the habit of writing. Comments would be awesome, though I don't expect them.
Dumped
Winter, the coldest months of the year. Most winter stories associate christmas, snow, big clothes and bigger electricity bills with the season. Not every winter is a happy time, though. Some are a struggle to survive; barely enough finding to keep the household going, let alone celebrate the season. The streets are often lined with large patches of snow, too thick to walk through or over, but too shallow to be fussed with. Generally, winter is associated, by the masses, as a time of happiness and good will to all.
For one young Riolu, only a few months old, the winter had brought nothing but pain.
He was a scrawny member of his species, ragged dirty fur and poor reflexes. Not from a lack of skill or training; no, he was weak and underfed because his owner, a human female of high stature, treated him simply as something to come home and vent her frustrations on. Nightly beatings which often left him either too weak or too unconscious to eat his nightly meal of berry bread and water. His parents belonged to another human, a friend of his owner, and he had no doubt that they would at least attempt to remove him from the cruel human's ownership.
He was forbidden to see them, probably for this very reason.
And so, day after day, week after week, he endured the torment. One day she'd simply beat him, the next she'd tie him to some contraption and have it torture him, another she'd cut or burn him... His body was riddled with scars of prior tortures, and what hadn't scarred over remained an open, bleeding wound. He didn't cry or whine, he'd been through too much pain for that, and it usually only made her hurt him more; instead, he endured. He had but one wish, to be freed from his living hell, but he knew it was a silly wish; this pain, this torture, this hell was all he knew.
Today, hell froze.
He was barely awake when she returned home, he had been unconscious through the night and day from yesterday's beatings, and he heard her walk angrily through the house to where she had left him. Weakly, the Riolu looked up to her, waiting for the first blow, and was surprised when he was hurriedly bundled into a burlap bag. The surprise only lasted a few seconds, he knew the bag torture well, it stopped her from seeing his pained face as she beat him more viciously than usual.
The blows never came.
Instead, he felt himself be carried through the house, heard something be opened, and then felt the weightlessness of being thrown. He didn't know where to, expecting a wall to collide with him, instead feeling extremely cold and the bag started to become damp. He whined from the cold, its harsh sharpness waking him faster than he'd ever woken before. He heard the front door be closed and locked, and the bag in which he was trapped was lifted.
"Be silent!" His master snapped, swinging the bag against the brick fence and knocking him out cold, the sheer force enough to open his barely-closed wounds back up.
She carried him to the car, hurled him into the passenger seat before sitting in the drivers seat, starting the car up, and driving off. She only drove for about ten minutes before she lifted him from the seat in one hand and deposited him on her lap. She hastily let her window down and held the unconscious Riolu up, still within the bag.
"And now I wash my hands of you, you pathetic waste of fur." She grumbled, before tossing him out. She never even bothered to slow down.
The first bounce against the road brought him back from his unwilling sleep, the second breaking his right arm. After that, the burlap bag started to disintegrate, but not enough to break open and reveal him to the world.
A nurse Joy, sitting at her counter, saw the bag tumble onto the pavement out front her Pokemon Center, and thought nothing of it. But, when she heard the howling, and saw blood start to seep from beneath the bag, she rushed out the door, leaving a Chansey to mind the counter.
The young Riolu was hurriedly carried from the cold street into the emergency ward, where he was removed from the bag and sedated. Joy inspected his bashed body in a mixture of professional calm, shock, and outrage. He was covered in scars. Burn scars, lineal scars, warped skin where he had barely healed. What wounds she could find that were not from his most recent ordeal were either covered in fresh blood from an obviously recent re-opening or were becoming septic. In all standards, what he had been through already should have killed him; the fact that he was still alive at all was a miracle. His right arm, where she could see it was broken, had been ruptured, the bone protruding dangerously far.
She called a pair of Chansey out, washed up, and set to work repairing the damage.
The young Riolu awoke later. He woke slowly, the feeling of a soft, warm place alien to him and jolting him up into a seating position. The room he was in was large and white, with a dozen or so beds along the walls with small tables alongside them. There was a small bottle on the table next to his bed, a small bottle with a yellow tag around it. He couldn't read the writing on the label. He sighed and lay back on the bed, trying to remember how he had gotten here, when the events of the day came back to him in vivid detail. The bag. The pain. Being thrown out of a moving car... He shook as he thought about it; of all the ways to abandon a Pokemon, it had certainly been heartless.
A human woman walked in, her pink hair curled into a large bow on the back of her head. She strolled up to the bed, tapping something on her ear before sitting down on a stool and gently wiping his brow.
"Hello Riolu, I'm Nurse Joy." She said politely. "How do you feel?" He gave her a distant look, like he was waiting for her to make up his side of the conversation in her own head. She could see, deep within his eyes, a tiny flicker of fear; as if he were expecting something painful to happen. "It's alright." She said calmly. "I won't hurt you, all I want is to know if you're alright. You were in quite a state when I found you in that bag, your master has been summoned to come collect you."
The reaction he gave was exactly the opposite of what she wanted.
He started crying, slowly at first, but when she got another look into his eyes, the fear that had been hidden deep within was fast taking hold and he broke down completely. Joy, showing only a momentary flicker of being flustered, gently lifted the Riolu from the bed and cradled him, shushing him and giving him reassuring strokes until he calmed down.
"There we go." She said, putting him back on the bed and tugging the sheets around him. "I'm sorry if your master has harmed you, and I understand if you don't want to go back to them. I'll do everything in my power to keep you out of her possession if that is what you want." She flashed him a gentle and hopeful smile. "Do you want my help?"
He gave a discreet nod, as if fearful that whatever he was frightened of would lash out at him, and Joy smiled.
"Alright." She said. "I'll handle it. I'll see about getting you a new master as well. For now, if you need anything, one of my Chansey will be at your beck and call." She stood to leave, but stopped when she felt him tug her dress. "Hm? Yes sweetie?"
He seemed apprehensive, blushing and looking anywhere bar her face.
"...C-can you sh-show me the toilet p-please..?" He asked, quiet as a mouse.
Joy smiled, lifting the pup gently from the bed and carrying him to the nearby bathroom.
He spent a few hours in the bed restlessly sleeping; the day had been hard on him, and his past left him with only nightmares to sleep with. When he woke he was shivering, and he sobbed loudly. A Chansey, one of the half-dozen that helped run the Poke Center, came to his aid and comforted him.
"Are you hungry?" She asked, to which he nodded. "Alright, I'll go see if I can get you some food and water. Is there anything in particular you'd like?"
He shook his head. "All I've ever had is berry bread." He said, almost in a whisper.
"Alright." She said, putting him back on the bed. "I'll just go get you something nice."
He stared at the blankets as she walked off, the images of his past still flowing through his head in painful detail. He heard, distantly, nurse Joy conversing with another human woman, and he gave a sigh, staring at the ceiling.
Joy, however, was talking with Officer Jenny about Riolu and the circumstances of his discovery.
"I'll show you the video of the operation. I film my work so that if I make a mistake, I can see where I went wrong." Joy said, putting a video tape into a recorder plugged into a TV. The screen started showing Joy working on Riolu. "As you can see, Jen, he's covered in many scars, and he's littered with contusions and deep lacerations, many of which had been open for days. His arm was broken from being thrown out a car window in a burlap sack." She paused for a moment as she, on the video, put the Riolu's broken bone back into his arm with a sickening crack before dousing the location in an antidote/hyper potion concoction. "If my professional opinion is any help, and in this case it should be, he was tortured for days, possibly weeks, before being dumped on my doorstep."
Jenny sighed. "Every week it's another abused Pokemon. It's a lucky thing you got to him when you did, he was hours away from needing to be put down."
"I need your help, Jenny." Joy said pleadingly. "I've contacted his owner, and she's on her way; I don't want to put him into a potentially lethal environment."
"What made you think that he was abused?" Jenny asked. "I mean, this damage could simply have been from being tossed down the road..?"
Joy looked sheepish, and she gave Jenny her full attention. "When I said that I'd hand him back to his owner... oh Jen, you should have seen the look in his eyes. He was mortified, he broke down into tears at the news. Please, Jen; don't make me have to do something that may only end up killing him, he's only a puppy!"
Jenny sighed, scratching her head. "I guess I can lay a trap to see the owner's intentions, but Psychic readings require an outstanding reason, not to mention evidence from the Riolu."
"Is what is before your eyes not enough?" Joy asked, motioning towards the video of her still operating on the young Pokemon.
Jenny sighed. "I guess it is." She mumbled, clicking a Poke Ball from her belt and dropping it, releasing a Gallade. "Max, I have a favor to ask of you..."
Jenny approached the young pup, who had been shivering when she walked through the door. She was curious; who would do such things to a Pokemon so young? And why? She walked up to him and sat next to the bed, giving him a friendly smile.
"Hello, Riolu." She said, stroking his head to calm him. "How're you? I'm Officer Jenny." Her eyes connected with his for a split second, a look that sent shivers up her spine. Though on the outside he seemed calm enough; within he showed that, despite her friendly visage, he expected her to harm him. That split second made her feel crestfallen. She sighed; she had picked up on his aura without even trying. She sniffed the air, and decided a different approach. "You had spaghetti, huh?" He nodded sheepishly, not looking in her direction. She realized she was practically talking to herself and she sighed again. "You're an odd kid, you are." She said. "Putting up with so much from your cruel owner. She'll be here any second now, and I've had a unit check out your house." The Riolu looked up at her hopefully. "All that remains is for her to show up."
Sure enough, the clicking of high-heeled shoes echoed through the Poke Center. The door to the ward slid open, and the owner of the loud shoes stepped in, an irritated look on her face. The Riolu, upon seeing his master's face, seemed to struggle to resist the urge to hide beneath the sheets. When she walked closer, however, he froze up and stared into Jenny's eyes.
So this was the look of utter terror that Joy had described.
Jenny stood, slowly and deliberately, and turned towards the other human woman.
"Miss Kelly Hearth." She said in an authoritative tone. "I, as you probably know, am Officer Jenny. I'm here to ask you a few questions regarding your Riolu before he can be returned to your care."
"I don't have time for your questions." Kelly snapped. "I have a photo shoot in half an hour and I need to be across town!" She groped for Riolu, but Jenny grabbed her hand, and her Gallade stepped in the doorway.
"Do not allow her to take him." He said, his voice like echoes. "Not with what she intends to do to him." He walked through the room and stood directly in front of Kelly. "How could you do such things to but a puppy? The mere thought of it sickens me."
"We sent a unit around your home, Miss Hearth." Jenny said, now with a growl to her voice. "And they included with them a member of the Pokemon Abuse Prevention Agency. Their investigation led to some interesting finds; would you like to hear a list?" She pulled a notepad from one of her pockets and held it up. "Objects within included, among other things, bloodied and unclean bedding for Pokemon or Pokemons unknown, a torture Rack, a wooden horse on which Pokemon blood was found in copious amounts, and a hook suspended from the ceiling, beneath which was found still wet Pokemon blood." Jenny put the notepad back in her pocket and gave Kelly an angry glare. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
"You had no right to enter my home!" Kelly snapped. "How dare you invade my privacy like that!"
"We had every right, Miss Hearth." Jenny retorted. "A Pokemon, who has been proven by Joy to be no more than two months old, has been grievously injured with his caretaker nowhere in sight. It wasn't hard to get a warrant with the P.A.P.A.'s assistance. The evidence we've collected thus far is enough for your arrest, and we have plenty of his DNA with which we can compare to that at your home." She put her hands on her hips and straightened her back. "So, I have only one question to which you must answer, and make it a good one." She barked. "Why? Why would you do this?"
Kelly, however, didn't answer. Instead, she attempted to lunge for Riolu, only to get pushed across the room by Jenny's Gallade.
"Max, don't hurt her." Jenny warned him. "Her pleading Police Brutality would be too convenient an excuse for her to evade trouble."
"That Riolu is mine!" Kelly growled. "He belongs to me! Get out of my way!"
She threw down a Poke Ball and Riolu now hid beneath the blankets. He knew what this was, he'd been on the receiving end far too many times no not know what was coming. He felt the air chill around him, even through the thick sheets. He heard a thud, which crackled like lightning, followed by the sounds of someone falling. What he didn't hear, was any sound of terror or anguish, even though he knew that the Gallade had fallen.
"Missy, you don't seem to understand just what you've gotten yourself into." Jenny said. "And I do believe you've just added assaulting an officer to the charges against you. You're under arrest." Riolu peeked out from under the blankets to see Jenny release another Pokemon of her own. The beam struck the ground, and quickly shifted into an Arcanine. "Fudo, protect!"
The Arcanine male, Fudo, stared lazily at Kelly's Pokemon, a Froslass that Riolu had been on the receiving end of too often to feel comfortable around. The Froslass launched a Shadow Ball at Fudo, and it collided full force with the large canine. After the smoke cleared, Fudo merely yawned lazily, the damage having rolled off him.
"Resisting arrest." Jenny quipped.
Fudo, yawning again, spat a small Ember attack at the Froslass, bouncing the fiery lump off her head. She gave a loud screech and fell to the tiled floor, thudding heavily. Riolu gasped sharply, Fudo had knocked out a Froslass in a single shot, like it was nothing! Jenny clicked her fingers.
"Restrain."
Fudo, not skipping a beat, lunged forward. As a giant mass of fur, heat and muscle, he simply dumped himself upon Kelly, his weight holding her down. With a lazy, almost simple-minded look on his face, he turned his head towards Jenny for approval. She tilted her head.
"Yeah, that'll do."
It was later in the day, and Riolu had taken to exploring the Center, getting his bearings on where he would be living until a new owner came to adopt him. He had, so far, discovered the kitchens, doctor's offices, security office, and unwittingly the power room. Now he was exploring the main lobby, peeking out from behind the counter as far as he dared, lest one of the trainers spot him. Joy was right by his side at the counter, he knew, but that didn't make him any more brave. She wasn't surprised; he had been through a lot, more than even some League Pokemon went through, and naturally he was frightened of those he didn't know. His arm was still in a sling and cast, as even Hyper Potions will only help to an extent, and he would give the faintest whine when he moved it.
Carefully he returned to the ward he woke up in, crawling onto a bed before leaping back off in shock. Not only was it the wrong bed, but there was another Pokemon here! The female Lucario looked over the bed at him.
"Are you alright? Didn't hurt yourself from the fall?" She asked. He shook his head, carefully standing. He was cringing the whole time he was standing, she noticed, and she reached a paw down to stroke his face. "Don't be afraid, youngin'. I won't harm you." She said reassuringly. "Joy told me there was a Riolu pup here waiting for adoption, I take it that's you?" He nodded sheepishly, and she picked him up by the scruff of his neck gently, putting him on the bed next to her. "There's some advice I'd like to give you in that case." She said, stroking a digit over one of his ears. "You have the right to choose who you would like to go to, and even the ability to read the aura of those who would like to adopt you. Use this to your advantage, be selective; not everyone has the ability to choose their companion like our species can."
Riolu sighed, looking down at the sheets. "I think I know who I want to go to." He said quietly.
"Oh?" She politely pushed. "What's stopping you from going to them?"
"I..."
"You don't think they'll accept you?" She asked. He nodded sadly, and she put a claw under his chin, turning his face to her. "You never know if you never try." She quipped. "The worst that they can say is no." She smiled at him and scratched his ear. "Go on, off you go."
She lowered him from the bed and watched him scurry off out the door.
Jenny had been called to the Pokemon Center for the second time in the day, and it was almost time for her to clock off, go home and feed her Pokemon. She strolled idly up to Joy at the counter before being led to one of the wards and up to a bed. The young Riolu was sitting here, holding a plush toy that had been left, apparently, by the owner of his parents as an apology for putting him into Kelly's possession. He looked up at Jenny as she approached and put the stuffed Raichu down.
"You wanted something?" Jenny asked, to which he nodded.
"I... I wanted to choose my own master." He mumbled.
Jenny tilted her head. "I see no problem with that." She said. "I'm sure there are plenty of young trainers who-"
"I choose you."
Jenny, stunned at both the revelation and being interrupted, stared at him perplexed. Carefully she weighed the pros and cons of having a Riolu, possibly even a Lucario eventually, and she came to a conclusion. She gently lifted him from the bed and hugged him.
"Alright." She said. "I guess I can train you up like I did Max, but until you're strong enough to train battles, you'll need to look after the house, is that alright, Vere?" He looked up at her questioningly, and she stroked his head again. "Yep, Vere sounds like a good name."
From the Lucario's perspective on the other side of the room, everything went perfectly, and she smiled.
"That's my boy."
For one young Riolu, only a few months old, the winter had brought nothing but pain.
He was a scrawny member of his species, ragged dirty fur and poor reflexes. Not from a lack of skill or training; no, he was weak and underfed because his owner, a human female of high stature, treated him simply as something to come home and vent her frustrations on. Nightly beatings which often left him either too weak or too unconscious to eat his nightly meal of berry bread and water. His parents belonged to another human, a friend of his owner, and he had no doubt that they would at least attempt to remove him from the cruel human's ownership.
He was forbidden to see them, probably for this very reason.
And so, day after day, week after week, he endured the torment. One day she'd simply beat him, the next she'd tie him to some contraption and have it torture him, another she'd cut or burn him... His body was riddled with scars of prior tortures, and what hadn't scarred over remained an open, bleeding wound. He didn't cry or whine, he'd been through too much pain for that, and it usually only made her hurt him more; instead, he endured. He had but one wish, to be freed from his living hell, but he knew it was a silly wish; this pain, this torture, this hell was all he knew.
Today, hell froze.
He was barely awake when she returned home, he had been unconscious through the night and day from yesterday's beatings, and he heard her walk angrily through the house to where she had left him. Weakly, the Riolu looked up to her, waiting for the first blow, and was surprised when he was hurriedly bundled into a burlap bag. The surprise only lasted a few seconds, he knew the bag torture well, it stopped her from seeing his pained face as she beat him more viciously than usual.
The blows never came.
Instead, he felt himself be carried through the house, heard something be opened, and then felt the weightlessness of being thrown. He didn't know where to, expecting a wall to collide with him, instead feeling extremely cold and the bag started to become damp. He whined from the cold, its harsh sharpness waking him faster than he'd ever woken before. He heard the front door be closed and locked, and the bag in which he was trapped was lifted.
"Be silent!" His master snapped, swinging the bag against the brick fence and knocking him out cold, the sheer force enough to open his barely-closed wounds back up.
She carried him to the car, hurled him into the passenger seat before sitting in the drivers seat, starting the car up, and driving off. She only drove for about ten minutes before she lifted him from the seat in one hand and deposited him on her lap. She hastily let her window down and held the unconscious Riolu up, still within the bag.
"And now I wash my hands of you, you pathetic waste of fur." She grumbled, before tossing him out. She never even bothered to slow down.
The first bounce against the road brought him back from his unwilling sleep, the second breaking his right arm. After that, the burlap bag started to disintegrate, but not enough to break open and reveal him to the world.
A nurse Joy, sitting at her counter, saw the bag tumble onto the pavement out front her Pokemon Center, and thought nothing of it. But, when she heard the howling, and saw blood start to seep from beneath the bag, she rushed out the door, leaving a Chansey to mind the counter.
The young Riolu was hurriedly carried from the cold street into the emergency ward, where he was removed from the bag and sedated. Joy inspected his bashed body in a mixture of professional calm, shock, and outrage. He was covered in scars. Burn scars, lineal scars, warped skin where he had barely healed. What wounds she could find that were not from his most recent ordeal were either covered in fresh blood from an obviously recent re-opening or were becoming septic. In all standards, what he had been through already should have killed him; the fact that he was still alive at all was a miracle. His right arm, where she could see it was broken, had been ruptured, the bone protruding dangerously far.
She called a pair of Chansey out, washed up, and set to work repairing the damage.
The young Riolu awoke later. He woke slowly, the feeling of a soft, warm place alien to him and jolting him up into a seating position. The room he was in was large and white, with a dozen or so beds along the walls with small tables alongside them. There was a small bottle on the table next to his bed, a small bottle with a yellow tag around it. He couldn't read the writing on the label. He sighed and lay back on the bed, trying to remember how he had gotten here, when the events of the day came back to him in vivid detail. The bag. The pain. Being thrown out of a moving car... He shook as he thought about it; of all the ways to abandon a Pokemon, it had certainly been heartless.
A human woman walked in, her pink hair curled into a large bow on the back of her head. She strolled up to the bed, tapping something on her ear before sitting down on a stool and gently wiping his brow.
"Hello Riolu, I'm Nurse Joy." She said politely. "How do you feel?" He gave her a distant look, like he was waiting for her to make up his side of the conversation in her own head. She could see, deep within his eyes, a tiny flicker of fear; as if he were expecting something painful to happen. "It's alright." She said calmly. "I won't hurt you, all I want is to know if you're alright. You were in quite a state when I found you in that bag, your master has been summoned to come collect you."
The reaction he gave was exactly the opposite of what she wanted.
He started crying, slowly at first, but when she got another look into his eyes, the fear that had been hidden deep within was fast taking hold and he broke down completely. Joy, showing only a momentary flicker of being flustered, gently lifted the Riolu from the bed and cradled him, shushing him and giving him reassuring strokes until he calmed down.
"There we go." She said, putting him back on the bed and tugging the sheets around him. "I'm sorry if your master has harmed you, and I understand if you don't want to go back to them. I'll do everything in my power to keep you out of her possession if that is what you want." She flashed him a gentle and hopeful smile. "Do you want my help?"
He gave a discreet nod, as if fearful that whatever he was frightened of would lash out at him, and Joy smiled.
"Alright." She said. "I'll handle it. I'll see about getting you a new master as well. For now, if you need anything, one of my Chansey will be at your beck and call." She stood to leave, but stopped when she felt him tug her dress. "Hm? Yes sweetie?"
He seemed apprehensive, blushing and looking anywhere bar her face.
"...C-can you sh-show me the toilet p-please..?" He asked, quiet as a mouse.
Joy smiled, lifting the pup gently from the bed and carrying him to the nearby bathroom.
He spent a few hours in the bed restlessly sleeping; the day had been hard on him, and his past left him with only nightmares to sleep with. When he woke he was shivering, and he sobbed loudly. A Chansey, one of the half-dozen that helped run the Poke Center, came to his aid and comforted him.
"Are you hungry?" She asked, to which he nodded. "Alright, I'll go see if I can get you some food and water. Is there anything in particular you'd like?"
He shook his head. "All I've ever had is berry bread." He said, almost in a whisper.
"Alright." She said, putting him back on the bed. "I'll just go get you something nice."
He stared at the blankets as she walked off, the images of his past still flowing through his head in painful detail. He heard, distantly, nurse Joy conversing with another human woman, and he gave a sigh, staring at the ceiling.
Joy, however, was talking with Officer Jenny about Riolu and the circumstances of his discovery.
"I'll show you the video of the operation. I film my work so that if I make a mistake, I can see where I went wrong." Joy said, putting a video tape into a recorder plugged into a TV. The screen started showing Joy working on Riolu. "As you can see, Jen, he's covered in many scars, and he's littered with contusions and deep lacerations, many of which had been open for days. His arm was broken from being thrown out a car window in a burlap sack." She paused for a moment as she, on the video, put the Riolu's broken bone back into his arm with a sickening crack before dousing the location in an antidote/hyper potion concoction. "If my professional opinion is any help, and in this case it should be, he was tortured for days, possibly weeks, before being dumped on my doorstep."
Jenny sighed. "Every week it's another abused Pokemon. It's a lucky thing you got to him when you did, he was hours away from needing to be put down."
"I need your help, Jenny." Joy said pleadingly. "I've contacted his owner, and she's on her way; I don't want to put him into a potentially lethal environment."
"What made you think that he was abused?" Jenny asked. "I mean, this damage could simply have been from being tossed down the road..?"
Joy looked sheepish, and she gave Jenny her full attention. "When I said that I'd hand him back to his owner... oh Jen, you should have seen the look in his eyes. He was mortified, he broke down into tears at the news. Please, Jen; don't make me have to do something that may only end up killing him, he's only a puppy!"
Jenny sighed, scratching her head. "I guess I can lay a trap to see the owner's intentions, but Psychic readings require an outstanding reason, not to mention evidence from the Riolu."
"Is what is before your eyes not enough?" Joy asked, motioning towards the video of her still operating on the young Pokemon.
Jenny sighed. "I guess it is." She mumbled, clicking a Poke Ball from her belt and dropping it, releasing a Gallade. "Max, I have a favor to ask of you..."
Jenny approached the young pup, who had been shivering when she walked through the door. She was curious; who would do such things to a Pokemon so young? And why? She walked up to him and sat next to the bed, giving him a friendly smile.
"Hello, Riolu." She said, stroking his head to calm him. "How're you? I'm Officer Jenny." Her eyes connected with his for a split second, a look that sent shivers up her spine. Though on the outside he seemed calm enough; within he showed that, despite her friendly visage, he expected her to harm him. That split second made her feel crestfallen. She sighed; she had picked up on his aura without even trying. She sniffed the air, and decided a different approach. "You had spaghetti, huh?" He nodded sheepishly, not looking in her direction. She realized she was practically talking to herself and she sighed again. "You're an odd kid, you are." She said. "Putting up with so much from your cruel owner. She'll be here any second now, and I've had a unit check out your house." The Riolu looked up at her hopefully. "All that remains is for her to show up."
Sure enough, the clicking of high-heeled shoes echoed through the Poke Center. The door to the ward slid open, and the owner of the loud shoes stepped in, an irritated look on her face. The Riolu, upon seeing his master's face, seemed to struggle to resist the urge to hide beneath the sheets. When she walked closer, however, he froze up and stared into Jenny's eyes.
So this was the look of utter terror that Joy had described.
Jenny stood, slowly and deliberately, and turned towards the other human woman.
"Miss Kelly Hearth." She said in an authoritative tone. "I, as you probably know, am Officer Jenny. I'm here to ask you a few questions regarding your Riolu before he can be returned to your care."
"I don't have time for your questions." Kelly snapped. "I have a photo shoot in half an hour and I need to be across town!" She groped for Riolu, but Jenny grabbed her hand, and her Gallade stepped in the doorway.
"Do not allow her to take him." He said, his voice like echoes. "Not with what she intends to do to him." He walked through the room and stood directly in front of Kelly. "How could you do such things to but a puppy? The mere thought of it sickens me."
"We sent a unit around your home, Miss Hearth." Jenny said, now with a growl to her voice. "And they included with them a member of the Pokemon Abuse Prevention Agency. Their investigation led to some interesting finds; would you like to hear a list?" She pulled a notepad from one of her pockets and held it up. "Objects within included, among other things, bloodied and unclean bedding for Pokemon or Pokemons unknown, a torture Rack, a wooden horse on which Pokemon blood was found in copious amounts, and a hook suspended from the ceiling, beneath which was found still wet Pokemon blood." Jenny put the notepad back in her pocket and gave Kelly an angry glare. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
"You had no right to enter my home!" Kelly snapped. "How dare you invade my privacy like that!"
"We had every right, Miss Hearth." Jenny retorted. "A Pokemon, who has been proven by Joy to be no more than two months old, has been grievously injured with his caretaker nowhere in sight. It wasn't hard to get a warrant with the P.A.P.A.'s assistance. The evidence we've collected thus far is enough for your arrest, and we have plenty of his DNA with which we can compare to that at your home." She put her hands on her hips and straightened her back. "So, I have only one question to which you must answer, and make it a good one." She barked. "Why? Why would you do this?"
Kelly, however, didn't answer. Instead, she attempted to lunge for Riolu, only to get pushed across the room by Jenny's Gallade.
"Max, don't hurt her." Jenny warned him. "Her pleading Police Brutality would be too convenient an excuse for her to evade trouble."
"That Riolu is mine!" Kelly growled. "He belongs to me! Get out of my way!"
She threw down a Poke Ball and Riolu now hid beneath the blankets. He knew what this was, he'd been on the receiving end far too many times no not know what was coming. He felt the air chill around him, even through the thick sheets. He heard a thud, which crackled like lightning, followed by the sounds of someone falling. What he didn't hear, was any sound of terror or anguish, even though he knew that the Gallade had fallen.
"Missy, you don't seem to understand just what you've gotten yourself into." Jenny said. "And I do believe you've just added assaulting an officer to the charges against you. You're under arrest." Riolu peeked out from under the blankets to see Jenny release another Pokemon of her own. The beam struck the ground, and quickly shifted into an Arcanine. "Fudo, protect!"
The Arcanine male, Fudo, stared lazily at Kelly's Pokemon, a Froslass that Riolu had been on the receiving end of too often to feel comfortable around. The Froslass launched a Shadow Ball at Fudo, and it collided full force with the large canine. After the smoke cleared, Fudo merely yawned lazily, the damage having rolled off him.
"Resisting arrest." Jenny quipped.
Fudo, yawning again, spat a small Ember attack at the Froslass, bouncing the fiery lump off her head. She gave a loud screech and fell to the tiled floor, thudding heavily. Riolu gasped sharply, Fudo had knocked out a Froslass in a single shot, like it was nothing! Jenny clicked her fingers.
"Restrain."
Fudo, not skipping a beat, lunged forward. As a giant mass of fur, heat and muscle, he simply dumped himself upon Kelly, his weight holding her down. With a lazy, almost simple-minded look on his face, he turned his head towards Jenny for approval. She tilted her head.
"Yeah, that'll do."
It was later in the day, and Riolu had taken to exploring the Center, getting his bearings on where he would be living until a new owner came to adopt him. He had, so far, discovered the kitchens, doctor's offices, security office, and unwittingly the power room. Now he was exploring the main lobby, peeking out from behind the counter as far as he dared, lest one of the trainers spot him. Joy was right by his side at the counter, he knew, but that didn't make him any more brave. She wasn't surprised; he had been through a lot, more than even some League Pokemon went through, and naturally he was frightened of those he didn't know. His arm was still in a sling and cast, as even Hyper Potions will only help to an extent, and he would give the faintest whine when he moved it.
Carefully he returned to the ward he woke up in, crawling onto a bed before leaping back off in shock. Not only was it the wrong bed, but there was another Pokemon here! The female Lucario looked over the bed at him.
"Are you alright? Didn't hurt yourself from the fall?" She asked. He shook his head, carefully standing. He was cringing the whole time he was standing, she noticed, and she reached a paw down to stroke his face. "Don't be afraid, youngin'. I won't harm you." She said reassuringly. "Joy told me there was a Riolu pup here waiting for adoption, I take it that's you?" He nodded sheepishly, and she picked him up by the scruff of his neck gently, putting him on the bed next to her. "There's some advice I'd like to give you in that case." She said, stroking a digit over one of his ears. "You have the right to choose who you would like to go to, and even the ability to read the aura of those who would like to adopt you. Use this to your advantage, be selective; not everyone has the ability to choose their companion like our species can."
Riolu sighed, looking down at the sheets. "I think I know who I want to go to." He said quietly.
"Oh?" She politely pushed. "What's stopping you from going to them?"
"I..."
"You don't think they'll accept you?" She asked. He nodded sadly, and she put a claw under his chin, turning his face to her. "You never know if you never try." She quipped. "The worst that they can say is no." She smiled at him and scratched his ear. "Go on, off you go."
She lowered him from the bed and watched him scurry off out the door.
Jenny had been called to the Pokemon Center for the second time in the day, and it was almost time for her to clock off, go home and feed her Pokemon. She strolled idly up to Joy at the counter before being led to one of the wards and up to a bed. The young Riolu was sitting here, holding a plush toy that had been left, apparently, by the owner of his parents as an apology for putting him into Kelly's possession. He looked up at Jenny as she approached and put the stuffed Raichu down.
"You wanted something?" Jenny asked, to which he nodded.
"I... I wanted to choose my own master." He mumbled.
Jenny tilted her head. "I see no problem with that." She said. "I'm sure there are plenty of young trainers who-"
"I choose you."
Jenny, stunned at both the revelation and being interrupted, stared at him perplexed. Carefully she weighed the pros and cons of having a Riolu, possibly even a Lucario eventually, and she came to a conclusion. She gently lifted him from the bed and hugged him.
"Alright." She said. "I guess I can train you up like I did Max, but until you're strong enough to train battles, you'll need to look after the house, is that alright, Vere?" He looked up at her questioningly, and she stroked his head again. "Yep, Vere sounds like a good name."
From the Lucario's perspective on the other side of the room, everything went perfectly, and she smiled.
"That's my boy."