THE RESEARCHER

A #TeamLegume Hybrid AU Story

⚠️ Content warning: minor blood mention, some dark themes.

“What have we got?”

“Male, 24, tourist from Johto.”

“The hell’s the matter with him?”

“I don’t know, he came in complaining of a Pokémon bite. We had him waiting in non-criticals when he just started screaming. He’s in serious pain-”

“I can both see and hear that. Hey, clear the corridor! Move it!”

/ Bang! /

“What do you reckon?”

“Fast-acting infection? Although I don’t know of any bacteria that could- ack!”

“Are you okay?”

“He… he shocked me!”

“He…? Oh, no. Quick, get him to Ward C. And radio maintenance to bring the rods!”

“Ward C? But that’s for-”

“I know, I know. Pray it’s not what I think it is. We can’t take the chance. Hey, watch it!”

Clatter, clatter.

“Jeremy? Jeremy, look at me! It’s going to be okay, you hear me? We’re taking you somewhere we can help you…”

/// The pain. It was so intense. Like it was a part of him. He had never felt anything like it. It was like his flesh was on fire and it was increasing with every beat of his frantic heart. He didn’t know where he was, or who he was, he… I… can’t.- ///

The trolley bumped over the ill-fitting floor tiles, causing their patient to whimper with pain and shock. He was shifting side to side, moaning, clutching a fresh bandage on his upper arm, a deep red stain seeping through the white cotton, smears of it streaking the fabric of his shirt and bedsheets. They had tried to cover him in a thin, blue sheet, but he was tossing and turning so much that it was rendered ineffective. They were even having trouble keeping the trolley stable as he jerked and twitched, clutching at different parts of his body. Others in the corridor flattened themselves against the walls as the medical team rushed towards their destination, looking up curiously at the musty yellow lights that flickered and sputtered among the ceiling tiles.

The steel-plated double doors of Ward C banged open as the medics forced their way through with the blunt end of the trolley. Hospital maintenance were already there at the end of the ward in their blue and grey overalls, hastily setting up two long metal poles with tripods at their bases. They yanked out hair dryers and phone chargers with little regard to the other patients and connected some long, thin, yellow cables to the ground pin on each socket, while wrapping the other ends around the poles. They had just finished when the trolley came screeching to a halt next to the empty bed.

“Alright, on three,” the attending doctor commanded. The whole team grabbed a part of the mattress. “One, two, three!”

They lifted the mattress and transferred it to the bed in one fluid motion. The patient moaned again, his hands to his face, drawing his knees up to his chest and shivering. There was a small crack as a blue spark emerged from between his fingers, instantly attracted to one of the poles and flashing a bright light across the ward, resonating with a metallic twang. The other patients were staring, some looking uneasy, others terrified. The team had no time to draw the curtains.

“It’s imperative we get a blood sample, and quickly!” the lead doctor said to one of her nurses, who darted off to get a syringe. “Jeremy? Jeremy, can you hear me?”

/// He couldn’t hear anything, what kind of question was that? All he could comprehend was the roar of power, of energy, clawing up from within his chest and burning him from the inside out, with nowhere to go. Another surge came, and he screamed. He could just make out a bright flash through his tightly closed eyelids. Please, let the pain stop, let me die, just let it all end. ///

The team all ducked down in unison as another barrage of sparks hit the rods around their bed with a deep buzz a crackle.

“It’s no good,” the nurse said, wincing as he rose to his feet again. “I can’t get near him. We’ll need to wait until he calms down.”

“Isolation?” suggested another.

“No, this is something that.. that just looks worse than it actually is.” The doctor was trying to sound confident, but she wasn’t fooling anyone. “The lightning rods should take care of any excess energy while we try and figure something out. Just stay cool, everyone.”

But the first nurse had stopped listening, as he had been distracted by a stethoscope. Not extraordinary in itself, given their location. The problem was that it wasn’t on the table where the doctor had hastily put it: it was floating, steadily, just above it.

The nurse stared for a few seconds. It had been a long shift, for sure. The hospital was short-staffed, and he’d been here since 11 pm the previous night, with it being around 8:30 am now, so tricks of the mind were not out of the question. Yet the stethoscope was indeed floating in the air, about 3 inches above the surgical tray it had been placed on. Before he had time to blink in astonishment, the stethoscope shot forward, quickly losing momentum as it bounced and clattered along the floor. The nurse followed its progress, dumfounded, before turning back to the desk, where his heart did a somersault. Other objects were shivering, starting to rise. A catheter, a needle, a scalpel…

“Psychic…” he muttered. 

Then his mind lurched.

“Psychic!” he shouted “We’ve got a psychic!”

The others turned to see one of the scalpels whizz off the surgical tray and embed itself into the ceiling. A look of fear crossed the attending doctor’s face as she looked back down on their patient, who was clutching at his hair, shaking in agony.

“Isolation, now!” she shouted. She motioned the team to lift the mattress back onto the trolley at once. “Everyone, down!” she yelled at the ward in general.

“But the rods-!” one of her nurses squeaked.

“Rods are no good to us if he sends knives every which way,” the doctor retorted, heaving the trolley forward back to the ward’s entrance. Patients were diving under beds and staff were ducking behind desks as various objects flew in every direction. “We have to risk it, for everyone’s safety.”

The doors banged as they forced them open with the trolley once again and hurtled back down the corridor the way they came. The energy seemed to be building. Automated displays flickered and sputtered in addition to the flickering lights. Phones started beeping madly in the wards that they passed, some flashing their own lights and some turning off altogether. Posters flew from their frames as the metal pins pinged out, hovered for a second, then clattered to the floor.

“Not that far to isolation now, keep going!”

/// Isolation? Yes, that’s what he wanted… right? This is what he craved, always craved, never with people, always alone. Better that way. He should be happy at this but… he wasn’t? Why wasn’t he happy? He wanted quiet, but I don’t want… alone, no, please, don’t leave me on my own! I don’t want to be alone! ///

/// An explosion of pain wracked his body as a primal fear, a fear that he had never experienced before in his life, infested every fibre of his conscious thought. His mind was blanking out with terror, his body felt alien to him, everything hurt, everything… wrong… no… ///

“What the devil?”

The patient had started to scream at the top of his lungs, hands clasping the side of his head as he shuddered. The trolley screeched to a halt as one of the nurses tripped over, hitting the ground hard.

Deep, sickening cracks and pops could be heard as the patient’s body jerked and twitched violently, his muscles tensing up. A streak of yellow hair could be seen poking out from between his clutching fingers. His ears were growing, stretching painfully upwards, taking his earring piercings with them as they blossomed with soft, fuzzy flesh. They could see his ribcage pop against his t-shirt as his whole body seemed to compress in the bed, a distinct bulge poking at the back of his shorts.

“Good god - he’s morphing!”

“So soon? I thought that-”

“It’s… hodad?”

It was all happening so quicking in front of them that they could barely comprehend it. Blue sparks crackled and snapped as the patient’s body spasmed, soft orange fur sprouting from his exposed skin as the bulge at the back of his shorts became tighter and tighter. He gritted his sharpening teeth in pain as whatever it was strained at his backside, his fingers puffing out and becoming stubbier, his feet stretching beyond his shoes. Finally, the seams of his shorts could no longer hold and a tail burst out, long, thick and wiry, a lump of flesh bulging and swelling at its base.

“Dd’raaaAAAAAIIII!” he screamed, and an explosion of light and sound blinded everyone in the corridor.

*

“Hey.”

He’d seen the sunset twice, so it had been two days at least. Not directly seen, though. He’d glimpsed the red light through the bedsheets he had permanently pulled up over his head. Alolan sunsets were supposed to be some of the most beautiful on the planet. He’d never really seen it as important before. But… had that really been him? Ever? He had questioned himself every second since awaking from that nightmare. Questions he asked himself had different answers than before. His senses were different, his feelings were… painful, confusing, unknowable. The fear, the constant fear. Not to mention his body… my… body…

“Listen, I know you don’t feel like talking.”

The doctors had told him that no permanent harm had been done. He had taken out the main breaker for the entire floor, but the backup generators had kicked in almost immediately so there had been no noticeable drop in output, and all the patients were safe while the state electric company assessed the damage. The blackened section of the corridor had been sealed off but ‘just needed a lick of paint’, as they had put it. And most of the medical team that had been in close proximity had simply been knocked back into the walls.

“And I know you feel like this is your fault.”

Most of them. A young nurse had not been so lucky. Apparently he had been standing at exactly the wrong angle, or he’d been holding something, or something was in his pocket; they weren’t quite sure of the circumstances. Either way, the shock had hit him in such a way that he had suffered an immediate cardiac arrest. Luckily, again as the doctors had put it to him, the poor nurse had been in the best possible place in the world to have a heart attack, and they had said he was recovering quickly.

“But it really isn’t. You need to understand this.”

Not that they could say the same for him. Nothing could be done. This condition had been known to leave permanent markings. Sometimes they were subtle. Sometimes, not so much. He had hated how the doctor had gestured to his mangled body in such a flippant way when she had said that. How could they be so blasé about any of this? Did this happen often on this crazy island? He knew what the doctor had really been thinking. He wasn’t as naïve as they all thought he was. Why didn’t she just come out and say it?

“And it isn’t the end either, there are plenty of others just like you, living full and happy lives.”

What would he tell his parents? That their son had effectively died barely three hours after landing in the place they had sent him to ‘relax and be more sociable’? Some stranger would come back to them. He wasn’t that person anymore. There was nothing to relate to, no part of him remaining,

“Jeremy, please-”

“Don’t call me that!”

His voice cracked from lack of use, but he couldn’t help it. A flash of annoyance had rippled through his mind at the sound of that name. That other person. The person he no longer was. His ears twitched in annoyance, the foreign sensation of movement sending yet another wave of shame through his being. He hunched his legs closer to his chest. 

“Then… what should I call you?”

There was a question. He shuffled uncomfortably in his bed, making sure to keep the thin blue sheet covering all of him at all times. Despite being in the isolation ward, he didn’t want to risk the chance of anyone looking at him. But beyond that, he didn’t want to risk the chance of glimpsing his own reflection. He had only seen himself once in the past few days, when the doctor had held up a mirror and he had caught sight of his permanently mutated form. It was not something he yearned to repeat.

“I don’t know,” he croaked, his head facing away from the calm voice of his mysterious companion. “I’m not… I’m not… me anymore…”

He fumbled at his upper right arm under the covers. His wound had healed instantly when he’d… changed… he hated thinking about himself like that.

“You’re still you,” the voice said, evidently trying to sound reassuring. “You’re just… a little different.”

‘Different’? How stupidly reductive. A prickle of annoyance crept into his mind. He felt his tail lash angrily, flopping out from under the covers through the cut that had been hastily made to his spare pair of shorts. He could feel the bolt-shaped bulge at the end slap against the cool hospital floor. He shivered at the sensation. It didn’t feel right, it wasn’t normal.

“I must confess, I’ve always liked the Raichu line,” the voice continued, although he could detect a slight hint of hesitation. “And they do look so different here. Amazing abilities.”

He had never really entertained the idea of having a Pokémon. That had been for kids. He just wanted to eat pizza, drink Monster, play video games and beat people on them. He was fed up with people telling him he should amount to something better, that he should talk to others, make friends… He’d only done his college degree just to shut his parents up; he hadn’t cared one way or the other. And now… not even a Raichu, but the freak variant they had on these freak islands. The word resonated in his head. He felt his ears twitch again.

“And I’m sure that, given time, you’ll get used to your new appearance. The doctors tell me that others have-”

“Can they fix me?”

He already knew the answer. The doctor had been quite clear to him that not only his new additions would be a permanent feature, but that he was still unstable. He could change form at any time for any reason; it was impossible at this stage to know more.

“Jeremy…”

“They can’t, I know they can’t. They’ve already told me.” He shuffled under the covers. “I’m a freak.”

“You’re not a-”

“Freak!” he spat. “You can say it, I already know it! Look at me!”

He threw back the covers and stared angrily at a surprised looking woman who had been sitting in the armchair next to his bed as his sheets fluttered to the floor. His large, round ears were pressed flat against his head. His bared teeth showed his new, sharper canines in sharp relief. A tuft of orangy fur could just be spotted under his shirt as the bottom had rolled up slightly. His feet were almost comically large, covered in burnt orange fur with white tips with only three plushy toes; it would be more accurate to just describe them as paws. He couldn’t even walk on them yet - the one time he had tried had caused him to smack his head on the ground with only a bloody nose for his trouble. His once dark blonde hair was now also mostly orange, and his new, bright blue eyes were sparkly with angry tears.

“I didn’t even want to be here!” he shouted. “I came just to shut mom and dad up, now I’m just some… thing. A thing that someone like you wants to… study?”

A few sparks crackled from his fingers and leapt towards the two lightning rods that had been positioned either side of his bed. He jumped in surprise, staring in fear at where they had discharged, tears now streaming down his cheeks. He looked back at the woman, a wild sort of panic in his eyes, then turned over aggressively in his bed to face the opposing wall, hunching his knees up to his chest while he did so. His tail twisted around to his front out of instinct; he batted it away in frustration.

The woman was silent for a moment.

“Jeremy… or… whatever you want to be called,” she continued, more calmly. “At some point you’re going to have to live with this, and to do that you need to understand it. At that point, you’re going to need some help.”

“I’m not staying,” he choked. “As soon as they let me, I’m out of here. No more tests. I’m going home.”

Home… but what did that even mean? The concept now seemed so distant and alien. The last thing he wanted to do was face his parents, not like this, not the freak that he was. He didn’t want to live like this.

He heard a clack on his bedside table as the woman placed something down. 

“This may help,” she said. “It’s a stone native to these islands, and it’s known to resonate particularly with your… with their particular species of Raichu. In time, it may help control your abilities, but without its companion stone it is little more than a guess.”

He heard the chair creak slightly as she rose.

“It’s your choice,” she said. “I can’t force you to come with me. Just know that… if you need any help, give me a call.”

He heard her light footsteps against the hospital floor and the bump of the isolation ward door as it swung shut behind her. Now he was alone again, shivering, on his bed.

He twisted his body around to look at the object the woman had placed on his bedside table. He squinted; it was a small, yellow, crystal, roughly hewn to a diamond shape, with some kind of black marking etched on its surface. He reached a finger to touch it. It was cold, but otherwise unextraordinary. He felt nothing from it.

The light of the setting sun glinted at him through the crystal’s many internal chambers, sparkles of refracted light playing across his face and body. He slowly uncurled himself and sat up in his bed, his legs swinging off the edge as he started out the window. It was open slightly, and above the noise of traffic roaring on the interstate behind the hospital, he could distinctly hear the rush of the sea’s ebb and flow. His tail swished as he felt the painfully tight knot of tension in his chest ease slightly as he took in the spectacle of the Alolan sunset. Great red and gold shafts of light spilled through a wispy scattering of clouds, the rippling sea a deep crimson below while the sky above faded to an inky black.

It really was beautiful.