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Chapter Text

Incident 0024: Concussion

DATE : 27/02/24

NAME(S): ARVEN TURO/NEMONA GLITTERATI

INCIDENT LOCATION: SCHOOLYARD

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / MASTER HASSEL

TIME: 12:31 AM /PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO 

REFFERAL TO LGH A&E: YES / NO

You’re not entirely sure why Nemona considered her idea the best use of the last of your lunch break. 

You’d just finished eating lunch with about twenty minutes left before classes again when she suddenly considered that racing Arven around the track would be fun. Both running the opposite way around….whilst trying to avoid Naclstack’s Rollout move.

Now you’re somewhat used to the casual insanity that happens around campus these days, but you had come to notice that Nemona was unstable on high doses of caffeine and maybe you shouldn’t have allowed her to have that can of Sugar-Free Redbull. 

Younger years have gathered as Arven and Nemona line up and start stretching. She orders Naclstack to stand in the centre of the field and shoot at both of them as they run. 

You sip your orange soda and wonder why you were friends with these nut jobs for a moment. Maybe you should hang out with Penny more, she seemed more sane. 

They had just started running when Hassel appeared in the yard and paused beside you at the picnic bench watching the pair’s antics and the crowd that had gathered. 

“What in the name of horsea are they doing?” he asks looking down at you curiously. 

You laugh and stand up. “Nemona thought it would be a good idea to burn off lunch with a race around the track…although she amped up the race by making them dodge Naclstack at the same time” You admit turning to watch as Nemona very athletically manages to flip over an incoming boulder.

“Wow…seems a bit dangerous” Hassel admits but he doesn’t attempt to intervene yet. 

“Honestly I’m not sure how someone is going to win-” 

You’re cut off as the crowd gasps in shock and watch as both Nemona and Arven somehow manage to crash straight into each other on the track whilst getting hit with a boulder. 

“ARCEUS!” Hassel is running for the track the moment they hit the floor with you not far behind. 

They’re both lying on the ground laughing even as Naclstack looks at them concerned, or as concerned as the rock Pokemon can. 

You hiss and grimace when you see the blood splattered on the track and the huge cut that was heavily bleeding down Arven’s face.

“Erm, I think I broke something” Nemona half laughs sitting up and cradling her arm before gasping in horror at the blood on Arven as he sits up wiping his face and cursing.

“JYXN TITS ARVEN!”

“What on earth were you thinking!” Hassel shouts as he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and presses it to the cut on Arven’s head. “Ow, ow, owowowow…that hurts!”

You roll your eyes and help Nemona to her feet whilst checking her arm. “Doesn’t look broken but you need it checked out” You huff turning to help Hassel and another student pull Arven to his feet. 

He’s dizzy but able to walk and you hold onto his left while Hassel holds on to his right and Nemona follows behind you, you head for the infirmary. 

Nurse Miriam isn’t impressed when you enter her lovely clean ward room dripping blood on her floor, in fact, she practically shrieks at the sight of Arven’s face. 

Five butterfly stitches, ibuprofen, some very bloody water, a triage bandage and a new shirt later they’ve both been patched up, Arven has to spend overnight in the ward for his concussion and Nemona has a letter sent home about the reparation cost of medical equipment when she admits her was her idea to ‘fuck about and find out’.

You return to the ward later that day to bring Arven some dinner from the canteen and his phone charger. 

“Did she call the Director?” You ask as you plug his phone in.

Arven shakes his head. “Luckily, no she didn’t, I think we’d have ended up in detention if she did, I don’t really want to get branded a bad influence like your Clive” he laughs. 

You pretend to be offended he called Clive a bad influence. “Clive hasn’t done anything wrong to be branded a bad influence…yet”

“Ms Tyme doesn’t seem to agree” he sniggers breaking open the crisps. 

When does she ever, you think “Yeah well, she just doesn’t like me hanging out with an older guy who enjoys breaking the uniform rules, that’s about as much of a rebel that he is honestly”

“Well at least I get a cool scar and Nemo owes me a milkshake because I won that race”

There’s a dopey grin on his face as he lays back on the bed. “Ugh, concussions suck”

You snort. “Maybe we should keep Nemo off the Red Bull huh?”

“Yeah, maybe don’t challenge her to almost getting crushed when she’s high on Red Bull either?”

“Good idea”

Chapter Text

Incident 0036: 1st Degree Burns

DATE : 04/03/24

NAME(S): ARVEN TURO/MELA (Team Star)

INCIDENT LOCATION: COURTYARD

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / MR SAGUARO

TIME: 2:02 AM /PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFFERAL TO LGH A&E: YES / NO

Usually, it was nice to see the Team Star crew getting along with new people on campus. You’d told Penny that you, Arven and Nemoa would be in the library at 2 o'clock to study up on your next exams and she’d agreed to bring along one of the other members of her crew to join you. 

Mela was nice enough, fiery as usual but you found she struck it off with Arven pretty fast. It seemed they had quite a bit in common even if she disliked the idea of camping and cold showers. 

Since you had been working to tutor some of the team star crew on your day’s off, you were fully aware that Mela’s concertation span wasn’t very high, within the hour you’d all gone from discussing work to discussing Pokemon moves into watching Mela telling Arven about that time she saw someone get a Houndoom and set his fart on fire so it looked like a flamethrower was coming out of his butt and then wishing perhaps that for once Arven wouldn’t quite be so dense and boisterous because they were heading out into the courtyard to fucking try it out. 

Nemoa followed intrigued.

You and Penny sat there laughing until you heard screams. 

That couldn’t be good. 

When you got outside you found Arven flat out on the grass, literally smoking, with his pants half singed off and Mr Saugaro looking like he needed a strong black coffee and a week off. 

1st degree burns on his legs and his butt. 

You weren’t allowed to visit Arven this time so simply handed his stuff to Nurse Miriam who you assume has been cursing Turo’s lack of parenting skills. 

Just as you turn into the hallway to leave you nearly bump into the director. “Oh, Hey Sir”

He nudges his glasses and smiles. “Ah, Champ, here to see Arven I assume?”

You shake your head. “Nurse Miriam said no visitors for this one…It’s kinda…awkward”

The Director snorts trying to muffle a laugh. “Oh I do wonder what goes through that boy's head some days”

You shrug. “I guess some members of Team Star are just bad influences”

He hums. “Speaking of which, Mela has detention tonight, she’ll be in your usual classroom with Erin if you wouldn’t mind attending for some late work?”

You laugh. “Sure thing, I think Erin will drive the point home well enough that Mela shouldn’t go trying that move again anytime soon”

Chapter Text

Incident: 0042: Possession

DATE : 15/04/24

NAME(S): P. JACQ 

INCIDENT LOCATION: RESEARCH LABS - MESAGOSA

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / DIRECTOR CLAVELL + 5 Others

TIME: 8:05 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: YES / NO

It had only just turned 8 pm on Friday when your night went from having dinner with your friends to chasing a half-naked man around the town. 

The half-naked man just happened to be Mr Jacq, shirtless with no glasses and barefoot. He’d gone running past your table outside Barato’s shouting 'Mochi' and sending everyone in the square into a panicked frenzy as he almost mauled the man standing by the Crepe Vendor by trying to get to the chocolate sauce. 

Knowing exactly what chaos this caused last time, you and Arven had gone chasing Jacq while Penny and Nemona had gone running up to the school to seek out the only person you could blame for the fact your ‘sample’ of Pecharunt Mochi had been digested. 

The Libabry was in chaos, books were strewn everywhere, a student was injured and somehow Jacq had also smashed a window with a chair. 

When they arrived in the Research Labs, The Director was standing among the mess looking extremely pissed off and Miss Raifort looked like she’d finally seen more than she bargained for and sat stunned and as white as a sheet on the floor. 

“When you said that stuff was powerful…” 

“I-I can’t even begin to imagine what the police are going to say when they get here” The Director huffs. 

Turned out Jacq could fucking run because no matter what street you chased him down or how many times you tried to cut him off he managed to dodge and weave every tackle or attempt to stop him.

By this point, several locals had joined your endeavour as well, even though you had insisted they stay inside because the effects of the Mochi were unpredictable. 

Jacq survived falling ten feet, slamming into several lamposts and somehow didn’t seem injured when he crashed into several tables and chairs. 

No doubt he would be in pain come morning you consider. 

There’s a moment where you’re uncertain where he just went until you hear a loud splash more shouting and Jacq yelling “MOCHI MOCHI MOCHI”

“Yeah, I know you idiot!, I’m trying to help you, stay fucking still!” Arven demands as he wrestles with the Biology teacher in the square fountain. 

Without a trainer, Pecharunt’s powers were mostly based on its capability of the toxic chain but since you had caught the little ghost-type runt on your evening in Kikatami with your friends, its powers of control were unstable and therefore sent any Mochi victims on a rampage similar to that of a euphoria high, the results from Jacq’s testing had suggested it worked like high-level opium drugs.

So Jacq on crack for lack of a better description.

By the time you’d pulled Jacq out of the water and bound him up, he was looking very tired. 

“You get the antidote down him?” You ask digging in your bag for a blanket.

Arven shakes the water from his arms. “Yeah, most of it anyway, lucky we made something for that crap, else he’d be stuck like this until it wore off”

“Well, at least we know he’ll never agree to eat something Raifort offers him ever again” You laugh before recalling. “Erm, wait, you didn’t remember getting possessed did you?”

Arven frowns. “I remember something…it’s still a really fuzzy dreamlike though”

“I wonder if he’ll remember this?” You ask out loud as you wrap Jacq in the blanket to await the return of Nemona and Penny. 

“Well, I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough” Arven huffs sitting down beside you and sighing. “Just you watch, he’ll be writing a whole bloody Thesis on it next week!”

Chapter Text

Incident 0069: Falling Down The Stairs

DATE : 15/04/24

NAME(S): DIRECTOR CLIVE CLAVELL + 6 STUDENTS

INCIDENT LOCATION: MEGAGOSA STAIRS

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / CHAMPION GEETA / PENNY PEONY

TIME: 10:42 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO (DIRECTOR INVOLVED)

REFFERAL TO LGH A&E: YES / NO

It seemed Rolycoly was actually an extremely dangerous Pokemon. Especially on stairs like the ones that lead up to the school from Megagosa. 

You’d been on your way down said set of ‘killer steps’ looking forward to visiting your mother this weekend when you were suddenly aware of a great kerfuffle. You watch as several students all crash down the stairs and gasp when you spot a familiar purple velvet jacket among the bodies that land unceremoniously at the bottom. 

When you see Geeta dashing down the stairs you realise someone must have fallen, but who fell hard enough to take down so many people?!

You dash down the stairs yourself concerned for The Director and aid Penny in moving people out of the way, to get to him. 

One kid was crying, he couldn’t have been older than ten. You were pretty sure his arm shouldn’t be bent like that…ouch. 

Two or three of the students were complaining about their legs and when you look one of the older girls had definitely broken her ankle. 

You glance back up the steps to see that where a spilt cup of takeout coffee had landed they must have all fallen from just less than halfway down.

The Director was flat out and very dazed. Penny lay holding his head still as Geeta continued to move students out of the way. 

“What the hell just happened?” you ask coming to kneel beside The Director as you look him over and you’re grateful to see that he doesn't seem to have anything notably damaged. It looked like the pack of students that had been behind him had taken the brunt of the fall.

“Some twerp was playing with his Rolycoly on the steps, but before I could warn the Director he stood on it and went flying” Penny huffs annoyed. You're quick to your phone to call Nurse Miriam. 

You can’t help but stress when she asks you to call for the emergency services while she makes her way down. 

Six corvid ambulances, four Skwarkabilly paramedics and two police on Mudsdales later you were sat holding his hand and on the way to Levencia General Hospital. 

You wandered, drank tea, ate a doughnut, drank more tea, wandered some more, tried to watch your favourite TV show on your phone and had just sat back down to wait on any news when Nemona and Arven crashed in through the doors looking for you.

“Is he dead?!” Arven half yells freaking out other people who were sitting in the waiting room. You don't hesitate to smack him in the arm. 

“Shut up idiot, he’s fine, I think, just…I don't know they haven’t given me any results yet, they just told me to wait here”

They join you for the next hour until a nurse finally arrives.

“Champ?”

You turn at the same time Nemona does and you all end up laughing. “How is he?”

“Your boyfriend should be fine, some very bad bruises…but his MRI-”

“Boyfriend?” Arven blurts out from slightly down the hall at the vending machine. 

You blush but smile at the nurse to continue. “his…erm...MRI results were clear, he’s getting his arm seen to at the moment, just a minor fracture of the wrist, which is fortunate for a man his age-”

You scoff quietly. Wait why are you offended?

You glance at Nemona who also looks disgruntled at that comment. “You’re aware the Director of the school is only fifty-three?”

The nurse doesn't seem to believe that and you can’t help but glare at her as he hands you some paperwork and leaves.  Arven returns to your side handing you the chocolate bar you requested as you look over the discharge papers and medical bill. Oh, he had insurance, that’s good. 

“Boyfriend?” he asks again looking a bit concerned and this time even Nemona looks at you.

You gawp like fish for several moments before looking at the coffee shop. “We need to talk…”

You show them the name on the paperwork. They're both in shock. They’re both concerned about where this is going. They’d seen you kiss ‘Clive’.

They relax when you admit that it was mostly one-sided affection and the whole spy persona situation. 

“Does anyone else know?” Arven questions when you walk towards the discharge area to collect Clavell to escort him home. 

“Penny…that’s about it, oh and I think…ms Tyme knows as well”

“So what do we do, just, pretend like he’s still Clive when he turns up dressed like that?” Nemona asks thinking about how clever it had been for The Director to scope out his own school.

“Yeah, just you know, act like he’s Clive, same old same old, takeout, bad jokes and our usual brand of chaos, he’s only doing it to keep an ear out as it were for ‘rebels’, Penny is still concerned some members of Team Star might revolt suddenly so, it’s just so he can find out faster, you know what teenagers are like they’re not about to go complaining to him”

The Director’s tired as expected and it takes all three of you to help him into a flying cab to get him home. When he’s settled in bed you all explain about Nemona and Arven now being in on the ‘Clive’ situation. He suggests maybe they should stop the charade, but Nemona actually agrees it’s a good idea. 

Seeing that Clavell lived alone, Arven dropped his rucksack and headed for the kitchen to make up some dinner. None of you wanted to leave the Director’s side tonight so while Arven cooked something that already smelt amazing, Nemona set up the sofa bed for you to bunk out on overnight in case he needed something. 

Jacq had phoned and said he’d come by with Penny for a bit, to which Arven laughed and said to bring some drinks because he was making more than enough food for Jacq and Penny to join you for dinner as well. 

That night Clavell and Jacq became honorary members of Team Area Zero and were even added to the group chat for future adventure updates.

<Camp King> added <The Boss> to the group ‘Team A3r4 Z-0’.

<BattleAddict> liked this.

<TopChamp> liked this.

<EeveeQueen> liked this. 

<Camp King> added <DexMaster> to the group ‘Team A3r4 Z-0’ .

<BattleAddict> liked this.

<TopChamp> liked this.

<EeveeQueen> liked this. 

<The Boss>: 🔥

<CampKing>: 🤘

<EeveeQueen>: 🙌

<DexMaster>: 😎

<TopChamp>: 💪

<BattleAddict>: 🥳

Chapter Text

Incident 0072: Broken Fingers

DATE : 22/05/24

NAME(S): CLIVE CLAVELL 

INCIDENT LOCATION: DIRECTORS OFFICE

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / CHAMPION (YOU)

TIME: 13:20 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO (DIRECTOR INVOLVED)

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: ( YES / NO)

“So how did this happen?” Jacq looks confused at the large wooden doors. 

The Director fumbles for words as you stand to one side as you awaited Nurse Miriam. 

“I think I shut the door on his hand” You admit, you're not certain how to attempt at even making the lie sound plausible. 

“I was just leaving the office and reached for the door when Champ came in…I clearly scared them and well, they let go of the door and it…slammed on my hand” Clavell adds. 

Jacq still doesn’t look like he can picture the incident and you nervously try to imagine how you could point out how it might have happened on the door frame when the Nurse arrives. 

She looks between you, The Director, Jacq, and the Door and then tells Jacq to get out. He leaves without another word.

She huffs. “I should have known that when you phoned saying he’d broken a finger you’d been up to something in here”

You’re both stunned. “Oh please, I’m not blind, I know you're fooling around, running about in disguise might have fooled everyone else but I know you-” She points at Director Clavell. “-too well”

The Director blushes. “Um-it was an accident”

Nurse Miriam sighs and sets about strapping up the Director's fingers. “I don’t think they’re badly injured, but-” She eyes which ones are hurt and then looks between him and you again before raising an eyebrow. 

You can’t help but laugh in embarrassment. “I sneezed”

It takes a minute to register and she almost drops the small reel of strapping tape as she claps a hand over her mouth to not laugh in shock.

“I know people have said it can happen but I genuinely didn’t believe that you could break fingers by sneezing when they're like…you know, I’d have got off if-humffp!”

You all end up in laughter even as the Director hisses through his hand being strapped up. 

“Well, not my most unusual injury but let’s say it is one of my top most outrageous for the year, what happened to no sexual activity on campus?” Miriam asks pocketing the tape and giving Clavell a hard stare.

The Director shakes his head blushing and shrugs. “I can tell you now I’ve learnt my lesson, this is why we don’t allow this sort of thing on campus, too risky”

“Fastest way to kill a boner I guess” You inject causing Nurse Miriam to gaff and nearly trip on her way out the door.

“Pack it away, get some ice on it and go home if you're horny for the sake of the children Director good gods!”

As soon as she's gone you look back at each other uncertain what to do. “I’ve still got to assist Art today”

Clavell pouts and holds up the hand where Nurse Miriam just taped the middle and ring fingers together.

“You can’t leave me like this, my wrist only just healed last week and this is my 'good' hand if you catch my drift, not to mention I’ve got a meeting at 4!”

You blink and then notice he’s still got a raging hard-on when he moves his shirt to show you. 

Damn. “How the hell are you still hard, didn’t that hurt?”

He laughs and stands up shutting his laptop. “Yes, a lot actually but it seems my brain is far too focused on getting a shag in today than the fact you just broke my fingers by sneezing in the middle of…that”

“Think you can hide that until we get to Artazon?” You snigger grabbing your bag.

He winces. “God no, I know I just said we shouldn’t be doing this on campus but your private rooms are the closest to ‘home’ we can get before someone sees”

Chapter Text

Incident 0077: A Misplaced and Misused Paint Brush

DATE : 30/05/24

NAME(S): MASTER HASSEL/GYM LEADER BRASSIUS

INCIDENT LOCATION: ART ROOM 02

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / MISS RAIFORT

TIME: 15:31 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: ( YES / NO) (Paramedics requested)

There was a lot going on at the academy this week. Nearly all the gym leaders were on site for ‘League Week’, where students got up close with learning about type sets and how to start on their journey to take on the Pokemon League. It was also Culture week in Mesagosa so there was more than the usual locals milling about in the school and in the town to see all the stalls and to top it off it was also open week where the Academy had potential students from all over the world visit and tour around the place.

Recently Clavell had appointed you as part of the school's new ‘Health and Safety’ squad while so much was going on, to which you had pointed out also contained Nemona and Arven who were notorious for being the problem. He’d simply shrugged and said it was only a trial phase. 

You’d been in the middle of watching Ryhme and her sister Tyme showing off the Ghost and Rock types in a little friendly match in the schoolyard when Nemona came crashing into you nearly sending you flat on your face into the grass. 

“Hassel and Brassisus got caught!” she hisses when you eventually get chance to turn to her. 

You’re confused for a moment until it registers. Hassel had told you, in private of course, that he’d been in a relationship with the Gym leader for nearly the year now, it would be the second time they had attempted to hold down a relationship and so far it was going better than before. 

You push Nemona back into the hall, drag her past some students and up to another floor to avoid being heard. “Where?”

“Nurse Miriam was called to the art rooms about thirty minutes ago, Miss Raifort walked in on them doing the nasty in the supply closet and well, something is apparently stuck, I don’t know I came straight here from her office when she went down, but I think I heard the word paintbrush?”

You cringe and look about. “Okay let’s go then, as part of the Health and Safety team we need to know what happened I guess”

Arriving at Art Room 02, you found a bunch of people standing around. One of them was another nurse and two others were paramedics, one handsome and hunky fella who you noticed had a striking resemblance to Director Clavell was in a firefighting uniform and was currently in the process of cutting the door to the supply closest off.

Raifort shakes her head as you approach. “I’m not sure what happened, I heard a noise and came in, found them…doing that, yelled at them and then there was just all this noise and Brassius started shouting about something being stuck”

You try not to imagine just what could be stuck or where it could be stuck, as The Director strolls into the room looking for all the world sick of all the nonsense. He’d been very frustrated this week and you’d been too busy with League work and helping host classes to go and attend to your best friend in a high place with benefits.

You pray Nemona doesn’t find out yet, they’d only just got comfortable with the Clive lie. At least not before you tell your mother that your ‘boyfriend’ was as old as she was. 

“Just what on earth is going on this week?” He grumbles coming to stand beside the pair of you. “We have enough to deal with, never mind Hassel causing a scandal!”

“Did you know about this?” you ask quietly, curious if Hassel had at least informed him about the relationship.

Clavell looks at you and then at the door that was being cut off. “To some extent yes, but I was unaware THIS had been going on”

You stay standing with the Director as the door comes off and both Nurses rush into the closet with the fireman. Nemona goes forward with Miss Raifort to see inside.

There’s a lot of talk, muttering, some embarrassed laughter and then someone saying they required medical pilers and lubrication.

You look at Director Clavell and he looks at you as Nemona returns to your side blushing like tomato. 

“I think Master Hassel needs advice on where to store his paintbrushes”

You blink trying to prepare for what she’s about to say.

Nemona looks awkward as she tries not to laugh turning to the Director. “One of them is currently stuck up his arse…like…deep”

The Director sighs with an air of exhaustion. “I knew I should have just stayed in my office”

“Please don’t fire him, I know this is outrageous but I’m sure he’s just learnt a hard lesson” You offer trying to diffuse the tension he’s giving off. 

He shoots you a look and you raise an eyebrow in challenge, he relents and starts to leave. “Oh well, just do me a favour, bring me those papers from your trip to area zero last week to my flat in the town centre will you, I’m going to go home early, this week has just been …too much”

Oh, now you feel guilty, there were no papers, he just wanted company. Nemona looks confused. “Shall I go tell Jacq you’re leaving?” She asks.

He shakes his head. “Already told him before…this…happened…” He looks at you and sighs, there’s a pleading look in his eyes. 

“I’ll be about an hour…” you glance about the room before checking your watch. He nods and leaves. 

“He’s a bit uptight…” Nemona sighs. “Gotta admit, I don’t know whether I'm coming or going with so much happening”

 There’s a yell of pain from the closest and you both cringe as Hassel shouts. “BRASSIUS YOU BASTARD NEXT TIME SHOVE YOUR TOOLS UP YOUR OWN ARSE”

You both bump into each other in a fluster to get out of the room whilst trying not to start laughing at how awkward this was. 

“Lets just go then-” 

“yeah let’s you know-” 

“I got-” 

“Same”

Chapter Text

DATE : 27/05

NAME(S): ACADEMY CHAMPION (YOU)

INCIDENT LOCATION: HOME ECONOMICS

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / MR SAGUARO/ ARVEN TURO

TIME: 14:12 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: (YES / NO )

You’d been in Nurse Miriam’s incident book a few times but for nothing like this. Bumps and scrapes, and an eye test after some debris from a fight got in there. But no, nothing as bad as this. 

Everything hurt, you couldn’t stop sweating, your stomach was cramping and every inch you moved felt like it took forever. 

Someone was shouting. In fact, a few people were shouting. 

Poison.

Now it wasn’t entirely Arven’s fault. But it was also his fault. 

You’d agreed to go and taste test for a cook-off in the Home Economics department with the second years. Arven was now assisting Mr Saguaro for the lower years and everything had been going quite well. Apart from a few bland sandwiches, there was nothing dangerous. 

At least until you went to try the cake. The young boy who brought you the plate seemed familiar. In fact it wasn’t until you were halfway through eating the slice of chocolate cake that just seemed too good to be true that you recalled he’d been one of the first students to come and ask you to sign a copy of Jacq’s thesis on the Herb Mystica. 

Jacq had credited both you and Arven in the book. 

Something about this chocolate cake didn’t feel quite right. It was good. It was too fucking good. 

You wonder just how much planning it had taken for the kid to make the perfectly thick and chocolatey sweet filling when you recall something about the taste of those Herbs. 

“Arven…”

Your best friend looks up from the paperwork he was marking. “Yeah?”

“What was that rule on Herb Mystica again?” You ask setting your fork down and trying not to panic. There was only a little piece left of the cake. 

Arven eyes the plate confused. “Erm…well, you shouldn’t eat them if you're not ill, um, you shouldn’t cook them or heat them because they can release toxins…”

“That’s the one” You gulp. 

Arven blinks. “What do you mean?” 

“This cake is good don't get me wrong but…it’s too good…it’s practically perfect for a second year and it’s sweet…dark sugar sweet with cinnamon like…”

Arven drops the pen. “NO”

You both look at the boy who had given you the plate and he’s gone pale. “How did you-”

“I’ve eaten the plant before, I know what it tastes like” You admit frowning.

“I said outside ingredients were banned Havros-How did you even get-” Arven freezes then starts raiding a drawer of Mr Saguaro's desk. “Tell me you didn’t use the leaves I gave Saguaro”

The boy looks guilty. 

“Shit”

“But-I baked the cake it’s not cooked it?”

You both give him a dead stare of shock as so do some other students. “ARE YOU THICK OR SOMETHING?” Someone shouts.

“Baking is the same, it's been put under heat dimwit!” 

Mr Saguaro appears from another room at all the shouting and almost swears when Arven tell him what the boy did. 

You were about halfway towards the Nurse’s office when it all started. Arven had been marching you up there as fast as he could when you started sweating and going dizzy.

By the time you reached the doors, he was carrying you. The stuff was potent as hell.

Nurse Miriam had been rushing to stem a bleeding cut on another student when he crashed in the door carrying you and shouting something about fluids. He’d sat you on the bed and began trying to help Nurse Miriam’s assistant to get you onto an IV. 

“What happened?”

“In short food poisoning, in long, Sweet Herb Mystica cooked into chocolate cream poisoning” He barks snatching his phone from his bag and frantically trying to call Clavell.

Your stomach was starting to argue. It felt like your whole body had gone to war with the raging noises your guts were loudly making. You had the horrendous feeling the resulting explosion wasn’t going to be pretty. 

“Do you feel sick?” The Assiant asks reaching for one of those hospital cardboard bowls. 

You can’t even nod because as soon as she sets it down in front of you, you're throwing up. So violently, even Arven goes green. 

Nurse Miriam has to swap places with the assistant when she hears the agonising sound you make as your whole body seems to try forcing your stomach out. 

Arven is just brave enough to grab a towel from a sideboard and get it over your lap when Nurse Miram exchanges the bowl because the second round is somehow worse than the first and the bowl was probably useless. You hear Arven gag, the other student who’d been getting his arm seen to, gagged as well. 

Even both medical professionals were disturbed. Arven stood back to let them both start cleaning you up when the Director walked in and subconsciously you cursed but you were in no state to argue as they started stripping you down. 

Clavell flinches back from the curtains, winces and looks away. “Oh god…what’s happened?”

You can hear Arven trying to explain when Nurse Miriam warns the other nurse about needing paper bed sheets. Wait…what…why?

Your stomach growls. Lower this time. 

Oh no, oh no no no no you were not getting explosive diarrhoea in front of your friend in a high place with benefits. 

You fight off the assistant nurse when Nurse Miriam moves away and you only just make it into one of the bathrooms and slam the door before round three starts. 

You refuse to recall the details. 

“Can you call the hospital, we’re going to need some more diuretics, electrolyte IVs and Ipecec if this goes on for more than forty-eight hours” Nurse Miriam calls as she tries to open your bathroom door but finds you locked it. 

If you weren't just throwing up, you were shitting and if you weren't just doing that, you were doing both.at.the.same.time. 

It takes nearly thirty minutes for you to find the strength to reach up and open the bathroom door to which everyone had been calling for you to open. 

Everything hurt, you couldn’t stop sweating, your stomach was cramping and every inch you moved felt like it took forever. Something didn’t smell nice and well you didn’t want to even think about the mess you were in when Nurse Miriam opened the door.

Towels and Aprons. Water and Gloves. Masks and something about a bath, something about going home?

Everything was hazy by this point but not hazy enough for you not to notice the Director hadn’t left, was currently without his jacket and damn, he looked hot with his sleeves rolled up like that and wearing those blue latex gloves. It wasn’t remotely sexy that he was helping clean vomit off you but you would take what you could get from this view. 

You have no idea when you passed out, no idea what time it was when someone helped manhandle you into a bathroom to throw up. The walls were different. So was the floor. 

When you come around again it’s early morning and you recognise the sheets you were shivering under as the ones on the Director’s bed. The one in his flat in Mesagosa to be precise.

“Ah, you’re awake!” 

You turn to see he’s sat beside you on the bed, a steaming cup of tea on the bedside table, he’s half-dressed and looks to have been reading. “Feel any better?”

You groan and hide into the pillow making him chuckle. “Didn’t think you would but at least it’s out of you’re system now”

He tells you they brought you to his flat because the trip home would have been too much. “You weren’t well enough to stay on your own, they managed to get the worst of your side effects under control with medication but you were still throwing up last night”

You recall, so it had been The Director who had helped manhandle you into his bathroom when you woke up complaining you felt sick again. 

“Remind me…to never eat…anything from home ec again”

He laughs. “I can try but then you’d miss out on your favourite pastries, Mr Saguaro helps in the kitchens”

You groan at the mention of food. “Just put me down”

“I’ll do no such thing, and anyway you're already lying down” he jokes. 

“I don’t know…what’s worse” You grumble. “Getting poisoned by a fifteen-year-old or the fact you had help wash the vomit off me”

He snorts. “Well as much as it will be my current least favourite memory of how we spent time together, I can tell you now that it won’t be the last just because it happened, you needed help and as much as you are old enough to take care of your self, as your Director it’s still my job to look after all my students”

“I practically work for you now though”

“Well, you're still taking some courses even if you’re on the graduation list”

You grunt in response. He chuckles. “You look cuter in my bed and my pyjamas anyway”

You manage to move the covers and blink in surprise. “Wh-Arceus, I haven’t even told my mum about us yet”

His muffled laughter makes the bed jiggle and you manage to smile up at him. 

“I’d kinda hoped waking up in your bed would have been due to some other reason, not a medical emergency”

Clavell blushes and you giggle, wincing when it hurts, your stomach feels like someone had ripped it to shreds but end up smiling when he strokes your hair. “I’m sure we’ll get to that at some point”

Chapter Text

Incident 0086: Experimental Drug Use

DATE : 04/06

NAME(S): MISS RAIFORT

INCIDENT LOCATION: RESEARCH LABS

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / MR P.JACQ/ CHAMPION (YOU) +2 others

TIME: 19:45 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: (YES / NO )

You were just considering whether to head to bed early when your rotom phone perked up and started ringing. 

Huffing you head for the kitchenette. Oh, Clavell? You’d said no late night…

“Have you seen Jacq?”

You blink and scoff, amused. “Don’t I even get a Hi anymore?” 

“Hm?-Oh sorry, forgot my manners, Hi, have you seen Jacq by any chance, he was meant to join me here in the office for a meeting over half an hour ago?”

You shrug before you realise he can’t see you. “Erm, no, I’ve been in the dorms since, what…after four”

“So odd, it’s unlike him to miss a meeting, especially one about a thesis”

You're concerned enough to think about heading down the hall to find Nemona. “You know what, I-I’ll head over if you’re still staying late, erm, in fact, I’ll grab Nemo and ask if she knows and we can take a wander around the campus, I think she’s on patrol tonight”

“Would you? I don’t think he’s gone off site but…well, you see he was with Raifort this afternoon-”

You sit bolt upright, that wasn’t good news. “Say no more, I’m coming up”

“So when did you last see him?” Nemona asks glancing about the office at the now working scientific equipment. Clavell never had much of it running during the day because he had other things to attend to. 

The Director pauses from looking at the slide that he’d been checking under a microscope. “Erm, well, he joined me for lunch about one o'clock, texted me about half three to say he would see me at seven for the meeting and he mentioned joining Raifort in the lab for some final steps in concluding their sample testing…I-I’m not too sure what that is though, he hasn’t divulged much about what they’ve been doing, I did request he didn’t do anything illegal but who knows what Raitfort might convince him to do”

Nemona looks at you worried. You sigh. “Well, Jacq wasn’t out front in the courtyard and as far as the receptionist is aware he’s not signed out from the offices so he must still be onsite”

“Maybe we should go see if he’s in the labs? He might have just lost track of time?” Nemona asks biting her lip. 

You raise an eyebrow. “Perhaps…but the fact Raifort hasn’t signed out either means he could be anywhere if he is still with her”

In the end, you chose to head down to the labs together with Clavell to see if you could find a trace of where Jacq had gone too. But both Biology labs one and two were empty. Lab three had a late night class but it wasn't Jacq. 

“Let's try the testing labs” Clavell mutters. 

Following Clavell through a door that said ‘STAFF ONLY’ you head down a slightly narrow corridor lined with doors reading ‘SENSITIVE EQUIPMENT’ ‘MASKS REQUIRED’ and ‘DARK ROOM’ and that turns into a huge circular room filled with jarring white and steel machinery which remind you a lot of Area Zero. 

“Jacq?”Clavell calls curiously.

No answer.

“MR JACQ YOU IN HERE?”

You and Clavell wince when Nemona’s call echoes around the room. 

There’s a sudden bang from a supply closet door at the far end. You all glare at it in confusion before you're certain you spot a flash of hair. Raifort?

Worried, you all approach the door, Clavell yanks it open to find Raifort on the floor barely half-dressed, surrounded by towels and bedding. Jacq is standing to her right shirtless and looking sheepish as he tries to block the view of a table behind him that you don’t fail to notice is full of medical equipment. Raifort’s Gengar is passed out on its back looking like it had fought off a hundred Zoroaks and Nemona is glaring down at a very purple-eyed Gholdengo.

Clavell looks between everyone before eyeing the Gholdengo. “What did I say about testing that Mochi on my academy premises?!”

He’s furious. 

Jacq throws his hands up and stutters. “We-we didn’t I swear this-we don’t know how it got like this!”

Clavell shoots him a nasty look of disbelief before looking to Raifort who is, now that you're paying more attention, not looking too well. “Erm, is she okay?”

“I’m fine, kind of, just…-” She waves the arm that she isn’t holding to her body at the Gholdengo.

“How did you get this? These things take forever to evolve, gimmighoul coins are rare enough as it is…” You’re getting really concerned. 

“It didn’t need the coins” Jacq offers and everyone looks back at him again. “Look, we were testing different serums on Raifort’s Gimmighoul, it’s been acting out of sorts for weeks and well, we’re not sure how but we think Gengar opened the vial that had the last sample of Pecharunt Mochi and Gimmighoul ate it because when we came back into the lab from the library it was like this, Gengar was passed out and it was just standing there”

Nemona hums. “So, if that’s all, care to explain why there’s bedding in here and you're both half naked?”

You and Clavell look at Nemona and then each other before glaring back at the pair of them and Jacq looks guilty as hell. Raifort can’t seem to look at you.

“Answer her or I call the cops” Clavell snips.

Raifort head snaps up and Jacq gulps. “Okay-I-it went berserk when we tried to move it, it attacked Sabrina and-”

“I’msorrywhat?” You cut him off. Raifort goes back to not looking at you.

“Did you just call her Sabrina?” Clavell is clearly running on the same hunch that you and Nemona have now because his back is up and you just know this is going to be a bad look on Jacq’s monthly report. 

Jacq fumbles and gulps again. “I meant Raifort…well-”

Clavell huffs loudly. “Keep going we’ll talk about that later”

Jacq stumbles and nearly knocks over the trays of equipment. You carefully step closer to the table whilst keeping one eye on Gholdengo.

“It attacked her the second we tried to move him into a Pokeball and well, we barricaded ourselves in here because it well-I-erm” He’s lost for words. You spot names on the bottles and needles. 

“Are these painkillers?” you ask out loud. Jacq turns and winces. “Yes”

“It sprayed me with something, I don’t know what but the next thing I knew I was dizzy as hell, sweating and well, it’s fucking embarrassing to admit but hornier than a Ryhdon with three heads whilst also being in a ridiculous amount of pain” Raifort sounds exhausted. 

Clavell turns to Nemona. “Miss Nemona, go call Nurse Miriam, please”

You eye the Gholdengo. “Is it safe?”

Raifort tried to shrug. “Not sure, it’s been stood dead asleep for nearly fifteen minutes after we managed to pin it long enough to give it the anti-psychotic serum”

“Where’s Gengar’s ball?” Clavell asks looking around. 

“Out there in my bag” Raifort tries to point to the door. You fetch the ball and recall the unconscious ghost type. Gholdengo still doesn’t budge. 

You wave Clavell out of the way. “It should be calm now but just in case…”

He moves to stand beside Raifort with one hand on Abombasnow’s ball. You see him look down at her before eyeing Jacq again. 

You manage to pull the sleeping Ghost-type into a Great Ball without fuss and immediately escort it to one of the safety boxes in the labs that Jacq leads you to.

With the Pokemon dealt with, you return to the room just in time for Nemona and Nurse Miriam to arrive carrying a stretcher.

Miriam eyes the room, sniffs, glares at Jacq and then looks at Clavell.

“Wasn’t me this time” he grumbles. You snigger. 

“Why is there bedding in here?” She asks looking around before kneeling beside Raifort and checking the arm she was clutching.

Jacq huffs. “I sleep in here sometimes, I lose track of time in the labs so sometimes I end up working until 4 am and well, there’s no point going to my rooms to sleep, I just nap in here, use the showers, go get breakfast and come back”

Clavell sighs heavily. “Jacq, you do realise that A) the school isn’t going to burn down if you don’t work for one night and B) it’s unhealthy to sleep on a floor, no wonder your back is playing up and you're only thirty-two!”

Jacq shrugs and looks at the floor, looking much like a teen getting a bollocking off a parent. 

Whilst Clavell rips Jacq a new asshole over his unhealthy work habits, you help Nemona and Nurse Miriam move Raifort onto the stretcher.

“Feel like I’ve been sat on by a Waillord” She groans. 

Clavell and Jacq stop arguing for a moment to join you. “I’m not that heavy!” Jacq snorts before blushing. “And anyway, you were on top for most of that”

You all freeze. Clavell takes a deep breath and you just know he’s going to be phoning you for a ‘meeting’ tomorrow if not asking for you to join him home tonight to look at ‘paperwork’. Nurse Miriam gives him a look, you know she’s catching onto an unmentioned problem here before breaking the silence.

Nemona’s jaw drops when Nurse Miriam blurts out “Please tell me I’m not adding that he got potentially raped to his file Sab?”

Raifort laughs as Jacq nearly falls over in shock. “No god-fuck no, I-he offered, he's perfectly sane, I think anyway-”

“Offered?!” Clavell sounds scandalised as Raifort glares at him.

You and Nemona are fighting not to laugh. Jacq is speechless. 

“Okay, enough chat - let's just get you to the Emergency Room” Nurse Miriam huffs as you all take hold of the stretcher and escort Raifort back upstairs.

“So, Raifort was feeding Gimmighoul experimental breeding drugs, because they’re genderless and she wanted to see if she could get it to breed, before Gengar fed it the Pecharunt Mochi, it evolved then went wild having gone into some apparent sex frenzy, tried to shag Gengar which note knocked the poor bugger out, sprayed Raifort with the drugs she’d been feeding it all week when they came back into the labs, then Jacq gave it an anti psychotic serum before he fucked Raifort in the supply closet whilst a possessed Gholdengo ran around the lab in confusion before falling asleep stood up about fifteen minutes before we found them having just finished round two and Jacq was trying to give her a painkiller because she wasn’t horny anymore just in pain and didn't want you to call the cops…”

Clavell sighs from his spot on his sofa. You’d called him from the A&E with the story Raifort eventually fully confessed. “Is she alright and was it consensual?”

You pull a face. The last thing you wanted to think about. “She’ll need a few days to recover but no real harm done and she says he wasn’t affected by the drug and hadn’t resisted”

“That’s not exactly a yes”

“Jacq won't answer his phone”

Clavell sighs hard. “Let just-just pretend this didn’t happen and if Jacq eventually talks then we’ll demand an answer, I doubt it wasn’t consensual because I know he’s got a crush on her but-I-experimental drugs and an ex-cat burglar who’s obsessed with ghost types, you know what I’m getting at”

“Yeah, yeah, I do…see you tomorrow?” You snigger.

He sighs despondently again and you can only sigh in reply. “See you in half an hour?”

There's the sound of a teacup being put down. “I’ll unlock the door”

Chapter Text

Incident 0089: Stuck in the Bathroom

DATE : 13/06

NAME(S): ARVEN TURO

INCIDENT LOCATION: SENIOR DORMS - ROOM 112

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / CHAMPION (YOU)/ NEMONA GLITTERATI/MR SAGUARO

TIME: 9:45 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: (YES / NO )

You’d had some weird calls from Arven before now. But nothing as amusing as at 8:30 am in the morning when he’s in his bathroom saying he can’t get the fucking door open. You assume he was just pulling another silly brother-like prank on you until there’s a knock on your door.

You're forced from your bed to go and rescue him because Nemona has shown up not fifteen minutes later saying he phoned her as well.

You’re halfway across the campus when you meet Mr Saguaro who greets you good morning. 

“And where are the current Champions off to this morning?” He asks brightly, chuckling as he holds his morning coffee and watches the students milling about. 

“Manana Senor, Well, at the moment we're not certain but Arven called us saying he was stuck in his bathroom, so we guessed we better go see what’s going on with that” Nemona laughs. 

He raises an eyebrow. “Really? Goodness,” He looks at his watch. “He’ll be late for class if he’s not out soon” 

You frown at the next text he sends.

[ARVEN: I think the handle has fallen off the other side?!]

“The handle fell off…how?” You ask out loud making Nemona snort.

“Right okay, so this is either a prank or he’s actually stuck, Dios I’m going to laugh if he is actually stuck”

Mr Saguaro chuckles. “Well I don’t need to be in my class for another half an hour, I’ll join you and we shall see”

The Home Ec teacher joins you for the rest of the walk and you joke about having to kick the door in as you arrive at Arven’s dorm and knock on the door. 

No answer. 

You try the handle and find it open.

“Arven?”

“FINALLY HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE YOU??!”

You turn to the closed bathroom door and your jaw drops. The handle is in fact, missing. But it’s not on the floor. There are some marks on the door as if…

“Dios did someone steal your door handle?” Nemona gasps. 

Mr Sagaro stands with his hands on his hips and sighs. “Well this is a problem, isn’t it?”

“Is that…Is that Mr Saguaro?”

“Indeed Arven, I’m here too”

 “oh thank gods, I was trying to call you to say I was going to be late” He sighs in relief

You eye the lock but can’t make out how the mechanism would work without the other pin. In fact you’re surprised it’s still locked. 

“How is it still locked without the other handle?” You ask turning to the Home Ec teacher who just shakes his head. “I wouldn’t know I’m afraid, my speciality is baking cherry pie not door handles” he chuckles. 

Nemona nudges you aside and shouts at Arven to stand back. 

“Erm, why?”

“Well duh I’m going to kick the door in” She laughs.

You just manage to stop her. “Nemo these are fire doors, they won't break as easy as the ones down in bunkhouse dorms”

She pauses to look at the door again as Mr Saguaro agrees with you. “I’m afraid Champ is right, these are heavy, I doubt the hinges would break with just one attempt and even then...” He sighs and looks about the room, “I could attempt to the bust the lock by kicking it myself but I’m certain these were designed to handle most Pokemon attacks never mind me kicking it”

“Whatever you do can you just hurry up? Class is in fifteen minutes!”

Mr Saguaro laughs. “Arven I think you can be excused for being late this time”

“Shall I call The Director? Should we get maintenance up here?” Nemona asks.

You stop her again. “Don’t call Clavell, he’s…well, he’s not busy but he’s having a bad week I’ve been trying to keep people away for a while, I think Geeta said something about the budget”

You’re lying but you can’t tell her the truth. Clavell would be mortified if anyone else knew about what was going on.

“Shall I run down to the maintenance offices and see if someone can come up?” She offers. 

You nod. “Yeah go, erm,-” you look at Sagauro. “We’ll see if we can find out where the handle went…”

Mr Saguaro nods in agreement. “Good idea, looks to have been stolen so I’ll go knock up some students shall I” he smirks pushing up his sleeves and marching back out into the corridor to see if he can find a culprit. 

Once the other two are gone you shut the door. “Are you okay?” 

“Well apart from getting cold because I’m only wearing a towel, I’m fine thanks” Arven laughs. 

You try rattling the door by getting your fingers into what is left of the lock.

It didn’t budge.

You hunt about Arven’s room for his little tool bag. “Where are your camping tools? Didn’t you have a screwdriver in there?”

“Oh, erm, yeah there in my big rucksack, small zip pocket on the left” 

You turn for the bed to see his bag lent against it and his rumpled clothes dumped on the covers. You can’t help but notice the bright purple and pink boxer shorts with Espeon printed on them. “Aw, I like your pants” You shout and he snorts.

“This is only time you get to look at them!”

“I’ve seen you in the white ones with the Electrodes on them which say-”

“Bombastic” He laughs in reply just as Mr Saguaro returns.

 “No luck, unfortunately, most of the students have gone to classes now, but one boy said he saw a student come in here and leave just after eight. 

You find the pocket of the bag that Arven mentioned, open. Huh?

The little tools pouch was open as well and the screwdriver and an Allen key were missing.

“Well, looks like whoever stole the handle also stole Arven’s camping tools to do it”

“Prank gone wrong?” Mr Saguaro offers and you and Arven laugh. “More likely they meant for me to get stuck Sir”

“True, I have a feeling I know who did it but I won’t go pointing fingers right now…”

Your phone buzzes. [NEMO: Maintenance is in a meeting, they said they could be another half an hour]

“Manatince can’t get up here for another half an hour” You groan. 

“Arven stand back from the door”

“Why?”

“I’m going to see how weak the lock is” Mr Saguaro offers before setting his boot on the spot where the handle should have been and kicking it. It does budge even after three attempts.

“I told you these things were solid” he sighs a little breathless before trying again. “Nope, I don't think it’s going to move”

[YOU: Can you ask them for a screwdriver or something to break the handle?]

[NEMO: I can try]

“Let me try something” Arven suddenly suggests but before you can ask what there’s a large thump against the door and a rather muffled OW before he starts complaining and whimpering.

“You nitwit the door open inwards, it won't open with you hitting it from the wrong direction” You’d laugh but that was a loud thump. “Are you okay?”

“I think I did my shoulder in” Arven groans as Mr Saguaro shakes his head. 

“Maybe if we call Clavell he’ll get Maintinace faster?” The Home Ec teacher suggests but you shake your head. 

“This isn’t that serious, we can wait it out, he doesn’t need to be bothered”

[YOU: Can you fetch Miriam, please, Arven attacked the door, and hurt his shoulder]

[NEMO: What a dork, omw]

Nemona returns with Nurse Miriam but you realise until maintenance turn up you can't help Arven. You all start discussing potential ways to force the door free when Clavell appears in the doorway looking for all the world, DONE. You gulp. He eyes you all and then the bathroom door, he eyes the lock then steps back and kicks it just once making it break and you're all stunned. 

The door lock clicks and swings open, he huffs, looks at you slightly sadly and leaves. 

It's a long moment before any of you can talk. 

“Who…called Clavell?” Arven asks from the other side of the door as he peeks around the frame, he’s shirtless with a towel around his waist and clutching his right shoulder.

Miriam looks guilty. “Oh, I logged it down as an incident already he must have seen the email… but I didn’t…what was that?!”

You sigh. “It’s fine…ish-maybe, let just see to Arven…please”

Everyone is looking at you confused but Nurse Miriam moves into the bathroom as you ask.

Mr Saguaro looks over the broken lock. “Hm, well Clavell did study mechanical physics, while I was busy making the perfect pie crust he was probably studying how something like this worked and well…” he shrugs. “Brains over brawn”

“He’s half your size…and he broke the lock in one kick…” Nemona blinks.

“True, Mr Saguaro kicked it five times, it didn’t budge”

“And I don’t skip leg day” he laughs. 

“Neither does Clavell apparently” Nurse Miriam adds. “Come on let’s get some clothes on you Arven, you need to go to the LGH for an Xray”

You head up to the Director’s office at 5 pm as requested and to also ask him to fetch the student whom you believed was responsible for stealing Arven’s door handle. You’d taken coffee and doughnuts as a peace offering.

“He texted me about half 8 this morning, I thought it was a prank at first…” You start explaining as Clavell leans back in his chair indulging in his favourite doughnut and licking powdered sugar off his fingers. 

“But Nemona turned up saying he’d messaged her as well asking her to fetch me because he was stuck”

Clavell snorts but says nothing. 

“When we got there we found someone had locked it from the outside and then removed the door handle”

“Have you found it?” He eventually asks as he brushes his hands with a napkin. You shake your head. “He was also missing a screwdriver and an Allen key from his camping tool kit, the boy who I think did it is Steven Mayflower from our Home Ec class, he was pretty mad about Arven beating him in the sandwich contest last week”

Clavell sighs and sips the coffee. The food and coffee have softened him slightly and he settles back in the chair running a hand through his hair. “I will attend to call him up in the morning about it for you”

You nod and swallow. “Are you okay?”

Clavell takes a breath as if to answer you but unlike the previous times when he’s on the minute to answer, he pauses, looks at you, looks away and gulps. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me, it’ll pass…again”

“You can’t tell me this isn’t bothering you now?” You frown. “You kicked a door in that Saguaro tried five times”

Clavell laughs. “Man bakes pies for a living, I studied mechanical physics for ten years, brains over brawn”

You snort and giggle. “He said that”

Chapter Text

Incident 0093: Rampaging Rhydon

DATE : 19/06

NAME(S): NEMONA GLITTERATI + 37 STUDENTS

INCIDENT LOCATION: SCHOOLYARD

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / CHAMPION (YOU) / MISS DENDRA / MR HASSEL / ARVEN TURO

TIME: 16:20 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: (YES / NO )

“NEMO, NEMO, NEMO!!”

The crowd out on the schoolyard grass was huge. You’re sat with Arven in the front row seats in the temporary stands around the battle pitch to watch the semi-finals for the school's ‘Under 6 badges Battle Brawl’. Champion Trainer Nemona vs Trainer Kristin who was currently on his 5th badge.

Ever since the Academy Ace Tournament was founded you’d been leading undefeated. When some of the younger students who hadn’t claimed enough badges moped about not being allowed to participate, Dendra came up with the idea to host two different levelled Battle Brawls for the lower years, to help train them for the League Gyms. 

Clavell at first was almost opposed to the idea saying it was potentially taking away some of the learning curve of battling for the students but Geeta didn’t seem to oppose the idea and after a long discussion they came up with a set of official rules, making it more difficult for any one student to just walk through the ranks and have to work to earn points for leader board. The winners got extra credits, a small desk trophy and a cool printed backpack signed by the Elite Four. 

You were just a bit jealous. But you got to see the Elite Four whenever you wished most days so you could just get your own. You had a cool ring and baseball cap for your 25th win in a row and a sick-looking golden arm gauntlet Nemona gifted you for your recent 30th win. Clavell had been your last opponant in that match and it had become a nail-biting tit-for-tat as you wiped out each other’s Pokemon with ever-increasing difficult strategy. He’d come prepared for a fight and you had begun to sweat at one point when he single-shot your Sylveon who was well known for withstanding some of the hardest steel-type moves. Penny had shrieked. 

Currently, Kristen was suffering as even though Nemona had a much weaker and under-evolved team right now she was still managing to command them to pull serious hits. He was down to his last Pokemon and Nemona was down to three.

The young lad who had won the previous round of the semi-finals versus another student looked concerned about his chances versus Nemona in the final round. 

There’s a resounding gasp around the schoolyard when he throws out Rhydon. 

Nemona cocks her head. Rhydon uses Outrage. Pawmo goes down. 

Since it was a repetitive move for four turns, Nemona’s next Pokemon also faints. Tossing out her final ball, Golduck slides onto the pitch undeterred. The next move misses and causes Rhydon to become confused. You stand up and Arven looks about worriedly. 

“What’s wrong?” He shouts.

“I don’t think Kristen can control him” You call over the noise of the students cheering on Kristen’s sudden luck. 

Arven stands up then, he watches the Rhydon stumble and roar as Nemona throws out a command for Golduck. 

The boy had become overconfident and reckless, you watch as he commands the Pokemon into a Drill Run. 

When the Rhydon roars and charges lopsidedly into the move you hear Kristen shout “FUCK!”

Nemona is quick off the mark to launch her Machamp into the arena as you charge forward from the seats but the Rhydon takes the fighting Pokemon crashing into the audience and seating stand behind them, sending students and Nemona flying in a huge dust ball. 

You can see yourself on the widescreen TV charging into the chaos with Arven not far behind you and behind him, Penny and Erin come running as well. 

Machamp is still wrestling with the confused Rhydon as students scramble for safety and you launch both Lucario and Dragonite into the fray whilst pulling an injured Nemona up and help her onto Arven’s back so he can carry her away from the fighting. 

Dendra has launched her Pokemon into the fight now to subdue the rock/ground type but it seems to be taking hits like it was made of something out of Area Zero. 

You turn to take command of the fighting only to get blasted off your feet when Rhydon goes for a Take-Down move on Lucario but the smaller Steel Fighting Pokemon dodges, causing the Rhydon to come too close for comfort sending clumps of soil,concrete from the race track and metal from the stand towards you. 

The light gets cut out for a moment and when you look up, you find Hassel has dived over your back using his cape to shield you from another violent spray of mud and grit from the ongoing fray. 

“What on earth is this?” He shouts over the chaos. Most students have fled leaving only the injured and the few of you attempting to subdue the fight. 

Lucario takes a nasty hit and gets whacked into the wall of the school making you wince and scramble to get up to see if your ‘good boy’ is okay. “You okay buddy?”

Lucario grumbles shaking his head and you rustle in your belt bag to grab a full heal. Turning back to the fight as the Aura Pokemon recovers you watch as Hassel sends Dragalge into the battle and aids in taking Rhydon down with a final Hydro Pump. 

Pokemon recalled you’re left with the muddy aftermath. The pitch has been messed up, there’s brickwork, chairs, concrete pulled up from the racetrack and broken metal framework from the seating stand Rhydon had crushed when he charged at Machamp. The fleeing students had raised the alarm and as you and Arven broke your way into the crumpled seating you spotted Jacq, Thyme and Salvatore joining Dendra in sorting through injured students. 

Climbing into the broken framework you help Arven and Erin pull out students who had been trapped in the mess, the injuries were bloody but thankfully everyone was in one piece, you're grateful Clavell wasn’t in school to see the mess and the blood. This would have just sent him into another fit. 

Especially if like Jacq, he’d had to watch as you climbed through the crumpled metal to talk a thirteen-year-old out from under the worst of the wreckage. He was pinned by the seating and covered in blood. A thick large steel pole has sliced right down his left side pinning him by his shirt and he was panicking in the tight space. 

He’s choking on tears and clearly in pain “I don’t want to die”

The fear resonates in your chest as Geeta’s question to you after Area Zero echoed in your mind under the shadows of the wreckage. 

‘There’s no title more befitting of you all than Hero’s of Paldea, Guardian’s of The Great Crater, you have defended us against an unknown, unforeseen and potentially fatal future, encouraged our research to see new lights into how we use the knowledge we gain for the better in Paldea, the people see you and credit how your journey had built you into someone they hold in the highest of respect, higher than myself, I ask of you as a Champion to Champion, to stand beside us at the League, as a leader beside myself in this region, to continue to defend Paldea and it’s people just as you did tonight, whether the risks be worthy or not?”

You hadn’t hesitated to say yes. Maybe you should have?

You shuffle close enough that he can reach you with his free arm and let him grasp at your hand. “Not today kid, not while I’m here”

After you had managed to assess the worst of the injury and that he could feel all his limbs, Machamp had helped lift the framework up just enough for you to cut him free and hand him over to Arven and Erin who handed him to Dendra and Thyme who set to trying to stem the blood.

As Penny and Erin attended to Nemona’s leg, you and Arven helped Hassel, Jacq and Salvatore in gathering names and phone numbers as you awaited Nurse Miriam and the requested medics. 

“Are you okay? You took rather a fall” Hassel asks as you crouch, writing down another of the student's details. 

You look down at yourself, you’re covered in mud and grass, your jacket is torn and there is blood on your hands and gauntlet from helping to stem the trapped younger students bleeding wound but otherwise, you were unharmed. 

“I’m fine, just…annoyed”

Hassel frowns. 

“If I’d been faster….”

“You had no idea how Rhydon was going to react” Nemona complains from behind you. “We were lucky you were even here”

Hassle nods. “Don't beat yourself up over this, the fault lies with Kristen for carrying a Pokemon out of his league”

“Literally” Penny sighs. “I’m aware Larry’s badge means the evolution was now something he was capable of training but he was too inexperienced with that move set to handle it”

“Outrage is going to be added to the banned move list, immediately” Hassel agrees. “If he’d taken the turn to cure the confusion we wouldn’t be in this mess, but he was unaware that some Pokemon suffered from confusion after a few turns”

You jump to your feet at the sight of Nurse Miriam and her assistant rushing down the grass aside Mr Saguaro who was carrying a large medical bag and look up when you hear the sound of Corvid Ambulance. 

Thirty-seven injured students. Nine with deep wounds and breaks from getting trapped in the framework but thankfully not life-threatening were taken to hospital. Sixteen with multiple flesh wounds or other minor injuries and twelve with bruises and concussions. 

Nurse Miriam needs a raise you think as you stand overlooking the mess of the pitch once everyone has gone. There’s now blood on your shirt and your hair from aiding Miriam and Arven in patching up students so they could be moved inside. 

Oh, you’re so glad Clavell isn’t here but you were a little more than tempted to go to him instead. This had shaken your nerves. The school was lucky no one had been killed. 

Everything smells like mud and sweat and blood. “I need a bath”

You check on Nemona in her room before you enter yours, she’s badly sprained her knee, broken a finger and covered in scrapes but otherwise unscathed. 

You lean against the doorframe of the bathroom for a long moment feeling utterly exhausted. Being Champion meant more than just winning battles, it meant being aware of your surroundings, it meant being on the ball every second of the day to keep the school safe. It meant taking risks to protect students and others from harm that Pokemon could cause when uncontrolled. It meant teaching others how to control them and consistently being on top of everything including the League. 

Your metal gauntlet clinks against the porcelain sink as you look into the mirror and grimace at the state you’re in. Whilst you weren’t afraid of the responsibility you now held, you had begun to wonder, while you looked after Paldea, would anyone look after you? 

You're in the middle of Levenica the next day when you spot the front page of the main Paldea newspaper. You were supposed to be on campus this week but had chosen to flee the timetable for a break after yesterday’s events. 

Snatching up a paper you hand the teen standing at the stall a few dollars and walk away uncaring for your change. 

You have no idea who took the shot of you standing among the wreckage of the school yard but it’s almost poetic how the colours suit your current mood. 

‘NO LONGER ON THE BRAWL’

You scoff. You don’t bother to read the article and toss it in the nearest bin before pulling out your phone. You’d left it on Do Not Disturb since midnight. 

CLIVE (12) MISSED CALLS (8 MESSAGES)

NEMO (9) MISSED CALLS (13 MESSAGES)

ARVEN (5) MISSED CALLS (9 MESSAGES)

PENNY (4) MISSED CALLS (5 MESSAGES)

GEETA  (2) MISSED CALLS (1 MESSAGE)

26 POKEAPP MESSAGES

JACQ (5) MISSED CALL (3 MESSAGES)

14 NEW VOICEMAILS

You ignore it all but it flashes with one new message just before you can put it away. 

[Clive: Call me or I’ll track you if I have to]

You put the phone away and climb on Miraidon. Let him. At your age, Paldea was your palace. Geeta may have been the one to give you the job but she wasn’t in charge of you and neither was Clavell. 

“I don’t want to die”

The kid had been so scared, crying your name for help when he saw you. That wouldn’t do. 

Spending the week in training probably wouldn’t fix much nor prepare you for whatever else you could face but it would at least make you feel better right now about what happened.

Chapter Text

Incident 00101: Curtains

DATE : 28/06

NAME(S): MS THYME

INCIDENT LOCATION: STAFF ROOM

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / CHAMPION (YOU) /ARVEN TURO

TIME: 11:36 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO 

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: ( YES / NO)

You’d been hanging out with Dendra and Nurse Miriam in the medical ward when the phone rang.

You’d only just come back the night before to the academy after the Rhydon incident and immediately set upstairs to ask Nurse Miriam for updates on all those students. 

“The typical chaos hasn’t faded I’m afraid” Dendra chuckles as she swings in the chair beside Miriam’s desk. “But I’m glad you're back Champ, we were all getting pretty worried you weren't going to”

You frown but don’t get a chance to ask why they didn’t think you would come back when you overheard Miriam requesting a bed to be made up. “Ms Thyme has suffered a fall in the staff room” She announces rushing to grab something from her drawers. 

You blink. Ms Thyme? Dendra shrugs. “How?”

“Something to do with the curtain rail falling and she tripped, Salvatore wasn’t very clear” She sighs heading for the door before turning to you. “Is my favourite Health and Safety officer available?”

You laugh. “I thought that was a joke?”

Miriam laughs back. “It was until we realised they were potentially the best thing for the school”

You agree to follow her towards the staff room. When you enter the staff room you find Salvatore and Arven standing beside the large windows, Ms Thyme was sat on a chair holding an icepack to her head as Raifort sat with her, another boy who you notice is the third-year prefect from Tyme’s Homeroom is sat with them looking befuddled but not injured.

You frown at the huge curtains that were in a heap on the carpet before looking up to the holes in the wall where the curtains had come from, the rails had fallen free.

You nudge Arven and point to a screw on the floor surrounded by bits of plaster. “Has this been ripped out?”

He turns curious, looking down before looking at you and breaking into a grin then trapping you in a hug. “BUD! I missed you!”

You grunt but grin from his grip “Missed you too”

Letting you go he kneels down to pick up the screw then stands up to eye the hole in the wall. “Damn, that took some force”

Miriam turns from beside Tyme. “Anything?”

You both look to them. “What happened?” You ask.

“I was standing by the window talking to Darren here when all of a sudden the curtains just fell on us, the railing hit me in the head and I fell against the tables” Tyme says sighing. 

Salvatore shakes his head “I was only sitting here” He gestures to a chair only a few feet away. “But I saw nothing as she shrieked and then the curtain blocked my view of the room. 

You look around. “And no one else was here?”

Ms Tyme shakes her head. “Not that we know of…”

“I considered whether a pokemon was behind it but Gengar says there’s been nothing present in here” Raifort adds standing with her hand on her hips confused. 

“The only way this could have come out is by being pulled, hard, I mean I’m not a physicist like Clavell and I’m no good with a theory like Jacq but I’m sure it would take something as much as a teen's full body weight to force this out of the wall” Arven grumbles setting the screw and a few others he collected up from the floor on to one of the tables. 

You move aside some of the curtains and spot mud on the carpet right beside the wall. “Well, what in the name of Arceus do we have here…footprints?”

Salvatore steps up beside you. “Was someone behind the curtain?”

You look at Arven then at Thyme, an idea brewing. “I think so…infact…the curtain falling potentially hid their escape”

Arven folds his arms across his chest. “Do we have cams in here?” he wonders aloud. 

Salvatore nods and points to the one above the door. You grin. “Let me find Penny”

“Tyme has a stalker?!” Penny gasps as you sit on her bed in her dorm room. 

“As far as I know there’s a teen boy who has been following Tyme around the school for the past year, he’s a big fan and interested in her, especially her time as a Gym Leader, I’m thinking he might have hidden himself in the staff room knowing he was out of class but hoping to catch Ms Tyme alone knowing she’d be out of class herself, he’s tried it once before…”

Penny turns to her computer and starts to bring up the school’s security cameras. 

She brings up the live view of the staff room and drags the footage back an hour. You watch as the door opens and the boy you had accused appears in the room, peers around before approaching the window. He stands around nervously for a long time before he hears voices because he dives behind the curtains. 

You watch as Tyme and Salvatore appear and settle down to coffee, chatting away. There’s another long period before another boy comes in, older this time, oh, the 3rd year prefect from Tyme’s homeroom. Darren she has said. 

He approaches Tyme and he joins her at the window to talk. The windows are open and you can’t make out whether the curtain moving is the boy or the breeze but just as Darren reaches out to touch Tyme on her arm, one of the curtains suddenly goes taunt and the whole railing comes crashing down. Tyme, Darren and Salvatore are all covered by the curtains meaning none of them see the younger boy flee the room. 

“You physic or something?” Penny laughs. 

“I think I watched too much scooby-doo as a kid” you retort and she punches you playfully in the arm just before you turn to leave. “Send me the screenshot will you?”

“Sure thing, good to have you home Champ”

You pause at the door curious. “Did you guys really think I wouldn’t come back?”

Penny shrugs. “I said you would, I think it was Clavell who said it, he and Geeta got into a bit of a gripe about the incident and you leaving when they found out you’d had to pull that kid free”

You huff. “Geeta asked me to protect Paldea, she has to know I got better things to do than sit around and be questioned, or smeared by the papers…”

Penny shrugs again. “Clavell blamed her for driving you away, saying the responsibility was too much”

Bullshit. You were going to have to have words with him. 

You hunt down Darren to let him know the results of the footage and he agrees to fetch the boy you had shown him the picture off. 

You’re sat in the staff room alone, the curtains were cleared up and you sat with an iced coffee from the mini fridge waiting for Darren and the culprit. 

Darren enters first with the boy behind him, the younger looking about excitedly, as you’d expect because you’d told Darren to tell him Ms Tyme had requested to talk to him in the staff room. 

When he see’s you, he goes white and turns 360 smacking straight into the doorframe with some serious force causing both you and Darren to curse. 

“Shit!” “Arceus!”

Darren picks him up and winces at the bleeding cut on the boy’s eyebrow. You shake your head in disbelief grabbing the tissue box from atop a nearby cabinet. 

“Well, I guess this is a fitting punishment for putting Tyme in the medical ward kid”

“How did you know it was me?!”

You laugh and point at the camera above the door. “I’m not physic, promise”

You sit at Nurse Miriam’s desk as you watch the kid getting patched up and apologise to Ms Tyme who just laughs off the incident. You wish you could laugh off last week. 

“Champ?”

You are so lost in thought after he’s left to his dorm that you don’t realise you're alone with Tyme. Looking up you see her sitting beside you at the other desk. 

“I’m glad to see your home and I know you don’t want a speech about what happened -” She starts and you bite back a retort about not wanting to hear it. 

“-But whatever it is that is bothering you. Forgive yourself. You did your best. Let it go. Everyone is fine and is fine because of you, you're a fighter, look at everything you’ve overcome and stop looking back at what could have been instead, don’t give up on your strength now just because people expect you to be superhuman”

Arven passes you the glass of cocktail from his right hand. “So shit just got a bit real huh?”

You laugh and glance about the busy Mesagosa square. It’s growing dark. 

“You could say that, my mind was racing after it all and I couldn’t stop thinking about Area Zero…”

Arven frowns at his beer. “Geeta gave us one hell of a title to live up to and you one hell of a job”

“I know but, we have each other, Clavell and Geeta will give us everything we need if we ask, the school now needs us to be health and safety officers because it’s just a nuthouse full of kids with no limits-” You smirk and he starts laughing. 

“Imagine, cracking the bitch you fancy on the head with a curtain rail, what sort of flirting is that?” he starts and you choke your drink before you spot someone coming out of the pharmacy to your left.

“Is that Clive?”

Arven turns to see what you're looking at and agrees. “Oh, yeah, the dir-sorry Clive…been a minute since he broke out the cover”

Clive spots you both and looks around rapidly before pocketing something and turning down another street. 

You both look at each other. Before you look back at the street he went down.

“That was weird…even for him”

Chapter Text

Incident 00107: Math Stinks

DATE : 04/07

NAME(S): ORTEGA + 8 STUDENTS

INCIDENT LOCATION: CLASS M3 - MATH 

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / CHAMPION (YOU) / MISS TYME + 1 other

TIME: 13:05 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO 

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: (YES / NO )

“CAN ALL ONSITE HEALTH AND SAFETY OFFICERS PLEASE REPORT TO MED BAY IMMEDIATELY”

You flinch as the speaker goes off in the breakroom and nearly fall from the chair you had almost fallen asleep on. 

Oh god, what now? 

After a long weekend of hunting you weren’t really in the mood for this, nor had you been in the mood for sitting through History class. Raifort had been empathic when you messaged to say you didn’t feel well enough to attend even though you had been on rota this week. She was aware Geeta had been pretty demanding this month and said for you to sit it out, you could catch up easily enough. 

You bump into Arven in the hall. “Oh, hey”

“What’s going on?” He asks, joining you in the direction of the Med Bay.

“No idea, the call woke me up, I was napping in the senior breakroom”

Arven frowns. “Didn’t you have History?”

“Raifort gave me a pass today”

As you get to the stairs you find Nurse Miriam and Mr Jacq, talking to Miss Tyme who is angrily ranting about…

“THOSE BLOODY TWINS AGAIN!”

You and Arven look at each other. 

There were only a few twins in the school at the moment and a pair of fourth-year boys, Harry and Jack were very well known for being, well, KNOWN. 

“What have they done now?” You ask tiredly as you ascend the stairs aside Arven. 

Miss Tyme turns to you and sighs, shaking her head in frustration. “Harry has been giving out laced sweets in my classroom”

You freeze. “LACED?...with what?”

Oh sweet goat gods that looks like they got stuck in a fence this was not the way you saw your day going. 

Arven groans. “Please don’t tell me they brought those stupid liquorice bears in that give kids the shits?”

Jacq winces and nods. You look at Arven confused.

“Do you remember the herbal shop in the city, you know the one where I got Nemona that pain balm, for her knee?” He explains. You nod. 

“Well they sell herbal remedies for all sorts of stuff, but one of their best-sellers are these herbal gummy sweets that parents use to get vitamins and stuff down their kids who don’t like veg you know, anyway, long story short, they have a liquorice gummy bear that works like a laxative when you eat more than two or three, there meant for weight loss or invalids”

You gulp. This sounded… disgusting. 

You look back at Nurse Miriam. “I have three boys in the med bay and five more in the bathroom all with explosive diarrhoea”

You shudder. You're getting Herb Mystic Posioning flashbacks. Oh no. 

Jacq looks back to the boy's bathroom door a few feet away down the hallway above you. “I’m just curious though…Harry is sixteen”

Miss Tyme cocks her head. “And?”

Arven blink and hums. “Good point Jacq, you have to be eighteen to go in that shop, they ID everyone”

Huh?

“That means someone gave Harry and Jack the sweets?” You add in and everyone turns back to look at you with varying expressions of agreement. 

“They must have fake ID” Ms Tyme huffs. Arven shakes his head. 

“How though? You can’t get a regular Megagoza Tram Pass without a guardian co-sign under twenty-one, and we use our school passes as ID everywhere, there laminated and given security markers, they couldn’t be easily faked and not easily changed”

“That can only mean someone gave them the sweets, someone who either wished them harm or was willing to find them a good prank” You're really curious now just how this was pulled off. 

Off the top of your head, Mela, came to mind, she enjoyed pranks, and she enjoyed chaos outright. She was old enough to go to the shop and buy the sweets. But the same could be said for a few students. 

You sigh and turn back to Arven. “You go with Nurse Miriam and try talking to the boys in the med bay, I’ll join Ms Tyme and try and work out where Harry and Jack might have been to get these sweets”

You glance about the now-empty math classroom. It smelt heavily of air freshener and floor cleaner. “Here is the class list”

Ms Tyme hands you the paper list of the students she had been teaching.

CLASS 4B

Susan J

Kevin H

Harry B

Jack B

The Twins….

Daniel F

Helen H

Jackie R

Helen J

Orthanel P

Yasmin T

Wait…

Orthanel…Ortega, had been in the class? 

Now that you think about it, all the team star members had been cast back a year by the Director to give them more time to catch up there grades. 

Ortega knew a lot of people, he still had grunts loyal to him even. He might know already or be able to give you a lead. 

“Ortega was here?” You ask but Tyme shakes her head. “He missed class, one of the students said he’d been ill this morning”

You hand back the paper. “I got a hunch to follow, it seems I might have found me…a lucky star”

You find Ortega in the Senior Breakroom sitting by the piano looking bored. 

“Champ?” He’s instantly curious when he sees you. 

“I hear your math class went badly, you wouldn’t know anything about that?” You chuckle leaning on the piano top. 

He laughs. “Never got there…why? It’s usually a shit show”

“Even more so today…so you don’t know anything about that?” You raise an eyebrow in wonder as he looks up shyly. 

“Not really…just heard now”

You tap the piano lid in warning and he grimaces. “Alright geeze, I didn’t know that they were laced sweets you know”

He huffs and folds his arms. “Mela and Erin dragged me into that stupid witch shop in town this morning because Erin needed some chalk or something and Mela came out with these weird sweets, I didn’t know what they were, she gave me some and they made me cough my guts up”

You frown. That wasn’t how those bears worked. “What colour were they?”

He thinks for a moment. “The first ones were like gummy balls, green coloured and covered in sugar, they were lime flavoured and I must have ate too many because they made me all dizzy and sick, the others she had bought were a black liquorice bear which she said tasted awful and gave them to me, I didn’t want them so I gave them to Harry at the break because he said Jack liked them”

“Just curious…you know what CBD is right?” You're going to have to call Penny after this. 

“Yeah, why?” he’s confused. 

“Those sweets she gave you were CBD gummies, you were high as fuck…”

Ortega looks scared for a minute before stumbling to his feet and knocking over the piano bench in panic. “I TOOK DRUGS!! OH FUCK MOM’S GOING TO KILL ME!”

“Chill Ortey, she doesn’t need to find out, arcues, You're just lucky you didn’t eat the black bears, they were herbal laxatives” You smirked when he went bright red.

“Oh jinx tits, for real?!”

You laugh. “Nurse Miriam has eight boys all needing fluids and meds from shitting their pants in Ms Tyme’s classroom”

He grimaces. “I didn’t need to know that”

“Right well, go to med bay and tell Miriam what happened just to make sure you're okay after that yeah? while I hunt down Penny, I think I’ll leave Mela’s punishment to her this time”

Ortega picks up the piano bench and glances back at you. “Ugh, remind me to never piss you off”

It takes Penny about fifteen minutes to join you in the hall of Med bay when she gets free from Jacq.

“What’s up?”

“Mela gave the laced sweets to Ortega who gave them to Harry”

She blinks, scoffs and sighs before smacking her forehead and cursing. “Why…Why did I not…I swear to Arceus…”

You laugh. “You got this or?”

Penny shakes her head and pats your arm. “Yeah, I-I’ll go find Mela and rip her a new one, again…I swear it’s like I’m their mom somedays”

“Oh and she gave another teen CBD gummies as well”

Penny blinks and then her eyes go wide. “IS THAT WHY ORTEY WAS SICK?”

You smirk and nod. Penny storms off down the hall without another word. 

You re-enter the main hall after your oral art exam with Hassel to find Nemona standing by Salvatore in the entranceway. The sound of crying catches your ears and you look to your right to find three students sat together at one end of the hall all in tears over something. 

When you reach Nemona and Salvatore you find…he’s crying as well, or more now just sniffling. 

What the hell?

Nemona turns to you looking lost. “Oh! Hey sorry…erm…I just-”

“What-what happened?”

You suddenly realise the atmosphere in the library is tense as hell, kids seem to have fled the room because there are books on the floor, desks with study stuff all over and no one sat there…the usual Pokemon that were always around were also missing…

“Clavell is having a bad day…” Nemona starts and you turn to her and raise an eyebrow. 

“Clavell…made Salvatore cry?” That’s not like him at all you think. 

Salvatore sniffles and shakes his head. “I-no, its not, I just shouldn’t have stepped on his shoes…I mean, he’s in charge-”

You look back at Nemona who huffs. “He came in here and shouted at a group of boys for mistreating a book, like, shouted, which as you know he had never done before and then when he heard them-” she points to the group that were sniffling over the other side. 

“-laughing about the boys getting told off he turned on them, Salavotre overheard and went to calm down the situation and Clavell then just turned on him cutting him up about poor attendance in his classes and how weak his last term report was before nearly knocking me and another kid over in the doorway before go back the way he came”

You try very hard not to curse in front of the much younger kids as you begin to roll up your shirt sleeves feeling pretty pissed off yourself now. 

“I don’t know what got into him all of a sudden he's been grumpy for weeks, avoiding meetings and running Jacq around like an errand boy” Nemona frowns at her shoes.

Oh boy.

“Well, we can’t have that can we…look I’ll go see Clavell, just erm, try and not get them-” you look at the kids. “-to rat him out to their parents huh?”

Nemona looks confused. “Okay…do you know something?”

You sigh as you start walking to the stairs. “I know something yeah, but I can’t go telling you yet because I’m not sure one hundred percent about the problem…I’ll catch you later”

Every thumping step you make up the stairs and down the hall towards the Director’s office feels like a nail in the man’s coffin. You were sick of the waiting, sick of the shrugging it off.

He was having a bad day huh?

Well, you're about to make it ten times worse. 

Chapter Text

Incident 00107: Blue Balls

DATE : 04/07

NAME(S): DIRECTOR CLAVELL

INCIDENT LOCATION: N/A (REFERRAL: HEAD OFFICE)

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / CHAMPION (YOU) / ARVEN TURO

TIME: 18:15 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO (DIRECTOR INVOLVED)

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: ( YES / NO)

You slam into the office and lock the door. It was late enough that everyone on the floor had left for the evening. 

Clavell looks up from his laptop and you watch his eyes go from curious to guilty in seconds. 

“You made three students cry”

He gulps.

“You made bloody Salvatore cry”

He fumbles for words.

“I just saw Ms Tyme and she was apparently seconds away from slapping the shit out of you in the staff room!”

He slumps in the seat a bit and looks at the desk silently. 

You sigh stepping up to the desk, dropping your bag on the floor beside it and lean on the polished mahogany. “Admit it, this is bothering you enough that you need to see Miriam”

Clavell jolts in the seat and then hisses. “Ah, no-I’-It’s fine-”

You huff and cross your arms. “I bet you can’t even stand up right now can you?”

He looks guilty and fumbles for words again, flustered under the pressure you are putting on him. “I can…it-it just takes a minute”

You huff. “Clive, I’m serious, three months this has been going on, getting worse every time after you get rid of it, and then it’s taking you longer to get rid of it, your now pissing off students and staff as well as upsetting them, your attitude is so out of line that I’m getting questioned like mad by Arven, who is insisting I tell him what the hell is going on because he is fully aware I’m the only one who is close enough to know”

Clavell sighs and nudges his glasses. “I’ve seen a doctor”

You blink. “And?”

“It’s hypertension…it’s not serious” He snaps before apologising. “Sorry”

You snort. “Not serious? Probably not if it’s only once in a year but it’s happening to you weekly because you can’t-”

“I know, thank you!...-” he glances at the door. “Keep your voice down will you”

You laugh and turn away wandering closer to one of the lab desks filled with books. “I doubt hyper whatever-tension is supposed to cause this much pain”

“It does if you're in my shoes” He grumbles. 

“Have you tried talking to Miriam for a second opinion?” You ask turning back to him. 

He frowns. “Not yet, I haven’t wanted to bother her with such a personal issue, she has enough to handle”

“Even so, you are still a member of staff and she’s already aware something is up with you after you kicked Arven’s bathroom door in”

“I was just having a bad day that day” he chuckled.

You pause to consider something. “Has it got worse because I’ve-We’ve not been, you know…”

After you’d been ill Clavell had given you space, then you’d been busy after the Rhydon incident and you’d not really spoken. 

He shakes his head. “I doubt it, I mean it was helping, but I don’t think it was stopping the problem”

“The problem being?” You question but he doesn’t answer you. 

“Let me get Miriam” you sigh in the end and he winces. 

“She can’t do anything” He huffs.

“You don’t know that!” You snap back and he growls.

“It’s not a big deal”

“It’s a big enough deal that you just showed yourself up in front of a room full of students who are likely to go ratting to their parents about getting abused by the Director of the school!”

Clavell slumps. 

“If Geeta finds out you just verbally abused a member of staff…”

“Fine! …” He relents. “Call her…”

It takes Miriam less than ten minutes to knock on the door and you unlock it letting her step through shutting it behind her.

She looks between you and Clavell before choosing you to explain. “He’s apparently got testicular hypertension”

“Ah, that explains a lot” she sighs folding her arms as Clavell starts blushing.

“How long has this been going on?” She asks staring him down.

“About…six months…”

Her eyes go wide. “What?! Clavell that’s serious”

“It kept going away and coming back…” he tries to calm her. “These past few weeks it was lasting longer before going off and this past fortnight it just won’t budge”

“He’s in enough pain that he can’t even…-” You hesitate to say something but he needed the motivation to keep talking. “-manually deal with it anymore”

Miriam sighs heavily and taps her foot. “You tried ice, hot baths…viagra?”

“Yes, yes and…yes…”

“Is that what you were buying when me and Arven saw you in town?” you ask curiously. 

He nods blushing. “Have you seen a doctor yet?” Miriam then asks. He nods again. 

“They just said to try Viagra and if it didn’t work go down to the hospital”

“Well, if the doctor gave you nothing for it, but that advice, I’ll give you two options”

He looks curious and you look at Miriam also curious.

“You can either pick A) the fun but painful option or B) the not so fun but more pleasurable option, A is that you come with me to the ward, I’ll jab a needle in your balls, try some cold therapy and see if you can free yourself up with some anti-inflammatories, or B) you can go home with Champ and I’ll phone you a friend to bring you a device and some handcuffs”

You blink. HANDCUFFS?

You are about to ask why handcuffs need to be involved and Clavell starts to stutter when the door opens and you all turn to see Arven slide into the room. “Why is Salvatore upset and why is Nemona crying?!” 

You and Miriam look at each other before answering him at the same time. “Lock the door”

Arven frowns but does as he’s told before moving to the desk and looking between everyone. 

You start explaining to Arven. “Clavell shouted at Salvatore…wait-Nemo wasn’t upset earlier?”

Miriam ignores your conversation to insist on Clavell making a decision. “If you want I can run you into A&E?”

“I don’t think this is worth six hours in the emergency clinic” He huffs. 

 Arven’s answer cuts through their conversation. “She was upset because Salvatore was bemoaning to Tyme about putting his notice in”

Clavell looks confused before leaning on his desk. “That’s my fault, oh god, how the hell am I going to fix this…”

Miriam sighs and looks at you. “What is the usual route when this happens?”

You cringe and glance at Arven. “Well, erm, a few things, I mean, we haven’t done, erm, we just assumed he was stressed out and that’s what his main problem was…”

Arven blinks and looks at Miriam. “What happens?”

Clavell blushes and looks away from all of you and Arven huffs. “Spit it out, you made me lock the door for some reason”

“Right confession time!” you hate doing this but Arven was locked in now. “The Director has been suffering from erectile problems for a few years-” Clavell looks at you absolutely mortified. 

Arven pulls a face. “I didn’t need to know that, Arceus, he was friends with my dad!”

You laugh. “The issue has gotten so bad, that he started being unable to actually, get, off….if you know what I mean, so in short terms, it’s built up to the point where he’s got hypertension or as you know it…” 

“Blue balls?!” Arven winces and looks very much like he’d rather have not been there to hear that. Before his face morphs into confusion then shock and then brotherly concern and folds his arms. “Wait…and you know this how? I mean, I know your close friends but-”

You wait a minute. Miriam giggles. Clavell braces himself on the desk. 

“YOU'RE FUCKING HIM?” Arven suddenly blurts out and you all laugh in embarrassment.

“No!” “No!”

You and Clavell answer at the same time. 

“Friends with benefits…Let's just sort him out first because he’s been avoiding getting help and right now he’s going to get fired for abusing his staff if we don’t fix it” You huff. 

Arven turns to Miriam. “So what can we do? I mean apart from pep talking Salvatore?”

Clavell looks guilty again. 

“We can try cold therapy to reduce swelling, I can give him some steroids and see how that goes, or he can go home with Champ and I’ll call my friend who works in the sexual health deparment in Cascafarra and get her to send in some equipment”

Arven flinches back pulling a face. “Why do I have the feeling I’d rather not know?”

Miriam laughs. “You probably don’t”

“Could we try a combination of the two ideas?” You ask and Clavell sighs.

“I’m sitting right here” He complains and you roll your eyes. 

“Shush”

He glares at you over his glasses but says nothing.  

“Like?” Miriam sounds intrigued.

“Give him the injection then I’ll take him home…”

Arven frowns. “And do what?…-” He pauses. “Have you told your mum yet?”

You look between Arven and Clavell.

“Please take him to med bay and jab him while I explain…” You wave an arm in Arven’s direction. Nurse Miriam rolls her eyes, amused, then grabs Clavell by the arm who looks terrified.

“Come on you, one phone call and I’ll have a steroid injection with your name on it”

“So you’ve not lost your innocence to a fifty-three-year-old rich bloke?” Arven smirks standing in the corridor of the dorms as you drag a bag out of your room and lock the door behind you.

“No! Gods…honestly it wasn’t much past oral really-”

Arven groans and rubs his eyes. “Shit me, that image isn’t going to leave my head any time soon”

You snort. “-it all started because I was getting frustrated with league stuff so he invited me to his flat-”

“Wait you’ve been to his place before?” Arven is very surprised.

“Yeah, well, once on official business, the second time was after the Hassel and Brassius incident, the third time, was when I was poisoned by that kid in your class-” 

Arven looks guilty. 

“Then I went over a couple of times, and well, I haven’t seen him since the Rhydon incident, I thought things were better for him but clearly he just didn’t want to seem like he was using me”

Arven huffs. “So are you, together or is this just like you said, friends with benefits?”

You shrug. “I was just helping at first”

Arven raises an eyebrow. “At first? He must know you're interested in him right? I mean, he can’t not think about you in some way to let you do stuff with him like that right I mean…I don’t feel like Clavell is-”

You shake your head. “I don’t know what this is, but honestly if we can get past this situation it will probably stop anyway, why would he want to continue fucking about with someone this much younger than him?”

Your phone buzzes. “Oh, I’ve got to collect a parcel from a ‘billy cab out front?”

Arven follows you out to the courtyard and drags the cardboard box out of the back seat of the waiting cab for you. 

“I don’t want to open this do I?”

You shake your head. “Let's just go put it in his flat, I think Miriam has convinced him to see a third person so were not needed…right now anyway”

Arven tosses his book on the desk and sighs just as his phone buzzes.

[TEXT] CHAMP: Think he’s fixed. You should see the mess. LOL

[TEXT] ARVEN: EW AND I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU WEREN’T NEEDED?

[TEXT] CHAMP: Sorry - turned out a nurse with eight years in sex therapy couldn’t figure out how to handle him properly.

[TEXT] ARVEN: I don’t know whether to be concerned that you do know…

[TEXT] CHAMP: He is going to be in a mad af good mood tomorrow. He’s already in one now.

[TEXT] ARVEN: I think I would be if I was getting my balls drained like Miriam was fucking saying!!

[TEXT]: CHAMP: Should have heard him screaming, wasn't much fun til the end…

[TEXT]: ARVEN: FUCKING HELL I NEED BRAIN BLEACH

[TEXT] CHAMP: He says did you get Salvatore to not sue him?

[TEXT] ARVEN: Yes but on the condition he gets an explanation why he flew off the handle at the kids. 

[TEXT} CHAMP: You have his permission to tell him.

[TEXT] AREVN: No tell him to grow a new pair and tell Salvatore himself, I’m not going about the school telling people the Director was in a bad mood because he couldn’t have fucking orgasm!

[TEXT]: CHAMP: It's so funny that you know about this now

[TEXT]: ARVEN: How is it funny?? It’s creeping me out.

[TEXT]: CHAMP: Do you not know what blackmail is?

[TEXT]: ARVEN: Well duh.

[TEXT]: ARVEN: Oh…okay, useful. 

[TEXT]: CHAMP: Just keep making hints and he’ll pay you in anything to keep your mouth shut, trust me. 

Chapter Text

Incident 00111: Why RedBull Got Banned From Campus

DATE : 08/07

NAME(S): Nemona Glitterati

INCIDENT LOCATION: FRONT COURTYARD

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / CHAMPION (YOU) / DIRECTOR CLAVELL

TIME: 10:12 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: (YES / NO )

It’s sadly no ordinary Monday. 

Any ordinary Monday wouldn’t have all the faculty out in the front yard.

Any ordinary Monday wouldn’t have students taking photos and making Tik Toks.

Any ordinary Monday wouldn’t have a fire crew trying to rescue Nemona from the roof of the school.

Any ordinary Monday wouldn’t have your Charizard passed out on the grass and nor would there be a huge scorch mark up the front of the building because Nemona thought it would be a good idea to drink a four-pack of Red Bull and then fly your Charizard around the campus before crashing. You need booze. You need something. 

You take several rapid deep breaths of oxygen from the mask in the back of the ambulance. 

You're not hurt, the kid in front of you is traumatized though after nearly being burnt and flattened by your Charizard falling out of the sky. You’d swiped the mask off him after Arven had informed you of the damage Nemona had caused with your Pokemon. 

Giving back the mask you step out of the ambulance just in time to see a ‘billy cab arrive and The Director turning up for his first day back since the blue balls incident. 

He’s rocking a black leather jacket and shades, carrying coffee like he’s 30 again. You snort.

Ms Tyme doesn’t look impressed at how late he is. 

“Hey, Champ!” 

He’s in a good mood you note. It won’t last long though. 

“Nemona is on the roof” You sigh, glaring up at the older student who is being helped down. 

Clavell glances about confused before lifting his shades to look up to where you point. “Erm…”

He glances about the school. Notes the scorch mark. “Care to tell me why there is a burn on the front of the school…and why your Charizard is passed out on the front lawn at only 10 am?”

You look at him, he simply looks at you. 

“Redbull”

“Ah”

Arven reappears looking sheepish. “Bad news, the fire guys have said there’s some serious structural damage done from the way Charizard smacked into the windows, some of the classrooms will have to be cleared for safety”

You breathe deeply.

Clavell looks at you concerned. “Are you okay?”

You shake your head. You're mad. Your so just fucking done with these last few months.  You pull out Charizard’s Pokeball and Arven goes to collect the injured fire type. 

“Sounds like you need a holiday Champ” Clavell offers setting his shade back on his face and sighing. “

“I need something” you growl and he goes to say something, reconsiders then looks around. 

He holds out his briefcase and you frown at it confused. “Take this to the office for me, I’ll meet you there in a second”

“Thank goodness her parents are rich” He mutters as he wanders away to talk to the now safe-on-the-ground student council leader.

You're waiting in his office for well over an hour. You spend the time by putting Charizard through several different healing cycles on the energy machine in there. 

You’d just put him back in your bag when Clavell returned with Arven.

“So how do we police this?”Arven asks as Clavell drops into his chair and sighs. 

You blink confused. “He’s banning Red Bull off campus”

“Good, if Nemona's parents have to pay anything else out there going to start demanding shares in the school” You grumble. 

“The vending machines are being dealt with, Mr Sangaro is removing any stock from the school kitchens and shops, and the local shops will be informed of keeping the drink regulated and told they are not to sell it to Miss Nemona whatsoever, it’s her responsibly to NOT buy it whilst she’s out of Megagoza” Clavell explains. 

“What’s the damage?” You ask tiredly and Clavell gives you a worried look. 

“$370,000”

Arven’s eyes go wide. You snort and reach into your bag for your cardholders. Clavell looks confused. “Forget her parents, I’ll pay for it, it was my Charizard that caused most of the mess, I should have known better than to think she would be fine taking a flying Pokemon when high on caffeine”

Clavell goes to argue but when you push the credit card in his hand he simply shrugs and tells you he’ll transfer the funds once he gets the receipts. You’d earnt over $150k last month from Pokemon Reseach in Area Zero, it wouldn’t take much to claw back. 

Arven excuses himself with some off-handed joke and you're left with Clavell. You nudge your bag with your boot in annoyance. “She owes me”

Clavell hums in agreement. “I think perhaps, that as much as you are going to pay for this that she at least pays for something else”

You glance over to him and he smirks. “Fancy a week in the exclusive Monteverra hot springs with me?”

Clavell in swimwear?

Clavell potentially skinny dipping?

You WITH Clavell. Alone?

Those hot springs were expensive, of course not $370,000 but…the things you could get out of this…

“Deal”

Chapter Text

Incident 00121: Cake-Shaped Soap Is Also Banned

DATE : 18/07

NAME(S): Arven Turo/Blastoise

INCIDENT LOCATION: Senior Dorms

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / CHAMPION (YOU) / CHAMP NEMONA

TIME: 14:37 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: YES / NO

You’d not seen such chaos since the Rhydon incident. 

Even Charizard scorching the front of the school hadn’t been this bad. 

You wince at the sensation of soap suds soaking into your trainers and look about the smothered hallway. The place was so full of foam that you could barely see the way to Arven’s dorm room. 

The hot springs had been brilliant. Nemona hadn’t even hesitated to pay up when the Director made the suggestion, she still hadn’t stopped apologising. 

Having returned, you thought it to be a nice idea to gift your best friends some of the handmade boxes of soap from the spa. You gave the flower set to Nemona and a set that looked like cakes to Arven.

What a bad idea that had been. 

“Good Gods…”

You turn at the sound of Nurse Miriam who appears amongst the suds with a medical kit, horrified. 

“How much did he eat?” She exclaims following you slowly through the obscene soapy wreckage of the hallway. 

“The whole box”

Never mix a Blastoise and soap. EVER.

You both find Arven’s room door open, the older boy is busy throwing buckets of soapy water out of his window as Blastoise lays passed out in the middle of the room. 

“Arven?”

“Finally! I thought I was going to drown in here”

The hallway was flooded up to your ankles, you wonder just how much water had built up in Arven’s room before he got the door open. 

Thankfully this had been the first floor, you dread to think about how much water damage would have been caused if it had been the fourth. The ground-level floor was just lockers and bike storage, the main door had been open the whole time so a lot of the water had just flooded out into the courtyard, alerting everyone. 

“What happened?” Nurse Miriam leans down to attend to Blastoise. 

“He ate that whole box of cake-shaped soap you brought back, I’d left it on the counter in the kitchenette and he must have seen it, when I got back from class, he was spewing soap everywhere and crying, before I knew it he just sort of exploded soapy water everywhere and passed out”

Ew. 

Well, at least nice-smelling soapy water was better than vomit. 

“Is Donatello okay?” you ask smirking at the name Arven had given the water type. He’d won the Pokemon in a battle against a kid from Blueberry Academy a few months ago. 

Nurse Miriam grunts as she helps the giant turtle-like Pokemon sit back up and gives it a second revive sachet. “I believe so, he’s just going to feel a bit sore for a few days”

“Buenos Dioses, justo lo que pasó aquí??”

You laugh and turn to see Nemona stomping through the soap bubbles. “Did you blow up a washing machine or something?”

“Blastoise ate the soap I brought Arven” you admit and she bursts into hysterics. 

Arven tosses another bucket of soapy water out of the window. 

“Mantaince is going to have a field day with this one” He sighs. 

“So is Director Clavell…I was with him when you texted me, and halfway down the hall when we both heard the explosion, I don’t think I've heard him swear that badly since…” you pause and glance between them feeling awkward. “I was at…his flat”

Arven shudders. 

Nemona looks confused. She still didn’t know. 

Nurse Miriam giggles. 

Blastoise groans and hiccups a bubble. 

“Well, erm, I’ll go fetch some mops and paper towels I guess” Nemona adds turning for the door again trying to dodge the worst patches of soap that still lingered. 

Arven shovels another bucket of soapy water out of the window. 

Nurse Miriam asks for the Pokemon’s ball. Arven recalls Blastoise and hands him over. “I’ll take him down to the lab for a run by Jacq” She sloshes out of the room quickly.

You say nothing and just admire the mess. 

Arven shrugs and gestures about. “Not gonna help?”

You laugh. “I might, I’m just enjoying the fact that my life can’t be quiet for two minutes with having friends who don’t listen to me about NOT leaving cake-shaped soap where stupid people or Pokemon can find it”

Arven gives you a middle finger. You laugh again. “Your own fault”

“I know, I know!”

Turning, you look down the hall and see Nemona digging in a closet for cleaning gear. 

“Have a nice break?” Arven eventually asks tossing more water out the window. 

“It was great, you don’t realise how much you need time to yourself until you actually get it” You admit. 

Arven nods and smirks. “So, is it official yet?”

You glance over confused for a moment, and then it clicks. “...No…we didn’t do anything”

Arven snorts. “Course you didn’t”

You scoff and he laughs. “Seriously, a guy doesn’t take you to a five-star spa resort for a whole eight days and not get something out of it, I know he had more motive than just a holiday Champ”

You blush. “He didn’t it was just…a break”

Nemona returns with two mops, another bucket and a packet of sponges. “Well, break or not, I doubt you expected to come back to this” She laughs. 

You shake your head and take a mop. “Actually, I fully expected chaos when I got back”

They both look at you confused. 

“I’m friends with you guys, life isn’t normal if something isn’t going to hell”

Chapter Text

Arven shakes his head at you in mock distaste.

“What? It’s a job, he asked me to help him and so here I am helping him”

Arven shakes his head again. “Stop doing that, that’s all this is!”

He sighs dramatically and you scoff at him turning back to the computer on Clavell’s desk. “Look are you here for something important or just to piss me off?”

Arven goes to answer your question when Nemona crashes in through the door almost pulling it from the hinges. “Whoops… haha I gotta learn not all the doors are as heavy as the dorms…erm, right, emergency in the labs, Hassel got caught again!”

Arven rolls his eyes. “Nope, I’m not getting involved, not in that, I’m already in this-” he jabs a thumb at you. “-I don’t need to be involved with that as well”

Nemona cocks her head confused and you dive up to try and smack Arven for that comment but the desk is in the way, he laughs at you. 

“What now?” You ask reaching down for your bag. “Not more paintbrushes?”

Arven grimaces.

“Nope, worse, they tried to bang in the lab where we caught Jacq with Raifort-” 

Arven gags. 

“For some reason, they thought it would be a good idea to use Jacq’s vacuum cleaner and-”

You throw up your hands to stop her. “I've heard enough, let's go”

“Thank god Clavell is off-site” Arven mutters as you leave him to lounge on the sofa in the office alone. 

“I can’t go” Nemona adds just as you get to the door. “Nurse Miriam has requested you and  Arven, I have to go meet Geeta and Clavell in twenty minutes at the League”

Arven groans. “WHY ME?”

You turn and grab him by the arm. “Because you're part of the senior health and safety team, that's fucking why, now move!”

He complains the whole way there. You point out he’s getting paid compensation and if he quits he’s going to lose the money he’s using to fund his education because now you’re all aware that Turo is dead and his dad sent all his money in a will to the League (bastard), Arven is having to actually work rather than run about camping. 

He got possession of the lighthouse lab and had sold a lot of the stuff off to pay back the lengthy bill his father hadn’t contributed to for over three years, Clavell had even written a good part of the debt off after Area Zero, so now he was all square and just trying to keep it that way. 

The scene that greets you in the labs is one someone might consider to be part of a very shit medical drama. 

Jacq is sitting leaning on a console looking pretty pissed off, Nurse Miriam is setting up some large screens to cover the situation, her assistant is digging through a rather impressive kit of medical equipment and there’s a paramedic from Artazon’s minor injury unit looking very befuddled.

You recall him from when you went to get some ice packs for a sprained ankle. 

“Dave?”

The Paramedic turns and smiles at you. “Hey Champ, long time no see”

“What’s happened now?” You dare to ask as Arven wanders over to Jacq to hear his side of the story. 

“Well, in short, Hassle is stuck inside Brassius and Brasius is stuck inside the vacuum cleaner”

You have to clap a hand over your mouth to not burst out laughing. Things just went bad for these two. 

“Dare I ask how?”

Dave sighs. “Well, Hassel is currently wearing some fancy cockring which lodged itself inside Brassius when they fell off the counter…” You glance to where he’s pointing, a spot just beside you on the desks. Oh god.

You can’t even imagine what position they were trying at that moment. 

“Brassius on the other hand, his penis has sw-” You wave a hand to cut him off. 

“Thanks, but I think that's enough detail I get the gist”

Dave laughs as Arven rejoins you.

“So Brassius got his dick trapped in the fucking vac and Hassel got his dick trapped in his fucking boyfriend, after trying to pull off fancy sex positions on Jacq’s equipment??” Arven sighs looking at you and you nod blushing. 

Nurse Miriam calls Dave away from you to help with something. 

“Is everyone in this school fucking each other and I’m just not involved?” Arven looks at you disgruntled.

You snort and try not to start laughing. “No!, you just have unfortunate timing, it's not my fault you crashed in the office when Clavell needed help”

Arven scoffs. “If I hadn’t I wouldn’t be here trying to defend your innocence”

That makes you laugh and earn a glare from Jacq. “My innocence is perfectly intact, thanks, I don’t need a bodyguard”

“No, but you need a big brother to stop you rolling over for a rich bloke because he took you to dinner once” Arven adds in with a smirk and you swipe at him. 

“Dinner…! Arven! I-”

“OW FUCK NO I DON’T THINK ITS COMING OUT LIKE THAT WOMAN!”

You both look at the screen at the sound of Brassius swearing. 

“Do we really need to be here?!” Arven asks blushing now and you agree, this was awkward as hell. 

You are about to suggest going outside the room to wait when your rotom starts ringing. 

“Oh, look it’s your boyfriend” Arven cuts in sarcastically just as Director Clavell appears on the screen. 

The Director splutters and the phone swings to view Arven. “I beg your pardon!?”

Arven looks innocent and smiles. “Hi, Director Clavell”

You turn the hovering phone back towards you. “You see the notification?”

He nods. “Yes, but only after Nemona roughly informed me, what have they done now?”

You try and explain in the least explicit terms possible which doesn’t help with the way Hassel and Brassisus are now cursing together as Nurse Miriam attempts to unstick them.

Arven cringes and whimpers behind you as the most god-awful slick and squealing noise echoes in the room before ending with a pop. 

“THANK ARCEUS” Brassius sounds pleased. 

“CAN WE PLEASE LEAVE?!” Arven almost barks at the phone going beet red. Clavell nearly spits coffee everywhere at the way Arven hides behind you like his own innocence was in danger. 

“Lighten up Arven, isn’t it all the fad these days to be down with the gays?” Clavell adds in with such polite and clearly unknowing air that you both look at him in disbelief.

“I don’t think you’ve understood that term correctly” You add in and Clavell looks concerned. 

“Being down with the gays doesn’t mean watching one of them get their dick pulled out of a vacuum cleaner!” Arven practically squawks and you can’t help but nearly double over in hysterics at how seriously awkward the room just got. 

When you get your breath back you snatch the phone away from Arven. “Look, I’ll explain that to you later, just-I think Brassius is good now but yeah we’re going to leave, when are you back, I’ll come see you?” 

Arven is already marching for the door.

“About two hours, I’ll book us a table for dinner if you like?” Clavell smiles.

Before you can respond Arven cuts you off. “HAVE THEM BACK BY 10 OR I’M TELLING YOUR MOM YOU GAVE YOUR VIRGINITY TO DIRECTOR CLAVELL”

Nurse Miriam pops out from behind the screen gobsmacked, Jacq turns so fast he nearly falls off the chair he’d sat down in and Clavell’s laughing echoes after you when you charge towards Arven into the hallway chasing him. 

The last thing you hear is Hassel misunderstanding Arven’s outburst. 

“Director Clavell is a virgin??!”

Chapter Text

Incident 00139: Morning Sickness

DATE : 04/08

NAME(S): CHAMPION (YOU)

INCIDENT LOCATION: Senior Dormitories

ATTENDING FACULTY: NURSE MIRIAM / ARVEN TURO / PENNY PEONY

TIME: 7:37 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: ( YES / NO)

You feel like hell. 

You wish you hadn’t gone out to that food festival with Nemona three days ago, you’d been coughing up each morning since. 

When Arven barges into your room at half seven on Tuesday morning, so you can head down to the canteen for breakfast before you head over to help him supervise Home Ec, he finds you on the floor in the bathroom looking like you’ve just gone another round with the Herb Mystica. 

“It’s just food poisoning” You groan.

“But you ate dinner with me last night?” He mentions.

True. You had been feeling awful all day but you hadn’t thrown up. 

“Were you sick on Sunday?” he enquires curiously when he recalls you’d said you’d been at Clavell’s. You go to his place most Sundays. 

“Um, no, just yesterday morning and this morning…why?”

He blankly stares at you. You don’t understand. 

“So you have been fucking him”

You blink then gawp then splutter then curse. “Arven what the-NO!”

From the way he folds his arms across his chest and smirks you're certain he doesn’t believe you. “You’ve been at his place this Sunday and you were there the last two sunday correct?”

You nod. Where was this going?

“He’s knocked you up, this isn’t food poisoning, you’ve got morning sickness, you're sick on a morning, your duffed”

You're not certain where you get the energy from to jump up and punch him but you do.

“OW! What was this for!”

“I’M NOT PREGNANT!”

You weren’t panicking. Nope. Not at all. 

You're about to punch him once more for good measure at accusing your boyfriend of doing such an irresponsible thing when you go violently dizzy and turn back nearly crumpling to the floor to throw up in the toilet again. 

Arven rubs at his jaw and sighs, reaching for his phone. 

“I’ll call Nurse Miriam, she’ll know what to do”

“Temperature is 38.2c, so you have a mild fever, nausea, morning sickness, you have stomach ache and lower back ache, dizzy spells, headaches, cloudy urine, the need to go to the toilet to pee a lot, your overall achy and tired, your complaining of a dry mouth, a craving for salt and you can’t smell coffee without feeling ill, your only comfortable laying down in one position, you feel bloated but your not gassy….anything else?” Nurse Miriam looks up from her notepad as you sit beside her desk. 

You sigh and look at your trainers. “I don’t think so…”

She taps her pen on the pad and tuts. “I hate to say it, but Arven could be right…”

You whimper. 

“Okay, so awkward question, since he’s here in the room…” she glances over to Arven who is leaning against the wall of her private office. "But when was the last time you had sex with Director Clavell?”

You look up at Arven and he raises an eyebrow. You gulp. “Last weekend”

Both eyebrows go up. Nurse Miriam waits. “And the weekend before…”

Both eyebrows go down and Arven rolls his eyes. 

“How many times this month?” She asks. You wince and count mentally. “Four…times I think”

“Did he use..-”

You cut her off. “Yes he did, we’re not stupid!!”

“They can break…” She chuckles. 

“I know, I know but we’re pretty certain nothing got…in there” You felt so hot right now that you didn’t know if you were blushing from embarrassment or the fever. 

Nurse Miriam takes a small blood sample, urine sample, and hair sample and then offers you a wrapped pregnancy test. 

Arven is looking worried now. 

“It’s just in case, I’ll send this to the labs, we should hear back in about three days, if you are still throwing up by Friday morning I want you to do that test and report back to me, if it’s positive, we’ll schedule a meeting with the Director and with a mid-wife”

You're terrified. 

“Bud?”

You're standing in the hall outside the medical ward feeling lost. You can’t be pregnant. 

You look at Arven. He looks sad. 

He pulls you in for a hug and you bury yourself in his jacket. “It’s alright bud, I promise, I’m here, It’s gonna be okay”

The next three days feel like torture. You are still ill on Wednesday and Thursday morning, but also on Thursday night. Friday morning you managed to not be ill but you couldn’t stomach the idea of food. You're still so dizzy and the headaches seem to throb at the back of your skull like a hangover. 

It doesn’t matter how much water you drink or don’t drink you still have to pee every couple of hours and it’s starting to hurt. 

You text Miriam. She adds it to the list of symptoms. 

The test stays on your bathroom sink until Penny and Arven turn up on Friday lunchtime and convince you to do it. 

You dump the plastic tab on the counter after you're done and sit on the sofa. “I can’t look”

Penny leans over the test and frowns. Arven shrugs. “How do we read it?”

“There’s a line on the right for positive, one line on the left is negative and no lines mean we-you did it wrong or its nerfed” she explains. 

“I can’t believe Nemona is out on League work, she should be here” Arven huffs. “She about to be a freaking god-parent!”

You gawf. “Who said I’m picking you guys to be godparents, you can barely look after yourselves”

They both start laughing and it at least lightens the mood. 

Penny nudges the test after five more minutes. “Well, I’m seeing one…”

Arven leans over to see it and frowns. “But is that a line?” He points to the left-hand side. It’s faint. 

Penny frowns and shakes her head. “I don’t think so? I swear the lines meant to be on this side…but…it could be a false negative”

“The big line is on the right…” Arven gulps. Penny looks over at you and you sigh heavily. 

Penny calls Miriam. 

You all head up and sit waiting in the Director’s office. 

Clavell is happy to see you at first but his mood changes when he sees all three of you looking rather forlorn and worried. 

“What’s happened?” He stops working and sits back in his office chair.

Arven glares at him and then sighs. “Nurse Miriam is on her way”

You say nothing. You can’t. You're still in denial. 

Both of your friends attempt to comfort you but they know until Miriam has the lab results you're not going to feel much better. Penny turns to the Director when he approaches across the room holding the pen he’d been writing with.

“Champ’s had morning sickness for the past week”

Clavell drops the pen in shock just as Nurse Miriam walks into the room shutting the door behind her and carrying a sheet of paper. 

She looks serious. 

She looks at Arven, then you, then Clavell, to Penny then you again.

“What did the test say?”

You look at Arven, you're choked up. 

Arven sighs and looks at Clavell. “Positive”

“WHAT?!” The Director has to lean on the desk beside you all for a moment. “Tha-That’s impossible!”

Nurse Miriam remains serious for about another minute before she smirks. “I know, because I’ve seen your sperm count and unless you’ve directly done manual IVF in the bedroom, there’s no way Champ’s pregnant, your lab results are back, you have a UTI, it can cause a false positive, your fine, you just need antibiotics”

Arven and Penny both nearly collapse in relief before you catch on to Arven laughing. 

You're gobsmacked. Your jaws hanging off your face and Clavell shakes his head in disbelief and what you assume to be annoyance. 

“What…the…fuck?”

“Your results came back yesterday, I’ve already requested the medication, Arven just wanted me to get you to admit to having done the deed with mister here-” she points at Director Clavell who glares sharply at the sniggering Arven. “I kinda also wanted you to admit it as well because he wasn’t saying anything either”

“In fact, I knew you couldn’t be knocked up from the second you walked into my office and Arven told me, because I’m the one who buys the condoms for this school and I know the Director uses them, those bastards are as secure as Area Zero and there coated with a spermicide so yeah, no god-kids Arven, sorry”

The older boy curses. “Damn it! I was looking forward to having an excuse to eat ice cream for breakfast”

Clavell snorts. “Arven I hate to break it to you, but you’re an adult, you can eat ice cream whenever you want it’s not punishable by law”

Arven blinks at him genuinely surprised. “Really?”

Penny punches him in the arm. “You're a dick, that wasn’t funny”

Arven winces. “HEy! Look I didn’t do anything I just played along, they could have been pregnant!”

Nurse Miriam laughs as you barge past to reach Clavell for a hug. He almost smothers you to his chest while he glares at the other three. 

“He’s right, most of the symptoms are the same for pregnancy, Champ was almost Pregnant” 

“That is not an accolade I ever wanted to receive” You grumble into Clavell’s shirt and he chuckles. 

“Nemona is going to break both your legs when I tell her” You mutter.

Arven winces. “She’ll break both of his when she finds out you’ve been doing the deed in the dark with the Director”

You look at Arven worriedly before settling to bargain.

“I’ll give all of you 100k to never mention this again, ever, to anyone for the rest of your lives and god forbid I have the right to kill you with my bare hands if this gets to my mother…”

You're not surprised when they all speak in unison.

“Deal” “Deal” “Deal” “Deal” 

Chapter Text

Incident 00141: Possessed Pt.2

DATE : 09/08

NAME(S): Nemona Glitterarti

INCIDENT LOCATION: Alfornada Tower

ATTENDING FACULTY: ARVEN TURO / MISS DENDRA / S. RAITFORT

TIME: 13:09 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: YES / NO

“She’s in hospital because of a dumb-ass sandcastle?!”

Clavell nods and sighs. Unfortunately, you were too ill to attend classes right now and had moved into Director Clavell’s flat to recover. You’d been sitting with him in his office for most of the morning helping sort out some paperwork for the month when he’d received a phone call from Nurse Miriam. 

She had sent Arven out to Alfornada, to collect Nemona because she had suffered an injury whilst out on her annual gym leader test run. You did it last year. 

“The police are escorting Miss Raifort back here and Miss Dendra is also being sent to Levencia General Hospital as we speak”

You blink and almost drop the folder you were holding. “Den-how is she involved?”

Clavell sighs again, it’s filled with an air of exhaustion. When Raifort was involved it couldn’t be good. 

“Perhaps I should let her explain when she’s available, I don’t think I could tell you without wanting to flip this desk over”

You snort. You’d love to see him try, the bloody thing was made of solid mahogany and it weighed a ton. 

He stands, reaches for his jacket and goes to the door. “Stay here, I’ll be back in a bit”

Nemona seemed very confused when Arven eventually returned with her. She was laid on the bed in the ward with her right arm bandaged and in a sling.

Nurse Miriam ran a light over her eyes. She barely responded.

“Give me one good reason…not to have you banished from this school” Clavell mutters angrily as he turns to look at Raifort who is sitting across the room, looking very guilty next to the police officer who escorted her back. 

She says nothing. 

Clavell looks back at Nurse Miriam. “Well?”

Nurse Miriam clicks her tongue. “Well,…apart from a badly broken arm, dislocated shoulder and some bruised ribs it seems she got off lightly, I’m not certain whether she’s concussed or it’s an after-effect of being possessed by the Palossand, hopefully, she’ll come around soon enough for me to check again”

Clavell hums with an air of annoyance and turns back to Raifort and the Police officer. “Care to explain what happened in better detail?”

“It was an experiment, Palossand is known for having the ability to possess a human or another Pokemon just by being near it. I’d already spoken to Nemona regarding my theory when she found me in Alfornada talking to Dendra about testing it on a Pokemon” Raifort sighs but refuses to look at Clavell.

“We attempted to try it out on Dendra’s Medicham but Palossand didn’t seem interested in the Pokemon no matter what we did. When it heard Nemona fighting Tulip up on the tower court it decieded to head up there, you see, it has a love for power, and the way it helps to hold its physical shape is by gathering a type of energy that is forming from a dark aura, it’s fond of possessing dark Pokemon or even other ghost types, it sensed Nemona’s Mighthyena up there and ran off”

Clavell looked confused. “A Pokemon, ran away?”

Raifort gulped. “I borrowed it from Salvatore, I didn’t raise it, so it didn’t feel the need to obey me like it might have done”

“When I got up there, I found it had scattered itself across the courtyard to absorb as much of the dark aura that it could and in the process, it possessed Nemona, when I yelled at it to stop, it panicked and tried to run but ended up pulling itself further into Nemona and making her jump off the tower court only to land on Dendra in the courtyard below”

Arven looks horrified. 

Nurse Miriam shivers. 

“Dendra’s condition?” Clavell looks at the police officer. 

“Stable but unconscious, potential broken ribs and a head injury but that’s all we heard”

Clavell gulps. “Did you collect the Pokemon?”

The officer holds out the Pokeball, which Clavell retrieves. “I’ll return this to its owner then, what charges are we looking it?”

The officer sighs and shrugs. “Unfortunately or well, fortunately for Miss Raifort here, the incident was the Pokemon’s fault but she was in possession of a ghost-type that is on her banned list”

“I didn’t even know it was on there, apart from Banette and Polteageist as well as Dusknoir”

“And a Zoroak with the moves Hex and Shadow Sneak” Clavell adds gruffly. “Does this require a court hearing?”

The Police Officer shrugs once again. “The fine for owning a banned Pokemon is $60,000 dollars, she’ll be charged when the paperwork is filed but unless the parents press charges or even Miss Dendra press charges she’s likely been able to avoid a cell…again”

Clavell snorts. “Well isn't that lucky”

Raifort looks to Nemona on the bed. “The effects usually wear off after twelve hours, the ghost type didn’t hang around long enough to cause any permanent damage so she should be fine save for some minor memory loss”

“THAT WAS SO COOL!”

You sigh and stab another chip on your plate as Nemona sits opposite you the next day in the canteen. 

“I was like, it was like all black and everything was shiny and…and I was so pumped like I didn’t even need to breathe and-”

“You need to breathe now” You snort as she nearly knocks her own can of drink over from the way her left arm is waving about. 

Nemona laughs. “But it was just so cool! I mean…sure…” she looks at her arm. “-this hurts and I’m mad I can’t battle for a month because I fell like thirty feet or something-”

“Sixty-seven feet Nemona, you fell sixty-seven feet and landed on Dendra” You wince. 

“Oh, wow, was it that high? Shit…is she okay by the way no-one said anything?” She looks a bit guilty and toys with the fork in her noodles.

You shrug. “I think so, I think you survived that fall because you landed on her, but apart from a bad concussion and a couple of busted ribs I think she’s okay too, neither of you is angry enough to press charges so Raifort isn’t going to prison either”

“Shame, I feel as if a trip to an 8 by 8 cell might just get rid her of these mad needs for experiments” Clavell huffs from behind you whilst holding a takeaway cup of coffee. 

“Oh hey, Cliv-Di-Director” You stumble over your words and he smirks. 

“I’ve come to check on my school Champions who are currently both indisposed…” 

You wince and Nemona laughs looking at her sling again. “Yeah well, I’m alive and in one piece, it’s enough, got to expect some injury payments for doing the job huh?”

Clavell sighs fondly then nudges his glasses as he looks down to you. “How are you fairing, you seem to be hungry?”

You stab another chip and snort. “Yup, appetites back, antibiotics must be kicking in because it’s the first full day I’ve not felt sick or had to pee a hundred times…”

He chuckles and sits down beside you with his drink. You lean into his shoulder making him smile. Nemona smirks at you. “I can’t believe you were almost pregnant, what a wild week”

You both blink at her. “Who told you?” You growl.

She smirks. “Arven…he was being vague about what I’d missed while I was away and when I threatened to set my Nuzleaf on his bollocks he told me...sorry I wasn’t here to save you from three days of panic, I’d have never let that happen”

Clavell huffs. “I wish Nurse Miriam had told me you were ill before you all ended up in my office, I’d have told you straight that it was impossible, but it seemed people were rather invested in finally knowing the truth about us”

You shrug and look back at Nemona. “You're not mad?”

Nemona cocks head. “Why would I be mad? You told me in the hospital you were together remember?”

You can’t remember. 

“When I fell down the stairs?” Clavell adds helpfully.

“Oh!...wait but, that was…Clive...it was…” you try and backtrack.

Nemona snorts and points her fork at you. “You don’t snog a guy like you did him outside of Barato’s at nine at night to NOT be dating him!”

You blush, oh god yeah that happened. 

“I mean sure, it’s weird, I never considered you’d be a thing but whatever floats you know, I like getting possessed, you like Director Clavell”

Clavell pulls a face of mild disgust as she laughs. 

“Come on though, it was so cool!” Nemona is still hyped and you can’t help but laugh at the Director’s confusion. 

What a week indeed. 

Chapter Text

Incident 00155: Little Blue Nightmare

DATE : 21/08

NAME(S): 308 Students

INCIDENT LOCATION: Uva Academy 

ATTENDING FACULTY: Champion (You) / Nurse Miriam / + 3 Others

TIME: 11:44 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: YES / NO

When the Director phoned you in a slight panic saying he thought he’d dropped something on campus somewhere you initially weren’t overall concerned. 

But when you arrive in his office and he embarrassingly informs you that it just happened to be a brand new packet of Viagra that he’s misplaced, you're stunned and slightly frightened. 

“Sir-I-do you have any idea how badly this could go right now?” You can’t begin to imagine the chaos that might be caused. 

As you discuss the possible ways of finding where he might have dropped the packet out of his coat, the phone rings. 

You both glare at it before Clavell picks it up. “Yes?”

“Director! I’ve been burglarized!”

Nurse Miriam never shrieks like that. Clavell looks worried. “You or?”

“My medical cabinets are unlocked!” She’s in complete panic and you can hear the assistant in the background talking through stuff she thinks might be missing. 

“On our way!”

He hangs up and you chase after him down the halls towards the nurse's office. “Where were you before you realised you didn’t have them?” You ask slightly breathless by the time you get to the floor of the nurse's ward.

Clavell pauses to think. “Erm…I definitely had them on me when I arrived in the main hall, I went to the staff room, the bathroom, my office then down into the green block meeting room before coming back to my office…”

“Did you go round the back of campus or the front to get to the meeting rooms?” You enquire grabbing your rotom to dial Arven. 

“Erm, the back, I took the green stairs past the art classrooms”

“Right, right okay, I’ll try and retrace your steps once we see Nurse Miriam and I’m sure Arven will help”

When you get into the office you find Nurse Miriam and her assistant digging through two large open white cabinets full of boxes and jars. 

“We’re here, what happened?” Clavell asks eyeing the piles of cardboard boxes they were using to count what might be missing.

“Someone must have broken in while we were off on our morning break, we came back to find both of the latches on the cabinets snapped off and stuff lying all over”

You blink. Who would rob a school nurse’s office for drugs?

Stepping around Nurse Miriam you pull back one of the cabinet doors to examine the latch. Yup, someone had definitely used a tool to break it off…or a Pokemon?

Who the fuck?

Clavell shakes his head as he looks into the boxes. “So what’s missing, surely they would have taken far more than this if they had a purpose?”

You shake your head. “Unless they came for something specific? We don’t have anything that could give you a legal high on campus, even mixing most of the drugs we do have wouldn’t get teens high so I doubt it was for a thrill…money?”

Clavell frowns and huffs. “I bloody hope not, how would you resell this? It’s all stamped and registered to the school for fucks sake!”

You sigh. “On campus? Although, why would anyone buy what they’ve taken when we can just come up here and ask for it for free? There’s no serious restrictions about paracetamol or whatever”

Clavell nods. “There is no real explanation for this at all”

The assistant steps back from the cabinet “Three missing” 

You watch as Nurse Miriam writes that down. “So far it’s bits and pieces, one box here and five boxes there, nothing missing completely”

“This doesn’t make sense, why would you break in and steal something you couldn’t resell?” Clavell asks out loud looking about the empty ward. 

You shake your head and reach for your phone. “We need CCTV, I know we don’t have any in here directly, but I think Penny might be able to get me the stuff from the corridor”

Clavell doesn’t argue with you about getting help from the Eevee manic hacker. 

“Damn she’s at the league, it'll be a while before she can look into it” you sigh. 

Clavell clicks his tongue as he bends down to look into the other cabinet. “This really makes no sense…”

“Oh!”

You all look up at Nurse Miriam. 

“They're gone!”

“What’s missing?” you ask confused.

“Well-” Nurse Miriam hesitates to explain. “-I had a few boxes of Sildenafil in here and there gone”

You blink. “What’s that?”

Clavell seems to blush slightly. “Miriam, why were you keeping Viagra on site, these are school children?”

She offers him a glare. “Not all of them Director, recall we do have a section of students that are over forty”

She had a point. Clavell wasn’t the only man to have ED at times. 

Clavell clears his throat nervously. “So there gone…how much is missing?”

“Five boxes, brand new, only got them in a few weeks ago, how strange it’s the only thing missing in full capacity”

You and Clavell look at each other.

“So, they did come for something specific, they took what they wanted and then grabbed anything else they could carry to looks of it, I highly doubt it was planned else I would expect a lot more to be missing” Clavell sighs. 

“Why Viagra?” you ask a loud looking about. “Why would someone want to steal it…it has two main uses, erectile dysfunction and blood pressure problems right?”

Nurse Miriam nods. “I didn’t have any Revatio which is the one for Pulmonary Hypertension, that's not my place medically, but we kept Viagra for the older students, we have I think four on the prescription list”

You fight not to think about that. Clavell looks away. 

“I-seem to have lost a box myself this morning…do you think I could have been robbed as well?” 

You shake your head. “There’s no one else but me, Arven and these two who know you use it, so I doubt anyone would have targeted you for it, sir”

As you continue to mull over just why someone would want to steal Viagra on mass, Arven arrives. 

“You won’t believe what’s going on right now, not that…I wanna talk about this but-”

You all look to Arven who shuts the door behind him. “What are the odds that…you know, five senior guys, my age, will…. all get…erm- abonerwithintenmintuesofeachother?” he squeaks blushing. 

Clavell blinks and nudges his glasses. Nurse Miriam looks at her assistant who shrugs and your jaw falls open. “Arven?”

“It just seemed strange!” he squeaks clearly not comfortable about this right now. 

Nurse Miram shakes her head. “Not possible, you're not linked by moon phases like women can be, unless, you all happen to be going through a very sudden last-minute and late phase of puberty which is highly unlikely!”

“Did you take something?” You ask frowning and he shakes his head.”God no! We were in the lunch hall, just eating and talking about a movie when Jake just started going bright red and we thought he wasn’t well and then Sam started and they both rushed off and I was like shit, is it a food bug and when Jake came back…well…I-I I don’t know what started that off but it happened!”

Clavell shakes his head. “What about the others?”

Arven sighs. “Two younger years were in the bathroom, Jake said they were panicking a bit and when he asked if they were okay they told him they just had the same problem as we did and nothing really set it off”

You look at Clavell. “Five guys don’t just get hard that randomly over lunch do they?”

He shakes his head confused. “I can’t fathom what would cause it, Sildenafil isn’t something that directly works like that, it’s an aid, you have to be…well-erm…”

“You have to be aroused to get an erection, it doesn’t work on its own, and it can take up to an hour to kick in” Nurse Miriam complains dropping aside her clipboard.

“There teenagers, I feel like hormones would have some say in this as well” Clavell mutters. Nurse Miriam scoffs a laugh and Arven glares. “I’m twenty-one!”

“This can’t be a consequence” You sigh. “We can’t have just had someone rob the school of Viagra and then boys all over the place are getting random boners?”

Clavell snorts. “All over the place is a bit exaggerative, this is only five seniors boys…”

Nurse Miram pats one of the beds. “Arven jump up, I want to run something real quick”

“What if they somehow took it without knowing?” you ask looking at the assistant. 

“Like what?” Clavell asks. 

“They were in the lunch hall…what if someone put it in the food?”

“Are you suggesting someone stole Viagra as a prank?” He blinks in shock at the idea. 

You shrug. “We’ve had kids bring laxatives in here why not go the whole hog and drop Viagra now?”

“I got to admit, Champ might be on to something” Nurse Miriam asks as she sets up to draw blood from Arven’s arm. 

“I’ll go down to the lunch hall, maybe call the staff? We might have more complaints like this we need to weed out, kids won’t just admit to it like Arven has, if someone nick this and dumped into the cafeteria someone could get seriously ill, that shit will have side effects in such big doses right?” 

Clavell looks concerned as the assistant hands him a booklet with the potential side effects. 

“Right…I’ll meet you back at my office unless something changes” He grimaces looking just as uncomfortable as Arven. 

Arven rubs at the sticking plaster in the crook of his elbow as he jumps off the bed and follows you out. 

“I hate to ask, I know it’s weird but how fast did that come on and how fast did it go down?” you ask quietly as you make for the stairs. 

Arven frowns and looks about. “Erm, well, one minute we were talking about a scene out of that new vampire movie that came out, you know the one where, erm, he bites her and she was all like-”

You stop him. “Yeah I know it, it’s gross, she clearly gets off on it though so go on”

Arven gulps, blushing beet red. “So we hadn’t even finished talking about the scene when Jake ran off, and then like I swear I only thought about the scene for a minute and the next thing I know I was fighting one off, I managed to get down to the library bathrooms unlike they did, took me less than ten minutes, I swear I thought it was going to mess my pants”

You frown. “Anything seem suspicious when you were in the hall?”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t notice”

Getting to the lunch hall you open the door and take a look about. There were very few boys in there, in fact for this time of day there were fewer than normal in the hall.

You’re about to step back and leave when a young lad who could have only been perhaps a second-year snatches his backpack and dashes past you from his seat. 

Arven moves out the way to let him by and you watch as he makes a beeline for the boy's bathrooms. 

You look at Arven. 

“Who in the school do you think would find it funny enough to drug a load of hormonal students to get erections?”

Arven gulps. “The twins?”

Hm. 

“Go down to reception and see if you can get her to put a call out for them, I’m going to call Nemona”

13:02pm

Nemona meet you in the hallway where Clavell had mentioned he had gone through to reach the meeting rooms. “What’s up?”

You turn to her from looking around the bottom of the stairs. “Hey Nemo, erm,-”

“You looking for something?” She asks glancing around. 

You sigh. “Yeah erm, look I hate how awkward this sounds but the Director dropped some tablets this morning on his way to the meeting and he thinks they might have been down here”

Nemona reaches into her backpack. “These bad boys by any chance?” She holds up an unopened packet of Viagra and you take it off her. 

“Oh thank the Gods”

She laughs. “Some first-year brought them to me, said he kicked them when he came out of his homeroom”

“Well at least we know these are not involved right now”

She shrugs. “I heard something is going on, boys are taking up the bathrooms like mad again, more laxatives?”

You shake your head. “Worse, Nurse Niriam’s medical cabinet got broken into and someone stole all the Viagra she had”

Nemona's jaw drops open. “What?! Dios that’s dangerous!”

“I know, Clavell is currently calling an emergency staff meeting while we hunt for the culprits, Penny isn’t back from the league yet so we can’t look at the CCTV”

“What else did they take?” she asks pulling up her rotom phone. 

“Nurse Miriam said they’re were only a few other random things missing, but everything is stamped so it can’t be resold without being questioned” You look about the quiet hallway. “Arven has gone looking for the Twins, we suspect it might have been them, this is quite the prank to pull off”

“Any ideas how they got so many affected?” Nemona questions looking for the school social board on her phone. “Dios, people are talking about this all over the school…”

“I’ve done some Google research on this because Arven says the effects took hold on him and some of his friends while they were finishing lunch, some younger years have said it hit them halfway through dinner and other’s have said they do not feel well or some have so far been running out of class over an hour later with the effects, according to google, eating has an effect on the drugs which coincides with Arven’s theory that they put it in the food somehow, but the tablet doesn’t dissolve in water, it needs your stomach acid to break it down so how they hid it is beyond me because these fuckers are not small” you shake the box with an air of frustration and shove it into the pocket of your rucksack. 

Nemona types something into Google. “Apparently it can be split…you think they broke them up?”

You frown. “They couldn’t have had much time…Nurse Miriam arrived at her desk at 8 am, she said the doors to cabinets were locked, but by 11am, they were broken into and stuff was missing after they left on break, they called the Director and me at around half eleven to inform us stuff was missing, now, it’s starting through second lunch and students are going mad…Viagra takes roughly half an hour to an hour to kick in for most people, if they dumped the whole lot in the food somehow then the dose might be higher for some than others, but we have to take into account, that these are teenage boys, Nurse Miriam did say hormones might help…”

“And a running imagination huh?” she chuckles. You laugh. “Yup”

“Oh god, what do we do?” She pauses in though then looks down the hall. “We need to check the canteen, they had to have crushed it and got it into the food somehow and quickly, I know Jack is a good hand in Home Ec so he might have been on kitchen duty, he is old enough to be in there”

You follow Nemona back towards the canteen to hunt around. Plenty of students on second lunch don’t seem too bothered by you snooping around until one kid asks out loud why his sandwich tasted weird. 

“Huh?” Nemona walks over to check it out. She looks the sandwich over but she can’t see anything. Going to see for yourself you deconstruct the sandwich until you spot the light blue flakes in the mayonnaise.

“Nemo…they crushed it up”

She picks up the salt on the table when she notices something off. “Dios, it's in here too…”

Just as you're about to suggest you evacuate the canteen and check out the kitchen, Clavell appears with Jacq and Mr Saguaro. 

“Find anything?” He asks looking flustered.

“Yup, it’s in here, it’s all over, they hid it in potentially anything that wouldn’t seem suspicious” You grumble and follow Clavell when he turns to follow Mr Saguaro into the kitchens. 

Jacq rounds up the kids on lunch and tells them to abandon anything they bought and head up to their dorms. 

Clavell picks up an open bag of salt from a cupboard to find it glittering with blue flakes. “Oh dear…”

“If it’s in the salt, then it could be in everything” Mr Saguaro suggests looking very annoyed. He turns to the fridge to examine other jars and condiments. 

Jacq looks into the doughnuts on the counter. “Look’s like someone mixed it into the sprinkles…”

Clavell spots a larger chunk sitting on one of the cupcakes and carefully picks it up. “It seems they didn’t have enough time to keep breaking it up either”

“But how did they break it up so quickly?” you ask with a huff. “From breaking the cabinet around 11 am and food prep starting at 11, they had less than an hour to break it and sneak it in here!”

Mr Saguaro looks around for something. “One of the food mixers is missing”

“They potentially stole the mixer, blitzed as much as they physically could dumped it into the salt and then hid it in the shakers and in the food prep, if they had cooked it wouldn’t have worked so they must have been adding it when serving as well, someone is getting expelled for this” Clavell sighs angrily.

Nemona winces. You snort. 

“Thankfully most of the teaching staff were eating in the staff room, they hadn’t come down yet, only Dendra and Hassel were on first lunch, both of them are feeling a bit off but no side effects”

“Breakfast was at 7 am…could they have planned this since then?” you wonder aloud but Clavell shakes his head. 

“They might have stolen the mixer but the cabinet wasn’t broken into until just before 11 am”

You pause in thought. “What if…hear me out here…they had already stolen it”

Everyone looks at you confused. “Nurse Miriam unlocks those cabinets when she starts her shift, it’s a keypad, if they had memorised the lock code somehow, stolen the Viagra before her shift, then locked it back up to make it look like nothing was missing, ground up the drugs, then while Jack was in here putting it all into the food before lunch started, Harry was in the ward breaking the locks to make it look like they have been bust into so no one knew they had previously taken the items, he then proceeded to swipe a few random boxes to make it seem like a random attack, we need to check the bins he’s probably dumped the extra drugs…”

Clavell looks at his Oxfords in thought. Nemona considers the idea nodding. Jacq comments about that being a plausible theory and Mr Saguaro just thumps his fist on the counter. “Well, however they did it, they will pay for it, this was too dangerous, those drugs can mess with other people's medications, someone could have been seriously harmed, I will not allow such idiocy in my kitchens, they’re out of this school immediately!”

Clavell flinches at Saguaro’s anger. “Of course, no, they won’t get away with it, I promise, I’ll have them removed from the school as soon as we have names and evidence”

Nemona pulls out her phone. “I’ll try calling Penny again”

14:03pm

Arven arrives a little while later looking sheepish. 

“Where have you been?” You enquire as you stand outside The Director’s office awaiting Penny. 

“Erm…how long does that stuff last?” he squeaks blushing. You frown. “Four hours roughly”

“Yeah, then you can guess” he grumbles. 

You wince. “Stop thinking about sex then” you joke trying to make the situation less awkward. 

“I’m a man!” he growls.

“I noticed thank you!” You laugh as Jacq reappears with Penny. 

“Anything?” you ask and she sighs heavily. 

“It was Jack and Harry, but they had help” She looks pissed off. 

You blink confused until you realise that someone else, someone she knew, must have been involved. “Do I want to know?”

“No, and I’m not telling, I’m pleading the fifth for them so don’t try me, I’ll handle that one” 

Clavell appears holding his phone and tapping away at a message. “I need you two to go down and make a log of students for me, I’m getting messages from all over the school about boys leaving classes”

Arven groans. “Ugh, can I be excused please, I’ve got it bad enough, I kinda don’t want to be talking to kids about it too”

Clavell gives him a sympathetic look. “Fair enough, head up to Miriam and help her restock if you can for a bit, I’ll go with Champ instead while we await the parents to collect Harry and Jack”

“Nemona is guarding them in the staff room” he adds as you follow him down the hall.

“Have they admitted to how they did it?” You ask worriedly. Clavell shakes his head. “They admitted they stole it but not how it got in the kitchens, we threatened to call the police but the parents have agreed to remove the boys immediately and pay damages to avoid criminal charges”

“And you're going to let them?” You hiss.

“What can I do? The police can’t arrest them, I’ve already spoken to Geeta and she said as much as we have CCTV of Jack and Harry stealing the goods at 5 am this morning as you said, we have no CCTV of them dosing the kitchens, the police won’t accept it as solid proof and I think they both know it, as long as they don’t give the method, they’re not going to get charged past being expelled unless we have better evidence” Clavell sighs heavily. 

Classroom after classroom you wander through the halls logging names of students who have told their homeroom tutor of being ‘dosed’ and getting side effects. It seems mostly boys who were feeling the effects, most of them suffering from random erections while a few just felt feverish and nauseated. “Three hundred and eight boys” Clavell mutters looking concerned.

“Does it not work on women?” you ask reading the list from Raifort’s homeroom. 

Clavell shakes his head. “Not with any notable effect, Dendra has an upset stomach but that’s because she pours salt on her chips like she does vinegar”

“It doesn’t seem to have affected everyone, so eating has curbed some of the effects, the twins wouldn’t have known that I guess?”

“We have twenty-three students suffering the worst effects right now” Clavell mentions as he leads you back up the stairs to Nurse Miriam’s office. You blink confused. “Persistent erections, Dylan has had one for two and half hours and it apparently won’t budge, Nurse Miriam is concerned he might have taken more than a whole tablet somehow, there’s a small chance they hid chunks of the tablets in other foods where having to crunch it up when you ate masked it”

You pause in the hall when Clavell’s phone buzzes. Just as you are about to ask who it is, you hear a toilet flushing and Arven steps out of the bathroom a little way down the hall doing his belt back up. You blush. He sees you and stares. Clavell chuckles. 

“Awkward doesn’t even begin to cover it” Arven mutters before shuffling back down the hall into the nurse's office again. 

“Well, at least no one is hurt” you gulp. You wince and pull a face making Clavell chuckle harder when you consider that some might be feeling a bit sore…

“This situation is far from amusing, I’m only laughing because I know how he feels, if you’ve no self-control it’s potent”

Oh. “Ah, yeah um-” You fumble for your backpack and reach into the pocket where you’d stuff the box. “-here, Nemona found them, well, a first-year found them and gave them to Nemona”

Clavell grimaces at the box but takes them off you gingerly and tucks them straight into his coat pocket. “Thank you, although I’m beginning to wish I didn’t need them”

You sigh. “You don’t really, it’s like you said, it’s an aid, you had an ongoing issue and there the best thing to prevent it from happening again, case closed, it’s not illegal”

You both quiet for a moment. 

“So what now?” you ask feeling like a spare part since classes had been cancelled and the case was pretty much over. 

“Did you get lunch?” he asks curiously. You shake your head. “Haven’t dared” You laugh. 

“Well, since we have nothing more to do other than await Nurse Miriam’s report, how about we go off campus, Barato’s takeout and Netflix on my sofa sounds good right about now”  he smirks. 

You pretend to consider the idea. “Can we get hot cookie dough dessert too?”

Clavell laughs heartily and reaches out for your hand, you take it and hang on to his arm as you walk past the nurse's office. 

“I can’t see why not, It’s not called Netflix and Chill for-”

The nurse's door bangs open. Arven rushes past behind you and the bathroom door slams and locks shut. 

You both glance back, alarmed. 

“Arven really has to get his head out of the gutter” Clavell mutters. 

You snort trying not to laugh. “You put him in the room with two hot nurses wearing skirts while he’s high on Viagra…what do you expect?”

Clavell winces and looks back at the bathroom door. “Oh, oh dear”

Chapter Text

Incident 00160: Score?

DATE : 11/01

NAME(S): Arven Turo

INCIDENT LOCATION: UVA Football Field 2

ATTENDING FACULTY: Champion (You) / Nurse Miriam / + 3 Others

TIME: 13:17 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: YES / NO

When Arven woke you at 3 am to declare he wanted to do something with his life, you immediately told him he was banned from becoming a scientist. He’d just laughed. 

“No bud, I’m serious, I’m wasting my youth here, I was thinking, you know Clavell announced the other week that he was starting an American Football team for the Paldea school league?”

You groan. 

“Oh come on! I’ll be so good - you’ve taught me so much about tossing balls-” you snort and he sighs. “-not like that bud, arcues, I’m well in on the weight chart so I bet I could get QB!”

You blink. “QB?”

“Quarterback! You know, it’s the most popular position, everyone loves a QB”

You sigh heavily and roll over in bed. “Arven, you only want to go for Quarterback because CHELSEA IS ON THE CHEERLEADING TEAM!”

There was a gulp on the end of the phone before he stuttered. “Oh-i-is she, I didn’t know that”

“Of course, you wouldn’t fucking know that your dream girlfriend crush is currently the lead for the cheerleading squad….” you just know this was going to go badly. 

“I swear I didn’t know”

You don’t believe him. “Right, okay whatever, good luck with that”

“Hey why wait wait um-” 

You pause in hanging up. “What?”

“It’s just…I need help…I asked Clavell yesterday morning about signing up and he said if I get approved for tryouts and pass, then I’ll need a sponsor to pay for my kit and travel expenses”

You frown. “Wh-Why? The school is paying for the team right?”

Arven makes a noise of agreement. “Yeah but there paying to get the grounds and the tickets ready, hire the physicians and shit but um apparently the gear is expensive so he said each player who is approved must have someone who can pay up the initial kit charges and travel expenses for this season so that if we get somewhere and or even win anything the Pokemon League will then pay out to fund us going forward”

You huff. “And because I’m champion, you want me to sponsor you?”

Arven snorts. “How’d you guess, look I’d ask Nemona but she already still owes you so much money and she isn’t fond of the game”

“How much is the kit?” you ask sitting up in bed to look at the clock. 

“I don’t know I need to check with Clavell if I pass the testing tomorrow first” Arven sighs. 

“You're tryouts are tomorrow?”

“Yeah, the season starts in five weeks, we already have half the team already, and tomorrow is the tryout for Quarterback and Fullback”

A whistle blows somewhere from your right and you glance over to see Dendra standing with some large burly bearded bloke whom you’ve never seen before. All the boys who are lined up for tryout gather around them, you have to admit, Arven does look pretty good in that gear. The school's purple and white looks good for the UVA Roaring Moons. 

You smirked as Dendra laughed about something and then gestured in your direction. You watch as all the wanna-be players turn to see you on the temporary stands and laugh as many go white in the face. Arven just waves. You wave back. 

“Ya’ll gotta pick up your shit and put it all down on the field today boys because you don’t want to show yourself up in front of the champion do ya?”

Who the hell was this guy? You're about to leave your seat to wander closer when you hear a door open to your left. Oh, your boyfriend. 

Clavell winks as he shuts the door behind him and wanders through the seating towards you. “Now how did I guess I would find you here love, hm?”

You laugh quietly. “Oh I don’t know, maybe because Arven chose to inform you this morning that I had agreed to sponsor him if he got into the team”

Clavell chuckles. “Indeed, if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have given him the paperwork”

You frown. “You weren’t going to let him play?”

Clavell shakes his head. “For as long as I have known that boy, he has never shown a minutes interest in sports, even Pokemon Battles, all he knows is how to handle is a frying pan and comic books, I told him it was a ludicrous idea to go charging, to say the least, charging into a game that well, requires skill and getting more or less smashed around if you don’t pick your fights right”

“So, like Pokemon Battles?”

“I guess, just in a lot of padding with helmets and people and a ball not…Pokemon” he laughs. 

Leaning into his side you watch as Arven and the fifteen other lads who had got this far in the try outs for QB line up. You cock your head curiously. Arven was bulkier than most of the others, probably from huffing that backpack around for so long but you weren’t certain weight would help him. 

“Not to mention running…” Clavell adds as the ‘coach’ starts making them run timed straights on the field. 

“Ah, I think he might have that down, he did well to run away from falling boulders”

Clavell frowns and looks at you confused. You giggle. “So is Clive not interested in getting on the team?”

Clavell makes a choking noise and your jaw hurts from smiling. “Bugger me, no he is not”

You huff as the whistle is blown again. “You know he’s only going for this to get Chelsea’s approval for a date right?”

Clavell nudges his glasses. “Chelsea…Harrington?”

You nod. “Yup, her”

Clavell rolls his eyes and sighs looking at his shoes. “I will never understand what he sees in her to be fair, she’s rather pretty but overall, there is nothing else to her, her grades are worse than his”

“A good match then, cheerleading blonde bimbo and a wana-be jock, chef” You mutter. 

Clavell snorts. “You are highly aware he’s only chasing that skirt because you’re dating me right?”

You hum knowingly. “I got the hint Arven liked me when he got defensive and started telling everyone he was my best-est best friend and personal bodyguard”

Clavell chuckles. “Well, if he makes Quarterback he won’t be short of heated looks, if they manage to get high up in the season quickly, the payout will be straight into his pocket”

“You mean, half of it will be mine” you snort.

Clavell smirks. “Well, this first half yes”

“Branson…1st team fullback”

“YEEEEAAAAHHH” 

You wince at the sound of people cheering in the crowded hall after hours when Clavell delivers his report from the coaching staff on who got on the team. 

“Tyler-Lee and Jenson…you got guards”

“Davidson, you got 2nd team Halfback and Murray your 1st team Halfback”

Clavell had already dismissed the seven boys who hadn’t made it on the team and was now informing the last few of their given positions. 

“Now for our finals, the Quarterbacks…” Clavell shuffles the clipboard and looks over at you standing by the door. “Do you want to tell him or shall I?”

Arven looks between the pair of you from the top row of seats. “Tell me what?”

You laugh. “Sinclair, your 2nd Quarterback”

“WHAT?!” “OH MY GOD!” 

The noise in the hall erupts when it becomes clear Arven got 1st team Quarterback.

“Congrats Arven, you’ve officially become a jock” Clavell sniggers. 

“$30,000 Pokedollars…”

Arven winces. “I know, but if we make the playoffs, you’ll get it back”

You sigh as you take your drink off the vendor in the food truck and turn to look him over in that uniform. It was the first game of the season, they had been training quite hard for the past few weeks and today was Arven's first major game. 

He’d nearly cried when Clavell handed him his helmet and jersey with his name on it. 

Part of you wonders if Arven had wanted this for more than Chelsea, he wanted to put a good thing back on his name, his father was still muttered about after Area Zero and some of it wasn’t nice either. 

The food vendor calls you again and hands you the basket of Krabby fritters and chips. “Just go and get on the field and you better damn get to the playoffs or you’ll be bussing tables until your forty to pay me back”

You join Nemona and Penny in the stands alongside, Ms Tyme, Geeta, Clavell and Jacq. 

Clavell reaches over to pull your seat open so you can sit down before he quickly pinches a chip. “So, the Monetevera High Gengars vs UVA Roaring Moons, can’t say this isn’t going to be interesting”

You sip your soda before setting it into the cup holder. “Honestly feels like a snooze fest” Nemona frowns. It seemed even the atmosphere wasn't doing anything for Nemona. Penny snorts. “You just want to see blood“

“And what’s wrong with that? I want to see men try to break each other to score not pansies in helmets trying to get a ball in a net”

You frown confused. “Nemona have you even been watching the same game?”

Nemona looks confused. “This isn’t basketball?”

“Oh my” Ms Tyme chuckles. 

“Champion Nemona this is American Football, it’s sort of similar to English Rugby, but also not at the same time” Geeta offers loosely. 

“How is it ‘foot’ball when they carry it?” Penny asks and Clavell shrugs. 

“They do kick it as well Penny” You snort. 

The first half, was as Nemona put it at the start of a snooze fest, too many fumbles on both sides, and clearly a lot of pressure to score. 

Just as you consider getting up to go pee and grab another drink Arven makes a break in the line and scores a rushing touchdown in his first game.

“HOLY FUCK DID HE JUST SCORE?!” Penny screeches.

“GO ON TURO!” Jacq yells getting caught in the hype aside Geeta and oh…Saguaro was here too.

You're absolutely gobsmacked. Clavell is checking if he’s seeing things and Nemona is suddenly all for American Football. “FUCK YEAH TOUCHDOWN!!!”

You lean over the barrier to view the field and scoff. “Fuck, he really is trying to get Chelsea huh?”

Arven turns to look up at the stands after getting jumped on by the other players congratulating him and makes the heart sign with his hands up at you. You give him a middle finger back and he runs off laughing or you at least hope he was you couldn’t see under the helmet. 

You do love Arven in a way. You just, don’t know how to process everything after Area Zero, you know he’d have probably made a decent boyfriend but you just got hung up on your crush with Clavell and then things progressed, Clavell fit you like your favourite T-shirt something you found comforting and loved having close, Arven felt like your favourite doughnut, satisfying and worth the money but better in small doses. 

Maybe if things changed…you shake your head. You weren’t getting over Clavell too soon. 

Penny and Nemona jump up to go and fetch more snacks as you head for the toilet before the second half. 

“So the game is only 60 minutes, but we’ve been here what an hour and forty-five mintues” Geeta comments as you return to settle beside Clavell again. 

“Indeed, some games can last up to four hours if the playthroughs are broken up by injury or penalties” Clavell adds reading his rotom. 

Huh. You’d wondered why the place had needed so many food trucks, four hours was a while!

You wish your Pokemon Battles were as hyped as this, sure, the crowds were big but you didn’t play with thousands watching or TV screens. They’d built this just for the game. You frown at Clavell. 

“Can we convert this?”

He looks down at you confused. “Hmm?”

“I mean at the end of the season, for the Pokemon championship rounds, don’t you think your undefeated champion deserves a stadium crowd by this point…”

“That would be amazing!” Nemona adds in.

Clavell chuckles. “I love to darling but this is all rented unless we’re going to start charging people to watch you fight then sadly not”

“Wait, people are paying to watch Arven?” Nemona enquiries. 

“Indeed, the adult tickets are $650 pokedollars for the season” Clavell smirks. Nemona looks around. “But there’s like…a thousand or more people in here”

“You’ve made $650,000 dollars on the season?” you gasp. 

Clavell snorts. “More like $50,000, I still have to pay off the rentals, but don’t fear, the profit is going towards the Pokemon fight this year, we had already spoken about making a stadium haven’t we Champion Geeta”

Geeta nods. “Now that we have Three Champions, the Elite Four as well as the Team Star EV fights we decided we need somewhere bigger and better to host it all rather than the League’s main playing hall”

A horn blows and you all watch as the game kicks off again. Two more passing touchdowns and the UVA Roaring Moons are steaming ahead to winning their first season game. 

Everything seemed to be going well for Arven as he directed the last quarter play until the crowd simultaneously cringed at a vicious tackle. 

“Oh god, is he okay?!” Penny gasps watching as Arven clutches at his leg. 

“He better fucking be” you curse standing and rushing from your seat to head for the sideline. “He owes me $30,0000 dollars!”

It takes five people to cart Arven off the pitch and onto a bed they bring down from the nurse's ward. You'd known this was going to end badly somehow and prayed to whatever gods would listen that he'd at least walk again as Nurse Miriam and a Paramedic checked him over.

Nurse Miriam shakes her head. “I’m sorry Arven but it’s broken, clean, you are not going back on the pitch nor walking without crutches for at least three months”

“THREE MONTHS!”

You wince. Arven had badly broken his foot and ankle in that tackle.

“That’s the whole season, I’ve not even finished the first game!”

Clavell sighs and looks out of the corridor back at the pitch which was back in full swing.

“Sorry Arven but it seems you're out of action already, we just have to hope Sinclair has been taking notes” 

Arven huffs and thumps the floor. “God damn it”

“You did score a lovely touchdown though, everyone is very well aware you can play” Penny adds in trying to cheer him up. 

Arven looks up at you and you shrug. “I guess I better print off a CV to apply at Barato’s huh?”

You're stunned when Arven drops down beside you in the library a week later and slides you an envelope of cash. 

You watch as he nudges aside his crutches. “Where did you get this?”

He smirks. “We made the play off’s”

You blink. “I know, but you're not playing…”

“I’m still credited as 1st team QB, they have to pay me for the round” Arven laughs nudging the envelope closer. Picking it up you count just over five thousand dollars. 

“So how does this round go?” you ask tucking the cash away. You hadn’t really planned on making him pay you back after he got hurt. 

“It’s too long to explain but um, basically four rounds, if we win all of them we make the final game, if we win we get $500,000 off the Pokemon League”

Your jaw falls open. “And how much do you get being on 1st team?”

Arven smirks and leans closer. “$50,000 as QB, it’s the highest paid position”

“And If you don’t win?” you frown. 

“Then I’ll maybe get another $5,000 back for you if we make the semi’s but either way if I can get back on my feet then I’ll go back and play next season, i’ll get paid every game, easy cash” He laughs. 

“Do you really want to play next season?” you ask curious. You'd thought this was all a ruse to get Chelsea….

Arven shrugs. “Sure, it’s a fun game, although-” he looks down at his foot. “Cooking is less painful”

You tut. “No I mean, you wanted to get Chelsea, you asked her on a date didn’t you?”

Arven blushes a bit and looks away. “Well, yeah um, she actually came to visit me in the hospital, we went out two nights ago…”

You smile. “So you got the girl, are you going to keep up trying to be the jock boy she wants?”

Arven shrugs. “Maybe one more season…also, I-I changed my mind”

You frown. “About what?”

“About her”

You blink in surprise. “You don’t like her anymore”

Arven shakes his head. “Clavell was right she’s pretty but basic, took her to dinner and she didn’t even know what steak was, I’m serious, I spent a lot of the evening explaining random shit to her that even ten years old know”

You snort. 

“Can you believe she thinks Aqua are like the best pop group, I mean, AQUA, fricking Barbie world? No thanks…”

You choke and cough trying not to laugh. 

“She has a tattoo of Ryan Gosling as well”

You gawf loudly enough that it echoes slightly in the small space. “Wait, Whaat?

“Yeah on her hip, like…ew” Arven sits with his arms folded and staring at the ceiling. 

Your eyes are bugging out of your head. “Her…HIP?”

He looks down at you and winks. You're highly concerned about why you feel jealous. 

“You fucked her?” you ask in a disgusted manner and then flinch catching yourself at why you sound so annoyed about that. 

Arven laughs. “Yeah, like what else do you do on a date”

“You got laid?”

“Yes”

“Like, legit, naked laid”

“Yes?...”

“Pants off, no condom?”

Arven snort. “I’m not thick of course I used protection, Arceus”

“You dicked her?”

“She sucked me off first” he smirks.

You grimace. “You actually had sex with that bimbo?”

Arven shrugs. “Kinda”

You frown. “How -What is kinda?”

Arven looks about a little nervous and you can see him blushing. “It took forty minutes”

You're confused. “Do I want to ask?”

“Don’t get me wrong she probably thinks I’m great, she was loving it, I think, she must have been I mean she came like four times, I just um…”

Arven looks uncomfortable, you are uncomfortable. You guess this was the universe paying you back for dragging him into your sex life. 

“I got going but you know I was so put off by her… I mean she sounded like a squeaky toy at one point…”

You legit choke on your spit. 

“So you didn’t..”

“Oh no, I came I just, um, had to think of something else”

You wince disgusted then blush hotly. 

“You are highly aware he’s only chasing that skirt because you’re dating me right?”

You hate to say it but you also feel like you need proof that he still likes you even when you're with Clavell. “Me by any chance?”

Arven coughs and looks away. “Maybe at one point”

You shudder slightly. You don’t need to ask. 

“So you're not a thing?”

Arven sits back and sighs. “Nope”

“So you're single, no longer a virgin, the 1st quarterback on the high school team, on crutches for three months and jacking off to pictures of me whilst I’m getting hot-rodded over a desk by the Director of school?”

Arven chokes and goes bright red. “Way to make this awkward bud”

You both start laughing. 

“We know way too much about each other to not be friends” you admit. 

Arven sighs. “Damn we do”

“But hey, let's see what happens, if you win the playoff how about I ask Clavell if he’s up for a threesome?”

Arven’s eyes go so wide you're certain his eyebrows just flew off his head. 

You stand up giggling and grab your bag before leaning down to whisper in his ear. “Let's see if he can teach you how to score touchdowns in the bedroom without needing to throw a ball”

Chapter Text

Incident 00164: HEATWAVE!!!

DATE : 14/06

NAME(S): Mr P Jacq

INCIDENT LOCATION: Mesagosa Stairs

ATTENDING FACULTY: Champion (You) / + 2 Others

TIME: 14:50 AM / PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO  

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: (YES / NO )

It was hot today in Paldea, good news for the ice cream vendors but not so much for everyone out on their treasure hunt.

Because it’s really, really hot. 

Okay, so Paldea is usually hot, it’s common for the country to be fucking hot, it’s not far from the equator, but today just seemed to be, well… unbelievably hot. 

On average, your mornings were relatively cool in your opinion. Most mornings started off cloudy around the school, considering it was closer to the mountain, but when you awoke at barely 8 am, drenched in sweat, you were aware that something today was going to be a hell of a lot different. 

“How is it 78°F at this time of the morning?” Arven barks as he slams into your dorm room, shirtless and dropping his backpack on the floor. “I’ve never had to crank the cold on the shower so hard”

You look up from packing your book bag, you had a biology exam at 2 pm, but you’d agreed to go hunting with Avren today beforehand for more herb mystica. 

“I know, right? I don’t think I recall it ever being this hot so early on, in the three years I’ve been here” You didn’t like the look of the weather report either. Clear sky, little breeze, and no chance of rain for three days…

“My rotom says it’s creeping up by more than a degree every hour, at this rate it will be 94 by lunch, pushing 101 by the time you got the exam”

You look at Arven in panic. “Dude, there are hundreds of kids out on their treasure hunt!”

“Tell me about it, Nemona is calling the school board as we speak!”

You find Director Clavell at his desk, looking just as exhausted as you feel after climbing up to his office at 10 am. There was a fan behind his desk, airing out the room. You glance up at the air conditioning unit as you approach the desk. He already had it on max.

“Thank Arceus, we have air con huh?” he chuckles, turning in his chair to smile at you as you drop your bag.

“It doesn’t seem to be doing a lot, though” you complain, unsticking your shirt from your back. 

“Agreed, I fear it’s going to struggle today, we built the school to withstand typical temperatures not a heatwave, parts of the building are made from the limestone from Area Zero, it’s going to make pushing the heat OUT a lot harder than we first considered, we built the school to handle blizzards…”

“We have roof windows, heat goes up right?” You know, you sound stupid asking but would everything be cooler?

Clavell snorts. “Yes, it does alas, not having them covered will potentially be more harmful, the more light, the more heat”

Ah.

“I’ve ordered the gym roof to be open, hopefully the students can enjoy playing basketball today but I’m preparing to send out a request for all students to return to campus or student housing by two, I don’t want kids in A&E with heatstroke and nasty sunburns”

“I saw Dendra and Saguaro in the hall, they said they were preparing freezers?” You enquire. 

“Ah yes, school policy is to keep drinks on hand, we’ve got two large empty freezers we can use for stocking water, soda and icecream, god knows we’re going to need it, I’ve barley moved from this chair and I abandoned wearing a black shirt but I can feel a layer of sweat running down my chest…ugh”

You snort as he unsticks the cotton; you can see the wet patches already showing on his white shirt. Your about to ask if you had permission to hide out at his penthouse since your dormroom didn’t have any air conditioning directly, save for your desk fan, when you have an idea. 

“Could we make it snow?”

Clavell sighs. “Good idea, but, no, sadly it’s too hot, the clouds might create some shade from the direct sun and drop the temperature a bit but it wouldn’t be enough to use rain dance or blizzard, it will just bump the humidity"

“Where has this heat come from anyway?” you ask fed up now and dropping onto the sofa, the one you had insisted he installed after he removed some of the equipment down to the labs last year. 

Clavell looks to his computer. “I hate to worry you, but…”

You sit up. “What?”

“It’s coming out of the mountain”

“The volcano isn’t active, I can assure you” Jacq laughs as you barrel into his office less than thirty mintues later, covered in even more sweat from dashing down several flights of stairs. 

“Clavell was correct when he said it’s coming out of the mountain, but the sun is harsh, I’m under the impression it would have been a typical 80 degree day if some other force hadn’t chosen to interfere” he huffs. 

“I can’t think of any Pokemon down there that could be causing this?” You wonder aloud standing as close to the air con unit as you can. 

“Remember Iron Moth?” Jacq asks smiling, turning his computer towards you and you nods at the picture. 

“Yeah, why, i got like three of them…?”

“They like to hang around mountains, especially volcanic mountains, and I know from your research there’s alot of them down there, fire types with reflective steel bodies, and not only that, but the main structure of the mountain is made up of basalt, andesite and limestone, so you’ve got heat producing steel types, causing a ruckus in a mountain that can absorb and release heat, the heat is coming up out of the ground Champ, not down from the sun”

Oh dear.

Thank the gods your friends with scientists you think for a moment. 

“So, how the hell, do we stop it?” You look around the currently empty classroom.

“Well, I’m afraid we can’t, unless you want to risk diving down there and shuting up whatever there doing?” Jacq laughs. “It’s not a bad thing, it just a bit hot, I’ve yet to figure out what it is that they do to cause this, they’ve caused the mountain to spew out this much heat before now alas, it’s never been aligned with us having such a dry summer, both May and June were as sunny as it is now in July, the ground would usually be far more damp and we’d have more cloud, because of the evaporation…”

“My rotom says it’ll only be three degrees cooler tomorrow, how long before the mountain has cooled off after they’ve stopped what ever there doing?”

Jacq shrugs. “Honestly, can’t tell you Champ, unless it rains for several days in a row any time soon, it’s going to be this warm for several days”

What the fuck were those Iron Moth’s doing to cause this much heat? You huff to yourself  as you make it back outside once more. 

Arven had abandoned the idea of hunting for Herb Mysitca and joined Nemona in helping to send health alerts out to students. 

Your just entering the library when your rotom buzzes.

TEXT (BF <3) : I’ve cancelled classes and exams, the league have issued a red alert for heat, can confirm it will be 106 by 3pm

Your sweating just looking at that message.

With little else to do, you make your way back towards the director’s office. You’d rather be in good company and comfortable rather than out here. 

Jacq passes you in the hall mentioning something about heading into the main square with Raifort but you don’t exactly take in what he said. 

When you arrive in the office you find Arven, Nemona and Penny along with Giacomo and Eri.

There’s a cooler box full of drinks in ice, another full of ice cream and several carrier bags full of snacks and tapas foods which Nemona and Penny were opening up. Your entrance is annouced by a small chorus of greetings. 

“Hey Champ!”

“CHAAMMMP!”

“BUD!”

You laugh and fist bump Giacomo as you drop your bag down by the pile they had already made. “What on earth is all this?”

“We decided to have a picnic with the Director, it’s too hot for much else and he has the best air con, wifi and the most space” Nemona grins at you as she wave her arm over the coolers and camping table. 

You look towards your boyfriend who was happily sat in his chair, he’s removed his shirt and exchanged it for a t shirt, lent back, shoes up on the desk and the fan now directly blowing at him. “I’m in no mood to be a director today, so picnic and do fuck all it is”

“Whoop! Been a second since we saw Clive mode” Eri laughs. 

The topic of conversation jumps from food, battles and the heat into trying to convince the Director to build a second pool for recreational use at the school.

You all lapse into silence as the heat rises over the next hour. You watch on your rotom as it ticks over to 98 at exactly half one and watch the threads of chats on the school Pokebook as kids run for cover and icecream. 

Rangers all over Paldea were on high alert to gather as many of the kids off the treasure hunt as possible and return them to the hotels. 

“I have a theory, if you want to hear it, that is?” Clavell breaks the silence after a long while, and you all look to him curiously as you munch your way through snacks. 

“Go on” you offer reaching down to the cooler for another can of coke.

“So, you know Jacq mentioned Iron Moth” He opens and you nod, everyone else look perplexed and Clavell chuckles before explaining.”-you see, the heat itself isn’t coming down, it’s coming up, it’s coming out of the mountain behind us, Jacq has come to the conclusion that the Pokemon Iron Moth is behind it”

“The fire posion type?” Eri enquires.

Clavell nods. “Well done, it is indeed, you see, with it’s main body structure being that of steel, it is reflective, and as far as we have gathered from Champ’s research trips, there’s around seven hundred of them down there”

Arven whistles. “Damn that’s a lot of futuristc bugs, wait was there that many before, I didn’t see that many?”

Clavell hums in agreement. 

“I know, you see, there wasn’t around five years ago, infact, from the paperwork Turo left behind, there had been just nine come through that portal”

You look at Nemona, then Penny, you gulp. “Sir?”

“Now, your not children anymore, you're all aware that apart from, Shuckle, most Pokemon can breed fairly easily correct?”

Everyone nods. 

“So, in the space of five years they have multiplied there population by over sevety times from what was the first recording of them” Clavell smirks. “It seems they mate somewhere around July and August”

You frown. Nemona does too. 

Penny groans. 

Eri looks slightly disgusted and Giacomo just looks terrified. 

Arven on the other hand…

He sighs heavily and…” Director, are you telling us, that inside that hole right now, there could be something as such as seven hundred crazy steel fire, poison moth, monster bastards that nearly killed us, and the reason its so hot is that they might be fucking bonking!”

The laughter that engulfed the room at his outburst could have been heard from down the hall, you're certain of it. 

Clavell is leaning on his desk chuckling and sighs with an air of fondness. “Yes, Arven, that’s what I’m try to say, sorry to break it too you, but it’s moth breeding season and we’re all getting sweaty just without the fun bit”

Nemona snorts and nudges you. “You could be…”

You scoff loudly. “Shut up!”

Eri gawfs from somewhere behind you at Arven going bright red. “That’s disgusting”

“I don’t want to think about bugs fucking” Giacomo winces reaching down for a tub of ice cream. “We got alcohol somewhere? I need to wipe that out my mind”

Clavell socffa and looks to Nemona, “Nemona, as much as we could be, I haven't got the energy to think about it never mind go home with Champ and actually do it!”

You squeak at how casually the Director just mentioned your relationship with him infront of everyone. 

Arven spit his drink, laughing. 

Your about to say something in retaliation when the phone rings. 

Clavell huffs loudly and snatches up the handset. “Clavell...”

You all wait quietly, sniggering between yourselves as Nemona makes a lewd gesture at you and Penny nearly spits her drink over Eri. 

“Yes, no, I-i well, maybe, where is he? Your already in the A&E?”

Everyone looks to Clavell. Who was in A&E?

Clavell sighs again and rubs the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Yes, yes, I know, I’ll-I’ll grab someone and make my way over, yes, no, that’s fine Sabrina, we won’t be too long”

Clavell almost slams the handset down and huffs again looking to his computer. “99…it’s still rising, it’s definitely going to hit 106 as predicted, for fuck sake Jacq, why couldn’t you take your own advice!”

You gulp and look about before setting your drink aside. “What’s happened?”

“Jacq’s fallen, he was out in Mesgosa Square with Miss Raifort and Mr Salvatore getting lunch, without considering how hot it was getting, they decided to head back to the school and he seemingly passed out with heatstroke on the stairs”

Gasps resound around the room. 

“DIOS!

“I know, fortunately Salvatore broke his fall but they still tumbled a bit, Jacq’s broken his shoulder, there currently in A&E in Artazon, I’ve been requested since I’m Jacq’s only other emergency contact, and employer” He yanks open the right hand side drawer and pulls out the phone you recognise to be ‘Clives’.

“Champ can you accompany me please?” He asks with an air of exhaustion and you nod, standing to grab your bag before picking up your drink again. 

You head down to the front yard and open the library doors, only to be hit with what felt like a blast from an oven. “Gods, this is awful”

Clavell sets his rotom up in front of you and it begins to click and buzz. The sound is familiar and you swallow. “Why are you testing for radiation?”

“Because this heat is coming out of the volcano…it’s unnatural” Clavell mutters watching as the reading bounces about. “Come on, I want to see the difference the further away we get…”

Jumping on Miraidon he attaches the phone to the Pokemon as you climb on behind. 

It took only fiteen minutes to drive into the town, but you noticed even Miradion didn’t like the heat. He kept looking about at the ground as if it was burning his metal paws. 

He grumbles and growls. “I’m sorry bud it’s too hot isn’t it?”

The dog like cyclizar snorts and huffs sniffs the ground then the air as Clavell phone continues to click. “Well, it’s a lot lower here in Artazon, but back at the school, I advise you don’t mention it but there’s enough radiation in the air that by the end of tonight, everyone will have practically had a full body CT scan”

You wince as you recall Miraidon. “Okay, so, definitely steel fire bug things fucking huh?”

Clavell smirks. “That or Jacq is wrong and the volcano is actually active”

You look at him in horror he laughs. “I’m kidding, it would be higher if it was, don’t panic love, I’m serious when I say that thing is dead”

“What if the futuristic bugs fucking cause it to wake up somehow?” You ask with an air of disgust and terror as you push open the doors to the A&E.

Clavell nudges his glasses and looks around the A&E before looking at you, giving you a shrug. “I guess it’s possible, honestly, futuristic Pokemon were already on my list of not possible before everything else happened so, anything is possible, I guess”

You find Jacq in a ward bed, half conscious, with Miss Raifort sitting beside him holding a can of soda.

“Hey”, you wave as you enter the room. It was nice and cool in the room, and you wished for a moment you could hide out here with them. 

“Hey, guys, sorry, I should have phoned earlier…” she starts, but Clavell cuts her off. 

“It’s fine, Sabrina, with everything else right now I don’t think anyone would have been here faster,-” he looks to Jacq, who is dozing slightly in the bed with his left arm in a sling.“-How is he?”

“He’ll be okay, it’s a minor fracture, but they have confirmed heatstroke, and now he's concussed as well. Salvatore has a minor concussion from the fall, but Mr Saguaro came a took him back to the school earlier...”

Clavell leans on the railing of the bed as Jacq turns to blink up at him and smiles. “Hi, Clive”

“You're an idiot”

Jacq laughs. “I know”

“We put out a heat health alert for students, and you're very prone to heatstroke, alas, you still go out in nigh on 98 degrees?” Clavell sounds annoyed. 

Jacq winces. “We were only out for maybe half an hour”

“We spent most of it inside at the ice cream parlour, I thought it was odd how he went down so fast, but after he did, I remembered how many times you’d said he’d not eaten all day and when I asked he said he’d only had tea with his toast this morning, in this heat!” She huffs. “I’d already chugged a litre of water before lunch so by the time we got halfway up those stairs, dehydration was sending him dizzy”

“And I doubt you’ve been drinking enough water all week hm?” Clavell asks, looking back at Jacq, who looks to you for help, and you sigh. 

“I can’t save you, you keep getting at us to be healthy, Jacq, you've got to start doing it too”

You slip back out down the hall to fetch yourself and Clavell another drink as you settle to await the Doctor.

When you return, you try to explain to Miss Raifort about the Iron Moths. 

“Wait, so, this isn’t just a heatwave? She asks, looking disgusted.

“No, unfortunately, it’s a normal day that’s being turned into an almost supernatural phenomenon all because it’s mating season” Clavell offers, nudging his glasses and playing with the cap on his bottle of water. 

You snort at the look on her face.

“Clive, are you seriously telling me that some futuristic fire moth creature is causing a heatwave up here because it’s busy shagging?” She sounded outraged and both you, Clavell and Jacq laughed.

“Very eloquently put, Sabrina, but yes, that's about the sum of it, potentially all seven hundred of them”

She nearly falls from her chair. “SEVEN HUNDRED”

“You're telling me SEVEN HUNDRED fire moth fuckers are fucking down there, that’s what, with chances of at least HALF getting knocked up, that’s over 300 more!”

You hadn’t considered that. “Does someone want to call the league and start a culling team?” you enquire, sipping your soda. “I mean, if it’s this hot with seven hundred, what happens when they hit a thousand?”

Clavell shakes his head. “I dread to think, you're right, we need to cut the numbers…”

Jacq hums. “What’s the radiation like? It was barely one this morning”

Clavell pulls his phone back out. “It was pushing eight at school, and three here…”

Jacq jerks in the bed. “Christ, by the end of the day, everyone will have been exposed to enough radiation to have-”

“Had a full body CT scan, yeah, he already said that” you cut in, chuckling. 

“It’s not harmful levels, I mean if it was to continue for a few weeks it would b,e but otherwise, as long as it drops in the next forty-eight hours, everyone will be safe” 

You all sit in silence for several long minutes before the Doctor arrives to discharge Jacq. “You better take him home, Sabrina. I’m locking down the school, as it’s due to be pushing 95 again tomorrow, I won’t risk students fainting. Once it’s back to normal temperatures, we will restart the treasure hunt and classes”

You look at your watch. 106 degrees. 3 pm.

“Director, it’s 106” You sigh worriedly. He huffs. “Good gods”

You call a cab to the hospital and drop Miss Raifort and Jacq off at her flat in the square. The place was now empty, shops had shut up, and vendors had packed away.

“I think we'd better go home too, the only thing I fancy right now is sitting in a cold bath with champagne and you, not just air con”

You laugh as he directs the driver to his penthouse. “You know what-”

Clavell looks at you curiously. 

“I think that’s the sexiest thing you’ve suggested all week”

Chapter Text

Incident 00168: WET TOWEL

DATE: 20/06

NAME(S): ORTEGA + 2 others

INCIDENT LOCATION: 3C GYM SHOWERS

ATTENDING FACULTY: Champion (You) / Nurse Miriam / Arven Turo + 1 other

TIME: 10:22 AM/PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO 

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: (YES / NO)

It’s never fun when the peace and quiet of the past few days, which you had irrevocably needed due to travelling, is broken by the sound of an alarm across the campus grounds. 

You had been sitting in the Director’s Office doing ‘champion shit’ as Arven had started calling it, mostly just paperwork on research stuff for meetings...when it went off. 

You scramble to the computer to find the alert was coming from the gym, and just as you're about to phone out for the Director, your rotom comes flying up out of your bag, and you see Nemona. 

“Fire Alarm… has been pulled… in the 3C Boys’… gym showers, students are evacuating,... I’m running there now,” she pants as you watch her dashing around a corner. 

“Where’s Clive?” You enquire, changing tack and heading for your bag. 

“League with Penny… they just called… for a ‘billy cab”

“Don’t go running in there without back up, Nemo, you’ve no idea why it was pulled. Can we see smoke? Is there actually a fire?”

Nemona skids to a halt, panting and glancing around her. You can see she is getting closer to the gym from the number of students who are piling outside. 

“No, no smoke…Hey, did you see a fire? What witness do we have?” she shouts out, getting the attention of some of the older students. 

You don’t hear much of the conversation as you make your way out into the courtyard yourself, meeting both Arven and Nurse Miriam as well as Hassel on the way. 

“Okay…okay so…the vibe I’m getting, champ…is that there is no fire”, Nemo shouts, slightly breathless down the phone as you all rush towards the gym blocks. 

Hassel glares down at the floating Rotom. “So what is it then? Who pulled the alarm? Half the school is out in the yard!”

“Some of the seniors say a fight broke out,... in the boys' showers, there were like, eight if not ten of them fighting, full on brawl, um…, might want to inform Penny that some of them were definitely Team Star rebels…”

“Oh, fantastic, this is going to really please Geeta” you huff. 

Nurse Miriam shakes her head and sighs behind you. 

“What was the fight about?” Arven asks, nudging the phone towards him.

“Okay, so,... someone from Ortega’s team insulted one of Giacomo’s or something along those lines, …before someone not from Team Star insulted Ortega, and he started braying this kid with his staff, then two more boys broke into the fight to protect the kid he was trying to beat up…and…yeah…I haven’t gone in yet”

As you arrive on the scene, you start hearing more comments about a fight. Students are standing around filling up nearly all the ground between you and the main doors to the gym. You toss out Miriadon, and he barks, causing them to part like the Red Sea. 

“Plan Champ?” Hassel enquires. “I’m certain now there is no fire”

You glance at him, confused. “Plan?”

“You're technically in place of the Director while he isn’t on campus” he offers, and you blink. 

“I’m what? Why? I-oh shit, Thyme isn't here, is she, damn, and Saguaro is on holiday, um, well, he won’t be too long, but would you all be good with just investigating inside? I don’t really want to call the shots” You wince, you weren’t fond of this level of authority yet. 

Everyone agrees, you advise Hassel and Arven to go into the bathroom while you, Nemona and Nurse Miram await outside to know if it is clear to enter. 

“Last thing we want to do is walk in on naked teenage boys” Nemona snorts. You and Miriam agree. 

It’s nearly ten minutes before Hassel reappears. “Okay, you can come in. There are still some students in here, but we need more hands”

You wince as you enter. “What the hell…is that smell?”

Nemona gags and pulls her shirt up to cover her nose. “EW”

Nurse Miriam quietly untucks a face mask. “I don’t care to think!”

Arven laughs from somewhere deeper in the locker rooms. “Ah, the smell of victory, defeat, sweat, tears, vomit, farts, blood, urine and hormonal teenage boys who are addicted to spraying Axe instead of showering properly”

“Are you serious?” you shout after covering your face with your shirt as well. 

Hassel laughs now. “Something along those lines, yes, I’m afraid he is”

You note that most of the place was clear, save for a few sections where clothes were still lying around, a bag lay abandoned on the floor, Ortega’s staff was snapped and left behind, and there was a small blood trail on the floor. 

Oh.

Nurse Miriam rushes in front of you into the bathroom as she hears whimpering. “So what’s happened?” 

“Broken ankle, head wound and dislocated shoulder” Hassel calls out, moving as she kneels down to the boy on the floor. You turn and glance inside nervously to spot Ortega standing beside them in only a towel. He slaps a hand over his chest as he sees you, and you snort. “Not like there’s anything for me to see, bro”

You spot Arven with the other boy, holding paper wadding to his head and cleaning off streaks of blood. “So basically, the fight died out, Ortega, Ryan and David came in here to shower as the other’s left, someone pulled the fire alarm to scare them, and that caused mass panic of people running out, David dropped his towel as he went to leave and slipped on it, breaking his ankle, and Ryan then fell over him and cracked his head on the door frame…him falling took out Ortega who has managed to dislocate his shoulder against the sink…”

You sigh. A fight, a prank in revenge and now a trip to A&E. 

The Director was not going to be pleased. You glance back at Ortega, who was now hugging his bad arm to his chest. Penny wasn’t going to be either. 

Panic cleared and alarm turned off, you set Nemona and Arven off to send students back to their classes. As you sat outside the gym hall awaiting the Director, Nurse Miriam and Hassel sat with Ortega, Ryan and David until a Corvid ambulance arrived to escort them to Levenica General. 

You smiled as the ‘billy cab arrived and touched down in the car park in front of you. Clavell dives out first and charges across the tarmac towards you, Penny in tow. 

“I’ve been informed I’ve got three students heading for A&E?” he enquires as he stops in front of you. You nod.

“Yup, unfortunately, Penny, it’s Ortega and his two hapless bodyguards”

“What happened?” She sighs, pulling out her phone to text the group chat. 

“So, in short, there was a fight, between some lads in Giacomo’s team and those in Ortega’s team, after the fight broke up, Ortega went to shower with his two, no one saw who actually pulled the alarm but the theory is it might have been one of the lads that Ortega was hitting with his staff, anyway, panic ensued, David tried to run out of the showers and dropped his towl slipping and falling, breaking his ankle in the process, Ryan then crashed into him and fell over him smacking his head open on a cubicle door and the result of him going down pulled Ortega and he tripped trying to avoid the mess falling and smacking his shoulder on the sink and dislocating it” 

“A fight?” “Dislocating it? How hard did he fall?” Penny and Clavell exclaim at the same time.

“I haven’t figured out about the fight yet. Nemona is currently on that one, Hassel is still in there with Nurse Miriam if you want a view”

You follow the Director back into the gym locker room. “Oh god, it still smells in here, and I’ve opened all the doors” 

Penny chokes up and pulls her hoodie up over her nose.

The Director sniffs and looks down at you in confusion. “What smell?”

You look to him, gobsmacked. “How can you not smell that?”

Penny looks highly concerned. “Why can’t you smell that?”

The Director raises an eyebrow, looking around. “What? What’s the smell?”

Hassle laughs and cuts in as he appears with Ortega in tow. “According to Arven, it’s the smell of victory, defeat, sweat, tears, um, vomit, I can’t remember but well just generally hormonal teenage boys who use too much body deodorant rather than showering, I guess…”

Clavell snorts. “Ah, yes, um, no, I'm pretty much attuned to the smell of a boy's locker room, I’m afraid, most of the men are by this point”

“Director, forgive me, but I highly doubt you enjoyed spending a second of your time in…this…” You glare from above your shirt. He chuckles. 

“I said I was attuned to the smell, not that I enjoyed anything remotely to do with being in a gym in high school love, I spent more of it hiding in the library, I admit” Clavell and Hassel both look to Ortega, who was now somewhat dressed with his arm in a sling. 

“I wish I’d stayed in the library." He huffs, looking to Penny, who was offering a look of annoyance mixed with concern. 

You're about to question him about the fight when the sound of the Corvid Ambulance landing outside has you all looking to the open back door. “Right…well…let’s get you three to A&E, hm?” Hassle smirks. 

5:46 pm Mesagosa Square.

You’d become so engrossed in your thoughts, sitting at a table outside Seafood Fresco, as you sat staring off into space at the colourful tiles of the square, that you were genuinely jumpscared by Clavell sitting down in the seat beside you. 

“Oh, god” The table rattles as you jolt, and he looks to you worriedly. You straighten up, force yourself to act casually. 

Clavell isn’t being fooled. “You alright? You missed the video meeting”

You blink and look at your watch. “Oh, shit, sorry I forgot it was Friday…” 

Champion doesn’t turn up for the scheduled weekly group scientific research meeting on Area Zero that you’d be preparing for, of course, Clavell would come looking for you. 

You’d kind of hoped to get this evening alone. 

When you don’t offer some excuse, he raises an eyebrow. Anyone who didn’t know Clavell would probably think he was annoyed, alas, you were fully aware he was simply worried, and this wasn’t a regular Director worried either…

“I’m fine, just enjoying the square for a bit, I was going to, um, meet Nemo for dinner”

“And she informed me you cancelled that about an hour ago” he adds curiously. You gulp. Damn it, why did she say that? Why did she tell him? 

You couldn’t bring this back up now. 

It had been a YEAR. 

“Something bothering you?”

You shrug. You feel thirteen again. 

“I’m fine, I promise it’s nothing…” he goes to argue and you cut him off. “I-I know It’s something but it really isn’t worth your time Clive, I promise, I’m just….thinking about…stuff”

You both sit in silence, listening to the sounds of the square for a long time. Clavell is planning his approach and you can tell. It makes you smile to yourself even though you can feel that emotional turmoil threating to break. Arven would probably never fully understand what it was you saw in Clavell, but my god, jokes about daddy issues or not, Penny hadn’t been lying when she said Clavell was actually the man you NEEDED in your life. 

“Ryan Le’Claire, he’s the older brother of the boy you rescued, isn’t he?”

You snort and look to him willing yourself not to burst into tears as he looks to you knowingly. 

“Trust you…trust you figure out what about today would have any relevance to my mood”

Clavell doesn’t say anything, he just sit forward leaning on the glass table. 

You didn’t want to bring this up. 

You're trying so hard to not start crying. 

You can’t look at him. 

But how were you supposed to let this go?

“It won’t go away”

Clavell looks to you, curiously, from where he’d been watching the square. “What won’t?”

“The nightmares…”

Concern floods into fear across his face, and you fight the lump in your throat. “You told Miriam…”

“I know but I lied, she was going to put me on leave, I’d already been gone two weeks…you were all freaking out that I was just going to run away”

Clavll sighs. “You have no blame for what happened”

“I know, I know that after spending this last YEAR going over every second of that damn fight, and after going over every mintue and every battle we torn through to get down that damn moutain…” you’ve lost the battle not to cry now. 

“I can still here him screaming, begging that he didn’t want to die Clive, it won’t go away, and what’s worse…noone told me, noone told me until today when I asked his fucking brother about him, that he’d left the school six months ago because he was afraid he’d get hurt again, one battle and that kid has been tramatised into running from his education, his friends and his dreams, all because we failed to make sure they would be safe”

Clavell is itching to hold you, and you can feel it, he’s moved closer, reaching, but he knows he can’t touch you out in public like that. Geeta’s rules sucked, but they were there for reasons. 

“What sort of champion am I in the eyes of these kids if they don’t think I’m strong enough to protect them from a Pokemon? Kids have been dropping from those brawls ever since. Dendra tells me all the time that more kids won’t go because I’m not there, not watching, I can’t now, Geeta gets anxious if I go home to mom because I’m far enough away that if that-” you thumb towards the shadow of the mountain. “-somehow has a breakout of futuristic pokemon, people are very likey to get fucking killed, I’m relied on to protect this country and it’s people Clive but if I can’t make one kid feel like I can stop him from ever having to face that nightmare again then what fucking good am I?”

Clavell can’t stop himself from reaching up and thumbing away the tears streaming down your cheek. You glance about, hoping no one is paying attention. You dread to think what the headlines would be now if they heard you talking about that day. 

“I’ll remind you every second for next thirty years if I have to, that WE failed him Champ, you didn’t, the school failed him, the school failed to take into account the safety of the students when we agreed to let Dendra host those brawls” He glances up to the square before looking back. “I wasn’t even there, I wasn't there when the school needed me and when you needed me because I chose to be a stubborn bastard and that put you all at risk-” you go to argue this time and he cuts you off. “-ah, wether or not I could have done as much as you did with the fact the moveset was overlooked, it happened and we learnt from it” he sighs and takes your hand under the table.

“Dendra has been thorough on checks since it happened, more pokemon have been put on the banned list, Hassel has even taken charge of the Batle Registery since then and he only approves students who pass the preliminary tests, there hasn’t been an incident since and there will not be on my watch, I let you down and I’m sorry, both myself and Geeta take the blame for what happened, we overlooked it, and not only was James Le'Claire hurt but so were many other kids not to mention Nemona and yourself” he gulps and raises your hand to kiss your knuckles.

“I failed you in more ways that one over this incident and I failed you over Area Zero as well, if we had listened to you, I admitted all those reports didn’t add up but we continued to believe Turo was alive as much as you and Nemona put evidence forwards something was very wrong, you went down there risking everything and you shouldn’t have had to do that, you shouldn’t have had to risk your life to prove to us that we weren't paying attention, twice might I add, I fear now, everytime you go down there that something might happen without me with you, but I’m not like you, I’m not like Geeta or Nemona, I’m aware my history back in Unova is close enough but I haven’t been on field for years, I’m a desk man these days, I followed you into those bases knowing I had Pokemon that could easily over power them but that doesn’t mean I’m tactically at an advantage over yourself”

“I took out what was left of Arven’s father infront of him, AI or not, it haunts me Director, if James had been killed too…”

Clavell shakes his head and grabs the chair, pulling you closer, as close enough that someone would probably say he was breaking Geeta’s rules.

“But he WASN’T, you didn’t let him, Turo got himself killed, and if you hadn’t dived in there to control that brawl fight, been there to evacuate that ground then I’m certain someone would have been killed, but you saw the chaos, you KNEW what was going to happen before Nemona, before Dendra before Arven, before Hassel, you saved them from what could have been a potentially far far worse fate, I wish I could take the time back and fix what happened, stop what happened beside you, but as fate would have it, it was lesson for everyone that we honestly needed as a school and as human beings working with creatures that we are still learning about everyday…you need to learn to forgive yourself, we do, I do, I never blamed you for a moment, no blames you, I promise love, this is one reason I fell in love with you…”

You blink up at him as you finally get a grip on your emotions. 

“You put your heart into everything you do, wether it’s fighting the good the bad or the down right insane Pokemon, standing up for equality, against bullying, against abuse, you’ve proven over and over again that you deserve to be Champion and not just because you have talent in battling Pokemon, you have become the people’s champion, you risked a lot as teenagers to dive into what was rumored as hell to save millions of people and I fear you will never understand just how much the people of Paldea admire you and respect you for everything you do constantly. James is special case. I tried myself to convince him he was fine but he wanted to step back, he needed time to revalute his life and I’m not about to stop a student from that level of mental health care, his parents update me regularly, he’s perfectly well Champ, and I don’t think you realise how grateful he is to be able to be at home to be with his family when that fight could have taken him. He’ll come back when he’s ready, don’t blame yourself for something we let him down on as a school”

You curl your fingers into the soft velvet of his purple jacket; you want to believe him. 

“Ortega finally told me what the fight was about…”

Clavell raises an eyebrow. 

“Students have been weighing up in the debate union about what happened, about how Champions should be tested and chosen,...many of them have begun to believe Geeta was wrong and should remove my title”

Clavell’s eyes go dark, darker than you have ever seen them. There’s a fire there that you fell in love with, the fire that burned underneath the first time you ran through Giacomo’s Team Star base. 

Fury. 

“Then I believe I better call a meeting with Champion Geeta and we’ll prove to every single one of them why she gave you that title in the first place hm?”

You can’t stop yourself jumping into his lap, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and hugging him like he’d disappear hif you didn't. Geeta's rules be damned, he holds you to his chest with a grip you haven’t felt before. 

“I will never let you forget who has your back, love”

Chapter Text

Incident 00171: BAD DAY FOR RESEARCH

DATE: 01/07

NAME(S): CHAMPION (YOU)

INCIDENT LOCATION: AREA ZERO

ATTENDING FACULTY: Nemona Glitterati / Arven Turo /Penny Peony + 2 others

TIME: 15:55 AM/PM

DIRECTOR INFORMED: YES / NO 

REFERRAL TO LGH A&E: (YES / NO)

“RUN, RUN, RUN!”

 If it wasn’t Arven shouting, it was Nemona.

If it wasn’t you shouting, it was Penny.

This was turning out to be a bad trip, and not the drug type ones you’d heard some people joke about.

You wished right now you were on acid, passed out on the floor or something rather than fleeing for your literal life up a steep hill away from a group of very angry iron jugulis.

For those who don’t know…a futuristic version of Hydregion. Yeah. If the original wasn’t enough….

Your lungs are burning as you dive behind a large boulder to avoid another dragon pulse attack. You could see the cave entrance. 

“SAFETY CHECK!”

There’s a minute before Nemona’s voice breaks over the coms in your helmet. “SAFE!”

“S-Sa-ah, um, SAFE…now”, Arven eventually adds in.

You're all awaiting Penny. “PENNY?”

“I’M HERE, SORRY SAFE!”

You relax slightly as you fight for your breath back. “SIGHT?”

“NO” Arven calls.

“DOWN BY PENNY”, Nemona calls

“They're not far from me…”Penny gulps over the radio, and you take a deep breath and push to your feet to peer over the rock. 

Penny is trapped.

She’s got three very angry-looking Pokémon circling the spot in front of where you can see her coat sticking out. 

You pull Miraidon from your belt and dose him with a full heal and a max potion before dropping him back out. He yips in confusion at why you're hiding. 

“You see, Penny, boy?”

The Pokémon cocks his head and steps out around the boulder, unnerved. You wish you could be that brave right now, but you’ve been out here for nearly seven hours, and you're all getting tired. If you had to run like that again, you're certain you wouldn’t make it. 

Miraidon chirps his agreement, then growls. “Yeah, do me a favour and knock those bastards out of here, please, we’re knackered, we gotta get outta here, I wouldn’t ask since you’ve already been fighting so much but I only got two revives and two other ‘mon’s and they're weak to these gits”

Miradon simply huffs unbothered and charges off. You hear the Iron jugulis roar in annoyance and scatter as Miraidon uses the move discharge, and they flee back, giving Penny space to run from her hiding spot to join Nemona. 

“As soon as you can’t as a Jugulis…run for the entrance”

You glance back once and then start running. You skid to a stop by the cave entrance to see all three of them following only fifteen or so feet behind you. 

No sign of Miraidon. Damn, you're going to have to go back.

“Go, get up to the camp!” You call as your turn back.

Arven grabs your arm. “Don’t you dare, he can handle himself!”

“I’m not leaving him here!”

Nemona grabs you then as well. “Champ, don’t risk it, he knows where we are he’ll find us!”

You huff. “I just need to get back to that ledge to whistle for him, he’ll follow, I promise”

They all look uncertain. Nemona drops out a Pokémon, and so do the other two. “Fine but where staying here until you come back?”

You want to argue, but at the end of the day, you only had two Pokémon left since you’d been doing most of the guard, even Penny’s team were faring better. 

You skid back down the rough and muddy steep track that leads into the first levels of the cavern. You hated being down here, especially since the incident with Kieran. 

You can’t see Miradion. You pull off your helmet, listening. You can’t even hear him fighting. You whistle. No movement, you glance around hoping to have not attracted any Iron Moths or Bundles either. You whistle again. There’s an echo of a scuffle and then a bark. 

You want to run to him, but if you go further, you will be at risk of getting ambushed again. 

You whistle once more and start backing up. You couldn’t describe the feeling of relief when he eventually appears galloping towards you, although it was short-lived. A huge pack of Iron bundles come charging out behind him and…

“OH F**KING HELL RUN FOR IT!”

You're running again. 

You just make it to the entrance to see the others ahead of you already heading towards the base when Miradion comes up behind you and throws you on his back. 

You’d never tire of the excitement. But only when your life wasn’t in danger. 

You watch as the others dive into the base, and Arven pauses at the door, holding it open and shouting for you. Miradion goes to charge inside but…

Something weighty appears out of nowhere in your blind spot and into your left-hand side…What the hell just slammed into you?

“NO!”

“CHAMP!”

“OH MY GOD!”

“PENNY, STAY THERE!”

The only thing you remember is Arven, then wings, then air and darkness.

Everything hurt. 

You could feel the ground, your body, and you could feel yourself breathing so, good news you're not dead.

Something is lying beside you, it moves and the sensation of cool metal grazes your hand. 

Miradion. 

He barks loudly, and you jolt awake, gasping and blinking in shock. 

“OW” oh it hurts to breathe that hard.

You're staring at the sky and find yourself staring up at the side of the mountain, the base tent is about 80 feet up to your left and you're below it. You fell off the edge of the cliff. 

Oh, god. 

Your helmet coms suddenly burst to life. “Champ, can you hear me?”

Penny.

“Ugh”

“Oh, thank fuck!” Nemona shouts from somewhere behind Penny on the comms. 

“Arven and Nemona are just healing up and are on their way down with a stretcher, don’t move, okay?” She sounds terrified. You don’t blame her. You're in Area Zero. Area WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS THAT basically. Because you still hadn’t logged everything that was down here. 

“O-Okay” 

You test your legs, there still attached. Turn your neck, that’s fine too. Your arms…yes?

You're actually not in bad shape considering, no doubt you only came off Miriadion halfway down so, slightly less chance to have broken something serious. 

The coms crackles to life again after a few minutes.

“Champ, it’s Clive. Arven has informed me that we have a code red? Can you give me permission to take over your rotom?”

You swallow hard against the shock setting in. “Um, yeah, yeah, go on”

There’s a rustle from your backpack that had landed a bit to your right, and eventually the device flies out to hover over you. 

“Well… you're in one piece that much, I can tell” Director Clavell seems relieved to see that. 

He seems to be moving; you can see Nurse Miriam beside him. 

“We’ll be down at base camp one in about fiteen minutes, Arven and Nemona are going to move you from three up to us then we can secure you out of Area Zero, I don’t want you to walk until we’re certain you’ve not broken any ribs or worse, understand?” he asks with that familiar fatherly tone and you grunt in response. 

He laughs. 

“Okay, scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?”

You consider for a moment…"Six”, you grit out as the throbbing in your arm starts to register. “I think my…left arm is broken”

The phone moves. “Hmmm…potentially, your suit is hiding any damage but your…wrist, I-um yeah that doesn’t look good, Miriam?”

She appears on the screen, and she winces. “Nope, definitely broken”

“Oh dear…thankfully not your ball arm though”

Thank god for smell mercies today you think. 

You watch as they climb in a ‘billy cab towards Area Zero, suited up just like Nemona, Arven, Penny and yourself had been. Geeta was determind to keep you all protected and these new carbon fibre Area Zero suits were pretty damn cool. They looked just like a leather motorbike suit, but just with more protective plates built to withstand certain Pokémon moves and attacks. 

You manage to move your head to look at Miraidon, sitting beside you like a giant puppy dog. He was a bit muddy from the impact, but overall didn’t seem injured. 

“You okay, boy?” you cough. 

Miradion chirps in approval at you and leans down to nuzzle your helmet. He was okay. 

You're about to ask him to go back up the cliff to lead Nemona and Arven down when you hear Arven shout. “Over here!”

You turn again to see them skidding down a rough track in the cliffside. “Sorry, we’d have been faster but had to find a way down that we could also carry you back up” Arven pants as he crouches down beside you. 

You're just grateful they’re okay and able to help. 

You lay still as Miriam talks Arven and Nemona through checking you over for injuries. “Apart from bruises, shock, a bad arm and a clearly broken wrist, it seems Champs got out of this fall quite smoothly”, Arven comments as he sets the board stretcher down beside you. 

“I can walk then?”

“NO”

“Absolutely not!”

“Are you mad?”

“God no!”

You snort at the carchophy of rejection to that suggestion. 

Nemona rolls you onto your good side so Arven can push the stretcher underneath, and your whole body protests. “AH okay, okayy, I get the point ah!” 

“Good” Clavell sighs. 

Miriam directs Arven to wrap your wrist and arm up for support before strapping you down. “Okay, so we just got to get back to Penny and we’re clear, we're going to put Jolteon on creating an electric barrier around us, and we can walk you up to base one without stopping, hopefully” Nemona offers with a cheerful and hopeful tone.

“At least that’s our plan anyway” Arven adds, checking the straps one last time. 

“You can’t carry me all that way?” You protest, strapped down like this. 

“We don’t need to, Machamp will”, Nemona smirks. 

Oh, yeah, you forgot about him. 

Nemona throws out the fighting type, and he stretches out refreshed after being healed. He scoops you up with little effort and turns carefully to follow Nemona back towards the slope they came down. 

You're about halfway up when Clavell announces he and Miram have arrived at the airlock for Area Zero. 

“Be careful” Nemona urges. “The top level is mostly known Pokemon, but they’re a bit skittish, it’s fairly wide and open so you won’t be able to hide much, not that the Director won’t already know, but things might have changed since he was last down here”

“If things haven’t changed in ten years, Nemo, I’d be worried” you comment. 

“Make that fourteen” Clavell adds over the comms, and you all wince. 

“Damn, have we been at this school for five years?” Arven mutters out loud. 

“Seven for you, Arven, Seven!”  Miriam adds in. 

Nemona pauses. “Oh yeah, your dad dumped you here when you were ten, didn’t he?”

Arven sigh. “Yup, and he’s no more my dad than Clavell has been”

“I don’t see how me teaching you to shave and get a bank account is classed as being a dad?” Clavell complains.

“It’s more than he ever did” Arven counters. 

“Don’t forget, paying off his school fee’s, buying his uniform, helping him sell the lighthouse and paying his championship submission, letting him resit the year we ended up down here as well as helping him get a mortgage for a house now he’s got cash from playing American football” you huff. 

“And that too,” Arven chuckles. 

“Not to mention, helping him see that Chelsea was nothing more than a dumb blonde and not worth his time when he needs a woman with standards” Nemona adds in as Arven helps push her up over the last bit of ledge to the top bank again. 

Arven rolls his eyes as he pulls himself up the bank. “Okay, so what sort of woman is good for me then?”

Penny decides to cut in. “Nemo”

Machamp carefully slides your stretcher onto the grass before climbing up over the ledge and picking you back up with a worried look.

Nemo and Arven look at each other for a second before looking away. You snort. “I don’t even need to see to know that suggestion didn’t work, try again, Penny”

“Miriam?” She jokes.

Arven chokes, Nemo laughs out loud, and Clavell just snorts. 

“Sorry, not my type” Miriam cuts in, grunting as she hauls a bag about. 

“Yeah, she’s like Champ, prefers older men” Nemona chuckles.

“Don’t be ageist Nemo, you're just jealous Champ has a rich bloke now” Arven teases as you start walking back towards the third camp. 

“Rich bloke?” She laughs. “Arven, Champ has about as much money as the Director now, and my family has about three times their bank accounts put together, PLEEASSSEE!”

Arven pauses. “Oh yeah, I forgot you're a glitterarti” 

Penny huffs. “Can we just focus on getting Champ back in one piece?”

Clavell takes the time to cut in. “Well, we have successfully landed at base camp one, we’re unloading the gear and putting the kettle on”

Arven sighs. “Thank Arceus, I have had about as much of Area Zero as I take for the rest of the year”

“Same” “Same” “Same” “Same”

You all end up laughing despite the concern. 

The plan to walk you up to base camp one went off without a hitch. Thankfully. 

Jolteon's eerie impulse managed to deter any Pokémon from approaching your group, so Machamp was able to safely carry you back up the slopes of Area Zero without interruption. 

The next thing you saw, save from the white ceiling, was Clavell. “Miss me?”

“No, course not, why would I ever?” You snort. 

Miriam chuckles in the background. Clavell turns to your friends and shoos them off into the main room from the side room where they’d placed you. “Go, go sit down, get out your suits, have some food and check your Pokémon, we’ll move as soon as we clear that Champ hasn’t smashed half their rib cage, okay?”

Nemona is distracted from wanting to settle by the way you keep complaining in pain as Miriam fusses about you. “Miss Nemona, I know you're worried but standing there isn’t going to help, go look after yourself for a minute. We’re going to need you when we move again, sweetheart, okay?” Clavell offers softly as he turns to her by the doorway. “You're the only defence Champ has got right now”

It takes half an hour for Miriam and Clavell to prod around you before they determine that you hadn’t been damaged too much from the fall. 

“So, good news-” Miriam calls from somewhere to your right. “Or bad news first” Clavell finishes off distractedly as he reviews his laptop. 

You glance between them as they lean over you. “Both and hurry up”

“Well, good news, you're not going to die, you're in one piece, badly bruised and with a mild concussion, but otherwise, fine” Miriam smiles. 

“Bad news, we need to air lift you to A&E because your wrist has completely snapped, potentially ripped muscles and damaged the nerves as well, and from the scans, your shoulder has taken a hit, it’s definitely cracked”

“Your arm is held out somewhat, but you probably can’t move it”

You try and fail. That's not good. “Can you splint it or something?”

“We’re going to, roughly anyway, enough to support it, why?”

You sigh. If you didn’t complain now, you’d be in serious bother by the time you got to the surface. 

“Because I gotta get up”

Miriam and Clavell look at each other before looking at you. “Absolutely not”

“I’m not asking Clive”

Clavell looks confused. “Why do you want to get up?”

“I need to pee, in fact, I needed to pee, twenty minutes ago”

“Ah” he laughs awkwardly. “Well…I’m afraid…”

“Nope, not hearing it, strap me up, I’m getting up”

“You shouldn’t really…”

“I’m not ruining this suit!”

“You were already bleeding”

“Not the point!”

“I’ve seen worse…”

“I was out of my body on a poisonous substance, I couldn’t do anything about that if I tried, THIS I can so move or I’m moving first!”

Miriam cuts in. “I can cather-” 

“Right, that’s it!” You snap, pushing to sit up with your good hand and Clavell and Miriam dive to support you.

“Ow, ow, fuck my back!”

“Yeah! I did warn you love, Arceus!”

Miriam is quick to bandage your arm into a strong sling before Clavell carries you into the small bathroom to prevent further argument.

The protest at you walking up to the elevator was cut short when you dropped out Miraidon, and they all relented as you rode on his back to the doors. 

A Corvid ambulance awaited you at the top, and you gave Miraidon to Nemona to take her, Arven and Penny back to the school as you went with Clavell and Miriam to A&E. 

The next morning, you're met by Miriam at the front gate as you return from the square for breakfast. 

“I thought I said you were on bed rest, Champ” She chides, smiling. You smirk back, fixing your snapback hat and glancing at your heavily strapped arm.

“Look, I was in bed, I just came out for a walk, I swear I wasn’t going to see Clive about some cool research I found” 

She snorts and walks with you as you head into the main hall. “That fall could have been far worse” she mutters, eyeing you. 

You sigh and glance about the lobby. “Tell me about it, I really meant it when I said to Clive to tell Geeta I’m done with Area Zero trips this year, it’ll take months for this to heal anyway”

“-And I couldn’t help but fully agree, Morning Champ, Nurse Miriam”

You both turn to see Clavell and Geeta entering in the lobby behind you. “You say that now, though, I tell you, by Christmas Champ you’ll be talking about going down there, and I know it” Clavell smirks. You snort and turn away, hiding a smirk. He knew you too well. 

Geeta looks at your arm and sighs sadly. “I’m so glad you didn’t end up doing any worse. You wouldn’t be injured if I hadn’t wanted those samples” 

You turn back and sigh, too. “It’s fine, it was fun up to a point, it always is, there’s always something new to learn down there, I just wish they’d stop mobbing up, they’re really aggressive recently, they have as much agro as tauros and everyone knows I hate those damn bulls”

Clavell hums. He recalled the tale of you running for your life across the Levenica plains. 

“What did you find out anyway?” Clavell cuts in curiously. Miriam and Geeta look intrigued, too. 

You glance around before sliding your bag open to pull something out of the side pocket. A thick cloth. 

Clavell cocks his head. You open the cloth to reveal a thick chunk of crystal, a crystal as black as onyx and sparkling like a diamond. 

All three of them gasp quietly. 

“A black tera crystal?” Clavell mutters.

“Solid black, in fact it was so dark I ran into the damn thing in the darker under levels. We were heading for the treasure cavern when we found it, it wasn’t there before. It’s even darker than the ones Jacq has had rare sightings of up here”

“Any Pokémon around it?” Geeta enquires, holding out her hands so you can hand over the cloth and the cyrtsyal, she admires it for a moment before wrapping it back up. 

“Yeah, Iron Jugulis, they swooped in the second I picked up the chunk I broke off for testing, we didn’t get a chance to see if something was inside or even if it was part of a cave, we ended up running when they one-shot my Charizard”

The panic on their faces was almost comical. “One…shot…Champ…”

“YEAH, one, just one dragon pulse and he went down, those damn things were WAY stronger than anything I’ve ever seen, even Miradion was having a hard time and he’s now my most powerful Pokemon!” You huff.

Miriam looks between your arm and Clavell. “This could have ended so badly”

“Well, let’s just remain grateful it didn’t, and yes, I agree, no more trips, not for a while, let things settle down, down there, maybe we can plan for a bigger group to go down if we need to later”

Geeta tucks the crystals away in her satchel. “Thank you for this, really, it means a lot that you're still willing to do this, without Turo, we’re pretty much blind to everything down there without you”

“Yeah, well, we’ve got a point to prove, don’t we?” You smirk. 

Clavell’s lips curl in a snarl. “You have nothing more to prove to anyone, not even me”

You laugh as you step away, seeing Nemona appear at the gates that lead towards the dorms. “Trust me, Clive, busted arm or not, I’ve still got A LOT to prove”