Chapter 7: Separation

John was mentally screaming. Now he basically had to assume that everyone could just possibly just eat him. After all, bugs offer good protein, do they not? He needed to think carefully about this, if Claire doesn’t give the owl a good enough answer, he needed to step in to tell the truth.

“So sweetie, why bring a newborn bug to class?” She asked, looking closely at the Joltik she was holding with her wings.

Claire shook the feeling of despair away and looked at the Decidueye with a fierce look. “He’s my friend! Please, don’t do anything to him, he was just um… watching over me!”

She looked back at Claire, glaring for a second at her before sighing. “Sweetie…” She shifted her position, turning fully towards Claire and crouching down to her level, placing John below her talons so he wouldn’t escape. He stayed silent, his tiny heart beating like a micro machine gun. “I know you erm… have a bit of a difficult time making friends but…” She placed a wing on Claire’s back, stroking her fur a bit. “You can’t just go into the wild and just… befriend every wild Pokémon you see. They might’ve escaped a Mystery Dungeon, that was making them act feral, but they still suffer the effects from it periodically. They could go mad and attack you.”

“But-…” She tried to retort but immediately got cut off.

“Even if none of that happens, what would happen if you brought one to a school? Yes, a Joltik might not be that dangerous, but still, he could’ve just bitten a student. Like Taro, for example, he does sit behind you.” She explained.

“But he would never do that! He can control himself!” The Vulpix shouted back, a bit mad.

“A newborn controlling himself? Please stop being delusional Claire… even if that was the case, what if someone else had spotted it? Someone that doesn’t think twice before doing harsh things?” She said while looking at the bug in her talon who was completely paralyzed by fear, or… something else?

Claire looked at her teacher with a sad look on her face. “Please… don’t take him away from me…” She looked to the side, concerned about the next events. The Decidueye stayed silent, then got up looking at Claire with a bird smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to him or take him away from you for good.” Iris picked John from her talons, holding him on her wing. “I’m just going to take him into a safe place so I can give him back to you once your classes are done. You know where my office is, right? It’s next to your locker, right?”

Claire didn’t know what to say, should she just accept Iris to have him while she was in school? Or should he grab him and run away again? No, she can’t be a coward, that’s not how an explorer does it! With a huge breath, she looked at Iris. “Alright… just don’t hurt him, please…”

“You have my word. You can go to your break now.” At that, Iris walks away, folding her wings to hide John.

Claire looks down as her face darkens. “Why does no one understand me…?” She clenched her paw and she could hear a metal screeching sound. She paid no mind to it and she calmed down. Unclenching her paws, she walked away from the scene, not noticing the locker door that was beside her, completely crushed and folded, as it fell from the locker itself.

---

The shiny Decidueye entered the room and locked the door with keys she pulled out from her feather pocket in her chest.

‘Man, these feathers are getting on my fucking nerves…’ John thought as he sniffed from his sides. The archer owl put the keys away and walked towards her desk, while also grabbing a small enclosure, fit for Pokémon of any small size. She put it on her desk beside the monitor of her computer and sat on her chair while groaning.

“Ugh… I’m getting old… can’t use a single move anymore without getting tired…” She placed John on the desk and looked at him. “I wonder where Claire found you… was she that brave enough to wander in a Galvantula’s nest?”

“Galvantula-?” John muttered out loud and covered his mouth with his nubs. The Decidueye looked at him in confusion but also in surprise. ‘Fucking hell, me and my big mouth!’ He thought as started trembling. The Decidueye blinked in confusion, shit he messed up! What does he do in a situation like this? Wait… Reya said to just say Joltik… he needed to do it. “Joltik!” He said with a squeak, trying to act like a normal baby.

Iris stayed silent for a moment and then sighed putting a wing in her head as she turned on her computer. “I must be really getting old…” John sighed in relief. It had worked, his secret was safe once again!

Although, he was curious about how someone with wings would type in a computer. He looked at the keyboard, it was a normal black keyboard, that had a strange logo on it. Something else bothered him, however… the keys were on the English alphabet. He flinched as he made the realization, and Iris took notice of that, she glared at him once again. ‘This Joltik… is a little strange…’ She thought as the company logo appeared on the screen “Asuri”. Again, which made the green critter flinch once again because those were normal letters.

“So I guess the handwriting of that room just felt weird…” John muttered so that only he could hear. But he got surprised when a wing swopped in and grabbed him, leaving him in front of the owl’s face once again.

“Alright, spill the beans, what are you? You react weirdly to certain things, and you stay silent most of the time, without muttering a single Joltik. And when I apparently hear you say another word other than normal, you immediately say Joltik. And then you muttered a full sentence… who are you?” She squinted her eyes, trying to get a closer look at John. He was backed against the wall, there was no other way out. John forgot almost every Pokémon has augmented hearing, sight, or nose. This one had sight and hearing it seemed…

John sighed and looked to the side. “You got me, happy now…?” Iris was a bit surprised that she recoiled a little.

“You actually can… talk?” She put him on the desk again, still on watch of him. John looked back at her, still a bit unsure if this was the right idea.

“Yes I can… I’m… a human…”

“What!?” She shouted while adjusting her glasses and her position in the chair. “W-why you didn’t tell me before? So Claire didn’t have to cover for you?” She asked, genuinely confused about why he didn’t admit right there.

“I… I didn’t trust you.” He admitted it. “Before coming here, I knew there was some secret organization kidnapping humans. I honestly just assumed that anyone would have contact with it, even the school employees could have. So… I thought it would be best to just hide my true identity.” He sat on the table, like a dog by just bending his back limbs and keeping his forelimbs straight. Slowly but surely, he was testing the limits of this body. It looked kinda cute in Iris’ eyes.

“Well…” She shifted into a more comfortable position, she glanced at the computer to see that it had turned on, then looked back at John. “It is understandable, if I was in your situation, I would be quite scared as well. After all, Joltiks aren’t really known for a lot of combat. However, the species you are right now does have its advantages.”

“Like for example…?” He tilted his head while asking.

“Well, one good example is that your size makes you really hard to spot. Well… except for a few flying types that have really good eyesight of course…” She admitted as John made a confused look.

“Are you a flying type since you’re like… an owl-like Pokémon?”

“Partially… like as you probably heard from my class…” Oh, she knew he was there all the time, didn’t she? “Since my physique is more like a bird, my core has a bit of the flying type along the edges. But my actual typings are grass and ghost.”

“I see… wait ghost?” He was not getting it, why was her species part ghost?

“You see, remember the move… Spirit Shackle? That Glameow I just trapped… I just didn’t trap her body, but actually her soul. Oh, wait, speaking of which…” She looked at the time on the monitor, it was 10:15 a.m. on the time bar. “her detention is over.”

She raised a wing up in the air and it glowed with that same purple glow that was in the arrow. Meanwhile, in the classroom, the Glameow was with her book opened beside the arrow piercing the desk. Suddenly, the arrow fell flat out of the table. The Glameow looked to the sides and grabbed her book, by wrapping it around her long tail, then left the classroom.

Back in Iris’s office. John was looking at her with a bit of fear.

“What… did you do?” He asked, his voice a bit shaky.

“Oh, I just released her of her detention, nothing to piss yourself over with.” She chuckled as John looked down to see he had pissed himself again.

“Dammit… this stupid baby body… ugh sorry for this, I have apparently been reborn a baby…” He look again to the side and blushed as he was embarrassed.

“Oh really…?” She got up from her chair and walked towards a drawer. “How old were you before coming here?”

“Twenty years old…” He said as Iris grabbed a roll of toilet paper from one of the drawers.

“Damn, so you were an adult before your old life?” He nodded. She went back to her desk, removed a piece of paper from the roll, and swept it on the piss area that John was standing on. She threw the wet paper on the small trash can on the side of her desk. “So you’re basically starting life all over again.”

John nodded slowly. “I… I didn’t want any of this…”

“Look… that’s what basically most of the humans said from reports of their adventures and stories.”

John looked at her pleadingly. “Did they ever get their old life back…?”

She put her wings together and looked to the side. “Not that I know…” John lowered his head at that. Was there simply no way back? No… even if he did, he was dead. He couldn’t possibly get his old body back, and he had to accept that. He had to live another life while being in the body of one of the creatures he feared the most… but hey at least he didn’t have to see how ugly his face was most of the time.

“What about Claire? Now that you know of me, will you take me back to her?” The Decidueye put her wing below her beak as she thought about it. After a moment, she adjusted her glasses once more.

“What you said before got me thinking… what IF a school employee is part of an evil organization that kidnaps humans? So I think it’s better if you stayed in my office until I give you back to Claire. Because even if they spot you, Claire will fight them off, and then, she might slip up and tell the truth.” John pondered that scenario. It was clear she would do anything to just stay with him no matter what.

“Yeah, you’re right… I know her long enough to know that she’s got quite the obsession with me…” He noted.

‘It is to be expected after that day…’ Iris thought as she started to look in the computer for some files.

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Why did she let him take him away? Was it really a good idea? Now look at her, all alone again, sitting like a bipedal Pokémon on a wooden bench in the small backyard of the school, eating her Wishiwashi sandwich. She felt miserable, she couldn’t even just keep him in secret the whole time. She was dumb, she was so dumb, she deserves being this lonely-

“Hey.”

A male voice said beside her. She looked to the source to see Taro, the Togedemaru. “Hey…” She said sadly as the rodent sat beside her.

“Are you good?” He asked while adjusting himself on the bench. “I saw you in here a bit sadder than usual…”

She raised an “eyebrow”, looking at him. “Were… you watching me?”

The Togedemaru squeaked and rubbed the top of his body in a bit of shame. “Um… for some time now…”

Claire stayed silent for a moment, as she didn’t know what to say. She then just sighed and confessed. “No… I I’m not that good today…”

“Do you wanna tell me about it?” He asked while looking worried at her. Claire looked down back at her sandwich and took a bite out of it.

“No… I don’t think it’s best to…” She said in between crunches.

Taro put a paw on his chin. “You’re not… depressed, are you?”

She looked at him and waved him off. “No, no! I’m not, uh… it’s just something that Ms. Iris talked about…”

“Were you actually in trouble for ditching class yesterday?” He asked, tilting his face to the side.

“I guess… you could say that.” She looked to the side, a bit ashamed. It was a half-truth at least.

“Well, don’t worry.” The Togedemaru let out a grin. “At least you walked it off, right? It’s not like you got punished or anything right?”

“Just a tiny lecture I guess…”

“See, it’s not as bad as you think. It turned out okay in the end.” He raised a paw in the air, trying his best to make a thumbs-up. Claire looked back at the sandwich in silence and ate the rest of it, resting her forepaws on her back limbs. She looked at Taro once again and smiled weakly.

“… Thanks.”

“Huh?” He lowered his paw. “For what?”

“For cheering me up.” She said while jumping down the bench and starting to walk on all fours again. “I feel a little better now.”

“Oh uh… you’re welcome.” He said as he rubbed his back. Until a sudden lick on the cheek by Claire caught him by surprise. Behind his gray fur, it could be seen he was blushing.

“That’s for being really supportive of me. Thanks!” She exclaimed as she walked away. The bells rang signifying that break was over and they should go back to class. Taro put his paw on his cheek, still not believing what just happened.

“I… wow…”

All of the students went back to their classes.