Teal
#1 of A pokemon story.
Teal, a vaporeon anthro, has an unexpected accident saving a drowning child at the Cerulean aquatics center (Misty's gym). Will his life turn for the worse?
The mid-autumn wednesday was cool and the air was crisp like the leaves covering lawns and roads alike. The streets were busy with the hubbub of everyday life, people driving between jobs or just to and from. The pokemon world had changed forever a few years prior when a meteorite had struck, sending 'evo-dust' across the globe. Though harmless to humans, the unique element had a profound effect on pokemon, adding a final evolution to their evolution trees. Now human-like pokemon joined alongside people in the workforce. They had proven to be versatile in almost every range of employment; psychics were perfect for lawyers, fire-types for smelting and most fighting types were good for construction.
A large bus laden with some first year schoolkids trundled along a road. The bus was headed for the aquatics center at Cerulean City for the student's first swimming lessons; students were required to go for an entire week every year, and most would have their first pokemon companion along for added support and security; the waters could be dangerous to a student who could not swim properly. Human trainers would be there, of course, but what the students didn't know was that the instructors that would be teaching them were all pokemon. Four instructors, three females and a male, who were under the careful watch of their caregivers. The pokemon that had proven most popular amongst the students who had been there already was Aqua, a Dewgong with a gentle heart and incredible swimming skills. The first year students were surprised to find that their bus-driver was also a pokemon, a vibrant blue Vaporeon named Teal. His trainer sat in the seat behind him, disinterestedly watching the students board and telling his pokemon when it was safe for them to go.
It wasn't that the humanoid pokemon were not trusted; Arcanine and Growlithe were fiercely loyal and guarded their human trainers like a poor man guards bars of gold. It was a law that humanoid pokemon had to be under the constant supervision of their trainers, people were unsure about if they might be dangerous, and some of them had unique physiologies that required constant supervision. Teal, for instance, needed to have his skin dampened every so often when not in a highly humid environment else his body could shut down. This was remedied easily by having him drive students to the aquatics center, where he could recuperate by sitting inside the room with the heated pool; the extreme humidity could ruin his uniform, so he wore bathing trunks underneath to keep himself covered. He was an agile swimmer, and like his lower-evolution brethren he could not only run on water, but also dissipate into it and even breathe it, filtering it out through gills hidden by the ruff around his neck.
The bus arrived at the center and the Vaporeon driver parked it in the designated spot before standing and grabbing a towel from inside the glove-compartment; he never knew if he might need it, he was allowed to swim with the first year students last year as a novelty to them, and he was a regular at the pool, even when it was the snowy season. His trainer trusted him under the guidence of Misty, the leader of the gym, and he was usually allowed to roam free as long as he stayed in the security camera's view. Teal liked Misty, she was kind to all water-types regardless of evolution or species and was always willing to give out some advice to younger trainers who were interested in challenging the gym for a badge. He opened the doors and stood at attention.
"Students may now leave the bus." He said haphazardly; most pokemon evolved to this stage can speak, but not many children are aware of this fact. "Please do not leave any personal belongings."
The teachers led their students out and into the aquatics center, where they most likely got changed, whilst Teal's trainer stood up and stepped off the bus to address his pokemon.
"Alright, Teal," He said, "you know the rules. No rough-housing, don't swim in the same pool as the students unless you are requested to or it's an emergency, you will listen to everything Misty tells you to do, else I'll take away your privelages and you'll be restricted to sitting in the corner with me looking over your shoulder; understand?"
Teal nodded and wagged his musculature tail. "Yes, master." He said. He scratched a spot under his ruff and his leg kicked involuntarily before he happily walked into the building.
He was stopped at the counter by the human clerk. "Hi, Teal." He said. "Welcome back. Misty is already in the pool hall, I'll accompany you to the change-rooms."
Teal smiled happily and followed close behind him to the male changing rooms, where he sat in the corner by the door and changed out of his uniform. He put it all in a plasic bag and hung it on a hook before grabbing his towel and walking back to the door. He scratched his neck again, this time he was irritated, it felt like a rash.
"Alright, I'll walk you to the pool, let's go." The human said, before noticing the bright blue vaporeon panting heavily. "Dude, you alright?"
Teal shook his head. "I feel tired." He said brfore slumping forward. The clerk caught him before he hit the ground and lifted him with a grunt.
"Dammit, Teal." He said. "We've told you before to tell your master to keep water with him and to watch out for the signs of your dehydration, but you never listen!" Teal lightly chuckled.
"I've... Told him... Before." He wheezed. "But... He never l-listens." The human took Teal's towel from him and carried him into the pool hall and up to the deep end, where Misty was watching the students with a disinterested stare on her face. She looked up to Teal before he was heaved into the pool with a large splash. Teal took a moment to allow the water to remoisturise his skin before resurfacing.
"Hello, Teal." Misty said. "Dehydrated again, eh?"
"I could almost swear that my master ignores the issue on purpose." Teal said as he climbed out of the pool. "In future, I'll keep bottled water in the bus so that I can keep myself hydrated." He said to Misty's unrelenting glare.
"Indeed." She said, turning her head back to the students who were busy learning different strokes with the aid of flotation boards. "Though it's a nice influx of funds for the pool, these lesons always bore me so." She said with a sigh.
"It's too bad you don't have another pool you can recluse to at times like this." Teal said. "And the Saunas are probably closed too, I take it?"
"The heaters have been broken for a week now." She said. "All we can do is sit and watch." She gave a bored glance to Teal. "How're you doing with your bus?" She asked, hoping that he could give her some relief from her boredom.
Teal sighed and stepped onto the water, standing next to where Misty sat with her legs in the water. "I do love the drives." He said. "But I would much rather be working here."
"And why would that be?" One of her Elite trainers asked. "So that you wouldn't dehydrate like a big blue prune?" He sniggered cruelly before Misty pushed him into the pool.
"Apologise." She ordered. "You know we don't discriminate, Daniel; if he wants a job here, he is fully entitled to give me his interview now free of prejudice."
Teal held up a clawed paw. "No, it's alright." He said. "That is kind of one of the reasons why I wouldn't mind the job."
"What are the others?" Misty asked, truly showing interest in this idea.
"You should know, as the most Elite of water trainers around, that Vaporeon can dissipare into water." He said. "Well, how about this?"
He sank down into the water, his body vanishing as he went until he had completley vanished, even his shorts. Suddenly the Elite trainer was lifted out of the water, by the water, and Teal reappeared around him, holding him up.
"A lifeguard that can be anywhere and everywhere would ba a valuable tool in the pool, would it not?" He said, putting the Elite on the tiles carefully.
"Yes, it probably would." Misty said. "But the pool filters are what prove a problem to hiring vaporeon." She said, pointing them out. "You could be hurt considerably if you were sucked into the drains, and your trainer would be quite upset if I let any harm come to you." She sighed with a light smile on her face. "You've not got a teaching degree, making you unable to take an instructing role, and though you might be a good lifeguard we have plenty already. I can't really justify getting you a position until one of those conditions change." She put her hand on his shoulder as his face dropped. "Don't worry too much, kid." She said. "I'm sure one of these days I could get you in here somewhere."
"Even if it's only as a pool toy." The Elite said rudely. Teal grabbed him and dropped him into the water, angrily walking across the water to another part of the pool.
He sat there for some time, idly watching the unevolved flying-types fly around the building whilst trying to force his mood out of his head. He wasn't paying the students any attention, not even when they came over to curiously look him over. Prejudice against humanoid pokemon was uncommon, and most who were the targets of such abuse would walk away feeling extremely upset; unable to do anything against it. He sat with his feet in the warm water, completley tuning out the world until his waterproof watch told him it was time to go. He sighed; as much as he loved his work, he wanted to work at the center more. He hated being stuck in a job that he could dehydrate doing in no time flat. He knew his master didn't mind his only humanoid working where he did; it payed well enough for them to live on it alone and so he didn't have a job himself. Usually he would laze about in the bus or wherever it was he would be watching his pokemon from and do little. Loyalty to his master was about all that kept him from running away and trying to join Misty's own party. His master could drive the bus, yes, but he was usually unwilling to do so.
Teal stood up out of the pool and turned to the entrance. A teacher jogged up to him carefully and stopped him from leaving.
"One of our students is missing." She said in a worried tone. "We can't find him anywhere. The instructors are checking the grounds, you've not seen him, have you?"
"I can't say I-" Was all he could say, before one of Misty's Elite trainers yelled, drowning him out.
"There!" He bellowed. "At the bottom of the pool!" He grabbed a radio on his belt. "Instructors to the pool, we have a kid at five deep!"
Five meters of water between the kid and oxygen, Teal could see that he was already running out of life, so he dived into the pool, despite Misty demanding him not to. Now he could hear the Elite saying something else, something slightly muffled but recognizeable all the same.
"Rogue pokemon in main pool! Freeze him in!"
They were going to freeze him in the pool? Even if it might kill the boy in one of the most painful ways? He had to hurry, he could feel the water around him cooling and hear the surface start to solidify. Quicker than any human could, he swum to the bottom, grabbed the boy around his middle and kicked off the bottom, rocketing for the last open space of surface. He had just enough time to push the boy out, using his momentum to launch him to the edge where the ice was already thick before his arms were caught in the solidifying water. Being almost water, his entire body froze with the pool, leaving his hands protruding out the top and a look of triumph on his face. Misty walked across the carpet of ice to the hands, followed close behind by her Elites and an Officer Jenny.
"His trainer is going to be angry." Jenny said.
Misty knelt down and rubbed the frost off the surface of the crystal clear ice and stared at the open eyes of the frozen pokemon.
"Turn off the filters." She said. "And turn the pool heater back on. We need to defrost him from underneath, else we could kill him with hypothermia."
"It wouldn't be much of a loss." The male Elite said. Misty swung around and slapped him across the face with her wet palm, leaving a bright red handprint on his face.
"'Freeze him in'?!" She yelled. "Since when do we do that to rogue pokemon?! You know full well that the ice function is for winter skating only, and you could have killed the child, who is barely consious as it is! You're lucky it's hard to find trainers as good as you are, else I'd kick your ass out of this gym so hard you'd be unable to sit for a year!"
The ice beneath them vibrated softly, indicating that the heater had been activated, and the soft whining sound of the filters that they had become accustomed to softly died away, letting Misty know that the filtration engines had, indeed, been deactivated. A human-form golduck came running into view. This was Misty's; and he was one hell of a far cry from the bumbling imbecile he was when he was a psyduck. He slid to a stop next to Misty and dutifully bowed.
"Filters are deactivated, heating grill is warming as we speak." He said. Though posessing no lips, he could speak fluently with ventriloquism. "His master is driving the kids back to school, and all of our bookings have been refunded for the day."
"What time do we expect his master back here?" Misty asked.
"About an hour." He replied. "He said something about returning with a lawyer."
Misty sighed, pushing the Elite on his ass. "See what happens when we become prejudiced?" She asked rhetorically. "I'll be in my office figuring out a way to get us out of this mess, you lot are to go about cleaning and lockup procedures. He'll be active soon, and he'll liquify himself when he's got some warmth flowing through him. I want you to come and get me when he is, got it?"
Below them, slowly but surely, Teal closed his eyes.
Twenty minutes later, Teal was aware again; and he could move his body, but not his hands, which were still frozen solid. He kept himself as still as he could, filtering oxygen through his hidden gills. He had to be careful, if he breathed too heavily, he could use all the oxygen up and suffocate. Every so often he heard the slamming sounds of the filters being activated to replace the oxygen he was using up, and they would only be active a short while before shutting off again. Another twenty minutes passed and he now had control of his arms and hands back. He opened one of his eyes a crack to see the Dewgong instructor watching him intently, and he closed his eye again quickly to make sure she didn't notice. In an instant he shifted, changing his body into water and joining the water in the pool. To a Dewgong who had been watching him for roughly ten minutes, this was quite disconcerting, and she screamed for Misty as soon as it hit her. Misty ran over and Teal reconstructed himself under the surface of the ice, his palm against the crystal-clear wall.
"Welcome back to the land of the living." She said, her words barely audible through the barrier. "How do you feel?" He eventually desciphered her question and held his arms around himself. "Head to the bottom of the pool, the heater is warming the water and you should be free in about ten minutes."
Teal nodded and headed for the bottom, but he stopped when he saw his master walking across the pool. He had another human in tow, dressed in a business suit and with a hefty-looking suitcase. Teal swam to a distant part of the pool and slammed into the ice with Giga-Impact, barely even cracking it. Teal's trainer and his human companion gave Misty a worried look.
"Giga Impact." She said matter of factly. "The is is very thick, though, I don't think he could break through it. What is your business here?"
"My client;" Said the suit-wearing human, "is here to discuss a suit for damages caused to his property, a Vaporeon called Teal." This struck Teal where it hurt, his master; suing Misty despite Teal being fine? Teal growled, but he couldn't be heard through the ice. The lawyer took paper from his briefcase and handed it to Misty. "You'll find this to be the sum total."
"O-one million Pokedollars?!" Teal heard Misty exclaim. "You can't be serious!"
Misty was right, one million was alot of money to claim over such a little accident, he knew his master was going to milk this for all it was worth.
"His personal property-" this comment made Teal's mind boil with rage. He was nobodys property. Humans and Pokemon team up as companions, not as master and slave! "-has been caused harm and as such has been unable to continue work, costing my client an entire day of earnings."
Now Teal was outraged. Is that all he was to his master? A thing? Something that made all the money while he wasted it pointlessly on things like TVs and game consoles? This was the final straw, and he swum over to where the humans were congregated and motioned Misty to move off the ice.
"Well..." Misty said, stunned at the outrageous amount of money being asked for. "Come to my office and we'll talk about this privately." She said, stepping off the ice.
Teal erupted through the foot-thick ice, his Frustration smashing through it like it were made of paper. His master and the lawyer fell into the cool water while Teal stood on the ice, glaring down at them angrily.
"You sicken me, master." He said. "Is that all you thought of me? Your own private money machine? Is that why you cared for me so little?"
"What are you talking about, Teal?" His trainer asked angrily. "You'd better have a good excuse!"
"I think I understand now why you would never take advice on keeping me well hydrated in the summers and on warmer trips." Teal said. "You don't care about me at all, do you? All you care for is your wallet and your comfort. Did it ever occur to you that I could have died in that bus from dehydrating? Did it?!"
"If you hated it so much, why did you do it?!" His master yelled back. "Well?!"
Misty walked over and glared down at the trainer clinging to the ice. "Why does a growlithe protect his master against impossible odds?" She asked. "Why do Ampharos protect their Mareep from packs of Mightyena?"
"I did it because you were the most important person in my life." Teal said. "You're my master! Did my evolutions mean nothing to you!?" Now even the lawyer was giving Teal's trainer dirty looks; despite being able to look at any argument in a truly neutral position, he was starting to greatly dislike his client. "I loved you!" Teal yelled, tears falling from his face. "And you broke my heart."
Teal's trainer wasn't going to take this from some pokemon, not even Teal, his meal ticket; and he fished teal's pokeball out and swung it up to withdraw him.
"Be quiet, you stupid animal!" He yelled. Before Teal could be pulled back into the ball, however, Misty kicked the ball out of his master's hand. The red and white orb skipped across the ice until it stopped, caught under Officer Jenny's boot. She picked it up and eyed Teal's master angrily.
"I think that you're in big trouble." Misty said.
"Normally, I would free the pokemon involved in this." Jenny said. "But I cannot release a humanoid pokemon under the laws. I am at quite a loss."
The lawyer tapped Teal on his paw, and whispered into his ear: "I can get you out of this man's posession, would you like that?"
Teal gave the lawer a shocked look. His eye twinkled oddly, and Teal lifted him up out of the pool.
"Now." The lawyer said importantly. "My master would, normally, be quite upset if I did this, but I do believe that this time he will give me leave."
Light spun around the room, and the lawyer changed shape, turning into a rather soggy Latios, who took off his top-hat and shook it vigorously.
"I apologise for what I had to say, Mr. Teal." The latios said grimly. "However I had no permission to read his mind and see what he was planning." Teal gave a surprised glance to Jenny, and then his eyes darted to a well dressed man standing in the door to the hall. "Now, I believe that we have an opportunity here to do some real good, and I would like to be able to assist."
"What do you mean?" Jenny asked.
"Well, as you would regularly release a mistreated pokemon into the wild, it would be free, and any other trainer could simply catch it again, could they not?" The latios asked.
"Yes, I guess."
"And as Teal cannot be released, and yet cannot be given back to his master in good consience, he is now the property of the law, under the laws we must abide by." He continued. "And the law can do with him as it sees fit. At the moment, you have two options; one, you can keep him yourself."
"I keep an Arcanine." Jenny said. "I can't keep a Vaporeon as well."
"Two, you can give him to a trainer who is here. My master has no wish to obtain a Vaporeon, so surely there is someone we can give him to?"
Misty stepped forward, standing on the fingers of Teal's master, who gritted his teeth and growled angrily. "I'll take him." She said. "I'm sure he could be of some use with me." She put a hand to Teal's cheek tenderly, wiping his anger from his face along with his tears. Jenny handed Misty the pokeball, which soon buzzed to inform that it had changed owners and she put it onto her belt alongside several others. Latios nodded sagely.
"As it should be." He said. "Now, Jenny; I believe you have someone to arrest for neglecting their pokemon." He lifted Teal's old master out of the water with his psychic powers and dumped him on the ice with a wet thump. "Have a nice day, all."
The latios slowly floated out the door, followed close behind by his master who praised him for quick thinking. Jenny released an Arcanine that stood over Teal's old master like a towering menace.
"If you move in any way you shouldn't," Jenny started, "Kala here'll fill your legs so full of teeth that you'll be unable to walk for a very long time." She stood next to the large fire-type. "Get up, you're under arrest for neglecting your humanoid pokemon."
The man slowly stood up, and in a flash he darted for Misty, who stood her ground. Being prone to flinching is not a good quality for a gym leader, and Misty didn't show a hint of fear.
"Giga Impact." She ordered. Teal stepped infront of her and slammed his palms into his old master's chest, the force of the attack sending him across the frozen pool where he slid to a stop. Jenny walked over and lifted him to his feet before dragging him out. Misty hugged Teal from behind, he was shocked for a moment before he let himself lean into the embrace.
"Thanks for saving me." He mumbled.
"No problems." Misty replied, breaking away from the hug. "Now, let's go see what we can do about getting you a position here; you'll have to drive the bus for the next fortnight, but I'll send one of my trainers with you." She said, looking him up and down. "I was thinking a position as a lifeguard."
Teal's mouth spread into a wide smile. "What do you know," he said, "that's just the position I was interested in."
Two weeks later, Teal walked into the aquatics center, towel over shoulder and smile on his face; he had just come from the bus depo after finishing his final day and was eager to see his new master, Misty. The clerk at the counter led him to the changing rooms, where Teal removed his casual clothes and pulled a water bottle from his shorts. He threw the water over his neck, where he could feel himself drying out, grabbed his towel and headed out to the main pool. He walked up to Misty and stood on the water before bowing respectfully.
"I am home, my master." He said. She ran a hand through his fur and over his scalp.
"You'll probably not be needing that towel." She said. "You're going to be in here for a while, and you'll dry off quickly in this warm."
Teal nodded and headed for the edge of the pool where he stood and watched the swimmers, happy that his life had taken such a twist.