Adventures Beyond!

Chapter 68: Desire to Regain

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Forest Grotto, Sinnoh

The days and weeks seemed to fly by as Lucy began researching the route Logan might've taken since leaving Forest Grotto. The Blissey found herself looking at the records of all of the nearby Pokémon Centers. Thankfully, they were all connected one way or another through means of exchanging information between centers in order to properly page Pokémon in different areas. With that, gathering information wasn't hard in the slightest.

Lucy quickly found out that around a month since the last time she saw Logan, he was admitted to the Sapphire Pokémon Center from injuries ranging from singes on his paws to bruised limbs. Lucy quickly figured that he recklessly got himself into another fight. But for some reason, this didn't worry her in the slightest. In fact, she couldn't help but to smile at the thought. It always reminded her of the days back when Logan was younger, after all.

There never seemed to be a day where Logan would return to the Pokémon Center without some kind of injury. He would be ushered in by Leah and forced to get treatment. Lucy had to cover her giggles as she played along with Logan's "tough guy" act, as he struggled to keep himself from crying when dealing with the more serious injuries.

Later on, she charted his course to Metro City, which was the last documented location of Logan. It was listed for residence instead of injury. That most likely meant that Logan was still in Metro City. But why? For days, she struggled to understand why Logan would be so interested in staying in Metro for as long as it had been up to that point, but that question was quickly answered when one of the members of the Grotto Rangers showed her a flyer straight from the closest civilization to Forest Grotto.

The flyer was one for an annual competition in Metro City, the Ion Cup.

The Blissey had no doubts that Logan was staying in Metro for the sake of competing in the Ion Cup, and judging by the records of the Metro Pokémon Center, so were his friends. With that in mind, Lucy learned that the quickest way to get there would be to travel to a nearby settlement, Sapphire Town, and use the train station in order to get to Metro City.

After she finally learned where Logan was and how to get there, Lucy was able to shift her complete attention to Emily in order to concentrate on her efforts to grow used to moving her body again.

While she had her doubts about getting Emily on the move so soon after waking from her coma, she noticed something strange about the Cinderace that separated her from any other coma patient she'd ever had to deal with. Emily's body seemed to be recovering at an accelerated pace. She noticed it first when Emily began to speak not long after waking from her coma.

And she definitely noticed it when she began to try moving around.

Sure, Emily had been putting medicinal berry mixtures in the tube that she was using to feed Emily with, but she had estimated that the muscle atrophy over nearly a decade of being inactive would be more serious than something shaken off with just a little bit of determination. But, there seemed to be something else at play. The substance that she had taken out of Emily a while ago. Things took a drastic turn from there. Emily's development shifted from unforeseen to unprecedented.

And if she was being honest, it scared her.

Sitting at the front desk of the Pokémon Center, Lucy shook her head in order to rid that thought from her mind. She couldn't be scared! No matter what has happened or what will happen, Emily was one of her closest friends, and she was sure that the Cinderace felt the same. She needed to do everything in her power to support her goal of reuniting with her son once again.