hugtopia | [Audio]

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M.E. 722-IV-15th
1-Lasdia-21st
This is Chief Besithia. After some investigation it has come to my attention that medical services are limited here. Considering the lack of biological life present previous to our arrival, it's of no great surprise that hospitals weren't a priority. There are limited supplies as well.

Thus, I would like to offer my medical services. I would charge a nominal fee to cover the cost of supplies.

I have over a decade's worth of experience out in the field and have had dealt with everything from mild to critical injuries. I often had to work with limited supplies or in substandard conditions and was commended for my work.

Though our world was limited to humans, based on my extensive experience I believe I would be proficient in adapting my knowledge to work with other races as well.

I'm also an adept engineer, in case anyone happens to have mechanical parts or be wholly mechanical.

I can be reached anytime through this tablet.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hehe, you can meet her whenever you want! She's mostly worked with other Pokémon, but I've needed her to patch me up a bit occasionally, too.

Actually.....

[Now that he thinks about it, there's no reason he can't introduce them. The next message is a short video clip of a Chansey, trilling and waving at the camera.]

Excellent. Experience working on a variety of lifeforms could come in handy when dealing with anything alien to us.

[He wasn't typically a video man, but it wasn't as if he was hiding anything.

He tilted his head at the video of this curious creature. He'd already met Deja, however, and knew not to underestimate these strange creatures.]

Greetings, Arete.

[She answers in a bright, happy chirp. Will makes a little apologetic gesture with his free hand, reaching down to scratch her ears.]

She's not a Psychic type, so it's a lot harder to talk to her--you'd need one of us translating, or have her writing or typing.

[This big pink blob might not be able to talk, but she sure is literate?]

I see.

[He raised a hand to his chin in thought.]

Is she able to understand what I'm saying?

Sure! Psychic types might be the smartest, but she's a pretty bright one herself.

[Arete gives the camera a remarkably expressive "seriously?" look, considering the lack of eyebrows to raise.]

[Well, she could certainly emote.]

Then only I would need a translator.

I imagine she would be quite bright. Medical care often takes swift decision-making abilities.

[But if she could understand him, he should address her directly.]

I look forward to working with you, Arete.

[That's definitely a sassy little head toss, since she lacks hair to flip--why, yes, she is just that good, thank you for noticing. Will snorts in amusement.]

So does she.

[Very sassy. Luckily, he could work with many personality types, so long as they were able to stand being around him. Perhaps he and Arete were quite similar in their confidence levels.]

You have been helpful as usual, Will. I do wonder, though, about your third Pokémon.

[Arete was quite different from Deja.]

Hehe, it's better for everyone if we can help each other, right?

[The camera turns away from Will and Arete; he points it at the Flareon sprawled on his bed, busily grooming her ruff.]

Arche is a Flareon! She's probably a little closer to the animals you lot have on your worlds.

[A big fluffy dog-cat-fox-rabbit that can breathe fire is absolutely just an animal, right? Right. Totally just like a differently elementally-aligned Coeurl, which is also just an animal.]

[Pointless as it was he leaned forward to get a better view. Of course, he didn't see the fire.]

Yes, she looks similar to various breeds of dogs that exist on my world. Perhaps a mixture of a few different species. Does she understand speech as well?

Mmhmm! Complicated things might go over her head, but her skillset isn't really specialized enough to need that. Do animals really not understand people talking to them?

[Pokémon are smart cookies in general--even if they're not brilliant, they're bound to at least have the sort of comprehension level you might expect from a kid. Why wouldn't animals be the same?]

It varies greatly depending on the animal. Dogs, for example, are usually able to be trained to follow orders to a certain extent. Cats are considered intelligent enough to survive a little more independently. Plenty of animals operate mostly on instinct with very low levels of intelligence.

Based on what I have seen, I would say that the intelligence of the average animal is far lower than of the average Pokémon.

That's so sad, though..... It must be a lot harder to bond with them.

[Not to mention train them. No wonder people seem to have such trouble understanding the concept of Pokémon training and battles! How do they get by when their animals don't understand things the way they do?]

I never thought much about it. On my world it was simply the way things were. Some people bonded with their pets deeply, though I never had a pet myself.

We often categorize life forms based on the apparent complexity of thought they can manage, with something like bacteria being at the bottom and humans being at the top. The closer an animal is towards the top, the more likely it is that humans will bond with them.

So the partnering is probably different. After all, if I were able to have a conversation about physics with my pet, I probably would consider it more of a 'peer' than a 'lower life form' to be kept for companionship or pleasure.

I guess so.....

[It seems weird, categorizing things based on their intellect alone. Sure, there's a range even in Pokémon, but it doesn't really matter that much. It just means you need different training methods for different species, right? But then again..... well, Verstael does have a point.]

That's why so many trainers find it hard to handle Psychic Pokémon. They're used to smart companions, but not training someone who could be a real equal in every meaningful sense--

[A sly grin.]

--Or maybe even a superior, in some cases. Not everyone has a head for strategy.

[Verstael, on the other hand, was intrigued. The thought brought a wide smirk to his face.]

To me that sounds like a challenge. It's when you may be surpassed that you have to push yourself the most.

I do wonder why such intelligent creatures would require a human in the first place.

Hehe~ I specialize in Psychic types, I like how collaborative it can be. You need to respect them as much as they need to respect you for anything to work out right--but as long as that foundation is there, the results are great.

[It's just random luck that he ended up with two off-types making the trip with him, huh? Oh, well. Will reaches to start petting the Flareon while they talk.]

They don't need us the way we need them, really. Pokémon get by in the wild just fine. But they also tend to be really competitive by nature, too! The higher a wild Pokémon's battle drive is, the more likely they are to end up with a trainer--they're more likely to get aggressive and challenge them in the first place, more likely to be impressed if they're defeated in a fair fight, and more likely to decide that staying with that human means they'll be able to grow stronger and be the best they can be.

It depends on the individual Pokémon as much as the species, but my co-worker says Fighting types are notorious for that. Apparently sometimes they'll go looking for humans, but if they're not impressed enough, they'll just leave and find someone else to test instead.

[Honestly, it was more impressive to Verstael. Better than someone who was intimidated by intelligence. He listened quietly, pondering Will's explanation.]

In retrospect, perhaps it makes the most sense. One of the main reasons humans evolved to be as advanced as we are is competition.

It's not the only reason, mind you. Consumption of meat and opposable thumbs are two others. However, if all we strove to do was fill our bellies and sleep peacefully we would be more than capable of doing that. It's the thirst to outperform others that drove us to progress.

If Pokémon have this same drive it could explain the underlying reasoning for their superior intelligence in comparison to the average animal. It would be interesting to see the steps of their individual evolutions and compare them to our own.

Edited 2019-07-27 17:14 (UTC)

[Heh. If a competitive nature, opposable thumbs, and consumption of meat were the only things that had elevated humanity in their world, what was different in his? Plenty of Pokémon species had those distinctions, too. What if the dominant species had ended up the Machop line or something? Now that would be wild.....

Still, something about his wording clearly means something entirely different to Will than it does to Verstael.]

How would watching a Pokémon and an animal evolve tell you anything except how strong they've gotten?

You could compare things such as the bone structure of their ancestors to their current structure.

For example, on my world the earliest human remains were found in the Piztala region, which is where my home, Niflheim, is currently located. By comparing the remains to modern humans, we can determine things like a change in height or a larger cranium. The skulls of our ancient ancestors used to have larger mandibles and smaller craniums. We can see remnants of that in our wisdom teeth - often people have no space for the extra teeth but grow them anyway. This is because our jaws once had more space for them.

Based one that we can deduce how we evolved over thousands of millennia.

If we were able to study the ancient remains of a current species of Pokémon we could do much the same and see how and approximately when they developed different attributes. We might even be able to form theories about why a certain species suddenly began to change. A change in the environment, for instance.

Oh--species evolution..... I don't know much about that. It seems interesting though? They're doing pretty amazing work on fossils and genetics in Cinnabar Island; I took a look at their museum a while ago.

I wonder how closely that sort of thing matches up for humans on other worlds? We can't be that different, right?

Was there another form of evolution you were thinking of?

I would love to take a closer look at humans from different worlds. By all appearances we seem quite alike, but how far do the similarities go? Having the same species be dominant on so many worlds brings up new questions of why we would all evolve the same way. Or, if we're as even from separate worlds as we might have first believed.

I guess you'll get a chance to if people come to you to get patched up! Hopefully they won't need help for anything too serious.

There's evolving as a species, and evolving as an individual--you know, just one Pokémon or animal moving on to the next form they can take? Maybe it's called something different for animals.

I'm not sure I follow. The next form they can take?

All that brings to mind is perhaps an insect emerging from a cocoon.

Right, just like that! Some Bug types have cocoon stages in their evolutionary chain, but it's not just them. Most species have two or three stages.

Deja was a Natu until she grew strong enough to evolve into a Xatu--it's a total transformation, they turn into energy and take their new form when they're ready.

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