Status: Updating on Sundays and Mondays

Uncontained

Lightning Burns in Pewter City

I swam slowly into consciousness. There was only a bright light beyond my closed eyelids. I opened them and my eyes watered. "What the hell?" I mumbled. "Am I in heaven?"

"Not even close," a voice said.

I looked over and my eyes wobbled back into focus. First I saw the purple shirt, the sharpedo fang necklace, and then Malachi's face materialized in all his glory. He was sitting in a chair beside me. I flinched. I was in a hospital. I jolted upright and spun my head around. I really was in a hospital.

"You okay, Beau?" Malachi asked.

I jerked my head toward him. He looked exactly as I'd seen him that night before: pensive expression, wild brown hair, and so-dark-they-were-almost-black brown eyes. At first he looked concerned, but then his face split into his shit-eating grin.

"I'm fantastic," I said sarcastically. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I dragged your corpse out of Viridian Woods," he said. "The doctors told me you were probably stung by a beedrill. I was leaving Pewter City when your pikachu found me."

"Florence? Is she okay?" I looked around and saw no sign of either of my Pokemon.

"She and your nidoran are at the Pokemon Center across the street," Malachi explained. "Oh, and when did you get all your tattoos?"

"What?" I looked down at myself and gasped. Feathery marks crawled down my arms, and when I looked in my hospital gown, they were streaming along my chest too. "Oh my God."

"They look like marks from a lightning strike," Malachi murmured.

"Oh," I said. "Oh."

"So are you feeling okay? The doctors gave you medicine, and you've been out for a couple of days, but they won't discharge you unless you're good."

"A couple of days? Damn it," I said. I swung my legs over the side of the crinkly hospital bed and realized I had an IV stuck in my arm. I was too scared to do anything about it so I pressed the "call nurse" button on the side of the bed. "Why did you stay here? You could've gotten miles ahead of me."

"I wanted to be here in case you died."

I glared at him. "Screw you."

He grinned. "I don't think so."

"You dirty rotten traitor." I pulled myself down and wobbled a bit. "Where the hell is the nurse? How do I get out of here?"

Malachi laughed. He always had the weirdest laugh; he sounded like a laughing spearow. "It's a good think you're not dead. Now that you're fine I can go onto Cerulean City."

"You know what, fuck you."

"I told you, I'm not interested," he said. "Smell ya later, buddy."
♠ ♠ ♠
You actually do get weird-shaped burns if you get struck by lightning.

There's no healthy food in the house and it's killing me. I never thought I'd say something like that. I can feel my body disintegrating underneath my mounds of fat that has grown over the past two days. Plus I haven't been lifting. Oh the humanity.