94-Spoor

Watching Amelia talk with the ranger, Ursaring sitting calmly bound between them where before she’d been constantly on the verge of violence, Tanya barely pays attention past the barest essentials as she desperately searches for a way out of the burden this stupid ‘mon had just laid on her.

Because apparently she thinks so little of human-made living areas that she’d rather foist her child off to the first available option rather than take even the slightestchance Teddiursa has to live in one.

Where he’d live with his mother, who mere minutes before seemed perfectly prepared to fight to the death to protect him.

She’d been this close to forcibly intervening between the entire farce that was the ‘fight’ between her critically injured patient and the man with the apparently telekinetic yo-yo. It was only the fact that the ranger is –supposedly– a professional in his field, who was acting like this was normal proceedings, that stopped her.

Tanya glances down at Teddiursa, who’s still sitting right between herself and Ursaring and looks as if he’s refusing to believe what he’s seeing. Like he expects Ursaring to all of a sudden pull out a new reserve of strength to rip the bindings off and reverse the defeat.

But Ursaring barely looks at him, beyond the occasional glance she’s just staring off into the middle distance with heavy but regular breaths.

But as time goes on and it becomes increasingly clear Ursaring truly has been defeated, Teddiursa violently shakes his head then takes a few steps towards his mother with the clear intention of trying to break the bindings himself.

But the movement seems to finally make the ‘mon look back at her son, her glare making it clear she knows what he was planning to do.

But whatever she sees in Teddiursa’s face has that expression falter, eyes widening as the low growl in her throat cuts out completely.

She opens her mouth to say something, but whatever she’d wanted to say is interrupted by Teddiursa screaming back at her.

“You were supposed to win!” He cries, voice breaking at the end of the word, the angused betrayal causes something in Ursaring’s expression to break, but it’s gone before it can be investigated.

With that the small ‘mon seems to collapse in on himself with a wet sniff, and out the corner of her eye Tanya see’s Amelia trying to get her attention.

Looking over at her distressed partner, Tanya narrows her eyes as the girl subtly mimes… picking something up?

But before she can try and decipher the message her attention is drawn back to Teddiursa as he gives his mother an impressively vicious snarl relative the size of his body.

Then he turns and charges into the underbrush to the sound of everyone’s dismay.

“No! Wait! Teddiursa!” Amelia shouts, taking a step toward where the ‘mon had disappeared into the underbrush only to stop and look at her partner. “Chansey, we need to find him before he can get too far. Can you–”

Tanya nods, glancing at Ursaring as she starts subtlety testing her bindings again and realizes the only reason she’s not trying to fight to the death right now is because she’d decided her child would be safe with a ‘mon she’d met just over an hour ago.

Things can change once Ursaring is at a full hospital and not teetering on total health collapse, right now the top priority is to keep her cooperative and not kill herself trying to fight them. Everything else can come later.

“On it.” She states calmly, heading over to the edge of the clearing, pausing to listen for the sound of movement, then trudging through the underbrush once she gets a bead.

Hopefully the ‘mon doesn't go far, and isn't thinking about losing a pursuer. Because for all of the gathered skills in Tanya’s life, animal tracking is one she’d never invested time into. Sure in the empire she’d been taught to identify animal tracks, but long range tracking? There was simply too much to learn and not enough hours in the day.

Plus the ‘animal’ she’s searching for has human level reasoning and cognitive ability.

Walking through the underbrush, Tanya’s forced to pause every few steps to adjust her course to keep track of her target.

Unfortunately, through the thickness of the underbrush and the simple fact it seems Teddiursa is quite fast, she cant keep pace and after a few minutes the sound she’d been following fades to silence. Even after arriving at the last spot she’d heard something there are no clues for her to follow.

So she stands there, observing her quiet surroundings with a calm eye as she tries to find the trail again even as it’s gone cold.

The child is missing, this is bad for several reasons.

Tanya looks around again, taking a few steps in each direction with the hope that a shift in perspective would help to no result.

Methodically scanning through each sense as she starts to move in slow circles around her last contact point, her bulk flattening the underbrush to create a widening clearing of compacted shrubbery, the ‘mon keeps every sense tuned outward.

Until she stops, blinking as she remembers she’d not gone through every availablesense.

Tanya frowns, then pulls her full attention to the vague… impression of energy she can feel all around her.

She’d tried to find a use for it for ages, but she’d simply found it unreliable for any kind of useful purpose. Fickle and noisy, normally the best she can do is take a hazy read of individuals she already knows are there, and even then it’s barely more useful than a confirmation of what she’d already suspected.

This is despite wasting a great deal of time trying to extract anything useful from it.

She sighs, shaking her head as she closes her eyes.

Because everyone’s energy is unique, even if it can be distorted by strong emotions and a hundred other factors such that they look completely alien again, the energy can travel through minor obstacles like this underbrush. Which means, hypothetically, she should be able to track him with it.

It's her best chance, as slim as it is.

A disheartening thought, but she continues regardless.

Squeezing her eyelids tight as she turns her full attention to the sensory equivalent of the blotches of color she can see on the backs of her eyelids, Tanya tries to ‘feel’ for a ‘mon she’d only known for the better part of an hour through the chaotic noise of a living forest.

This isn't getting anywhere, this wont work, she needs to find another path.

…But even as she thinks that, planning to open her eyes and start from square one, something stops her.

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Tanya keeps her attention on the fuzzy nothing, searching for the reason she’d not given up with this method yet. But she cannot find anything, so with the duplicate confirmation she’s wasting her time Tanya considers her options, eventually concluding she can use Ursaring’s superior sense of smell to track her child. With that, she opens her eye–

She’s still standing there, eyes screwed shut as the normally quiet something that hums just beneath Tanya’s mind makes itself known. A strange byproduct of alien biology, the reason she can walk and talk as a chansey without needing to learn how, this body's instincts and hardware that feel… not unwelcoming or strange, but different to a human mind.

And right now, those instincts are protesting her decisions as if she’d decided to stop breathing.

Tanya shakes her head, trying to push past this stupid instinctual obstinacy.

There is a child out here, hurt and frightened. Her mind flashes through impressions of his distress just before he ran off into the forest, emotional distress so clear she could almost feel it.

Tanya huffs at herself, because no matter Teddiursa’s emotional state, unless she can find the ‘mon he’s not getting help from anyone, and she has no way to find him. This is wasting time, she needs to get moving.

Opening her eyes, Tanya looks back the way she came, but in doing so her eyes cross over a seemingly random patch of bushes almost obscured by the forest between her and the innocuous foliage.

Yet for some reason something about the foliage demands her near undivided attention, despite nothing she can sense indicating it’s out of the ordinary.

And yet, after a moment of hesitation and a careful search for the touch of foreign psychic energy influencing her, Tanya finds herself walking towards the bush.

Fine, she’ll humor… whatever this is, and once she’s done she’ll get back to doing actually productive–

Tanya’s steps stutter as a quiet sniffle comes from the bushes.

Wh–

How?

Trying to keep herself quiet as she walks closer, she eventually manages to pick out Teddiursa’s sadness-stained energy out of the chaotic background, but only because she knew exactly where to look and what she was looking for.

So how did she know where he… but she didn't know, she was looking at the bushes and saw no sign.

So how…

Tanya purses her lips as the sniffling abruptly quiets and she’s forced to come to a stop, else the ‘mon makes another run for it.

Questions for later, for now she needs to close the final distance between her and Teddiursa, prevent him from running off again, and preferably mitigate the emotional distress–

Oh. Amelia was suggesting she pick him up.

Tanya huffs through her nose at the belated understanding, then gets back to studying the bush.

It’s too densely packed and low to the ground for her to even see Teddiursa, unless she wants to pick up the entire plant plus the surrounding meter of dirt she’s going to have to find a way to get him to come out.

She blinks, then looks down at her bulk.

Or… she finds a way to go in.

Though her skill in minimize is limited, even getting lower to the ground might be useful for at least appearing non-threatening.

Drawing energy from her core, the ‘mon throws it at minimizing herself down to at least a more manageable size, but is shocked by how easily the world grows around her, rapidly expanding until reaching a size she’d not seen since her happiny days.

How… Nevermind.

She quickly takes stock of everything she can notice that might have impacted this rapid improvement to be analyzed later, then hurries into the underbrush at a brisk clip that turns her normal upright walk into a swaying waddle.

It doesn't take long before she finds Teddiursa, curled up near the base of a bush. Unfortunately despite her smaller size she’d still been loud enough he was watching her approach, eyes wide as she once again draws on her memories and gives a flawed smile.

“Oh there you are dear!” She forces out in the approximation of cheer. “You had us worried!”

“Ch–Chansey!?” He stutters, sadness forgotten momentarily as he stares dumbfounded at her approach. “How are you so smal–woah!”

His question is interrupted by her getting into grabbing range, firmly grabbing hold of the ‘mon in both arms, then releasing her hold of minimise and erupting up through the bushes as the grapple morphs into a carry.

“You are way too good at hiding, I thought I lost you! Now let’s get back to–” She’s cut off as Teddiursa starts to struggle and try to break free from her.

“No! What does she care!? She’s just leaving me!” He shouts, his struggles morphing into scratches and bites trying to make her drop him.

Fortunately a little pain isn't going to do anything and almost before the attacks can conclude healing energy removes the bites and scratches, a bare sliver of blood the only sign anything happened at all.

But even if she brings him back, she’d rather have him be… less unstable lest Ursaring gets convinced that dying of pneumonia in the winter with her child is worth it.

Which is again, stupid, because there’s nothing stopping Teddiursa from coming with her other than her… obstinacy…

Tanya blinks, realizing she has an audience who would most likely agree with her plan to go around Uraring’s stupid hangups.

“Oh, Dear.” She croons, pulling Teddiursa away from where he’d been fruitlessly trying to claw a hole in her. “Ursaring cares about you so much, she just has some… opinions about where she needs to go to get healed up.”

Her mask had slipped pretty severely on the word ‘opinions’ but thankfully Teddursa didn't seem to notice, slowly going limp in the air with a distressed noise.

“...I know, it’s just– why didn't she– I don't want–”

“Buuuut…” Tanya drawls out, pressing Teddiursa back against her bulk as she continues to carve a path through the underbrush back the way she came. “Your mother put me in charge if she couldn't beat the ranger. And because I think all this is st–silly, I say that once she’s at the hospital and all settled in you can go there too.”

This way all she’ll need to do is hold on to Teddiursa for a few days at most, then he can go back to his mother.

She’d like to think Ursaring would have seen sense by that time but even with her limited experience with the ‘mon Tanya doubts it. But Ursaring can be as mad as she wants while safely in a hospital with systems in place to handle ornery patients. Because Tanya’s not dealing with a–

Teddiursa shakes his head, and it’s all she can do to not keep the frustrated incredulity she feels at him refusing to have what he wants from showing in her demeanor.

“...No. Mom said to stay with you until she’s better. S-so that’s what I have to do.” He insists, looking up at Tanya from her arms with sad eyes searching for approval.

There are a lot of things she wishes she could say about this sudden decision to listen to his mothers instructions without complaint, but doing so would have… consequences. Not to mention being out of character of Caretaker.

So instead she smiles down at him, holding tight to her expression.

“...Oh. Alright then.” She chokes out, mind scrambling as she tosses out the last option she can think of right now. “But even if you can't stay, I think your mom would really enjoy you visiting her while she’s–”

“Wait.” Teddiursa interrupts, head cocked to the side as his entire demeanor flips in an instant. “I can go visit?”

Tanya can't decide whether she should be pleased or worried by the enthusiasm as she nods.

“Of course Dea–”

“So I can go with you to new places, help heal people who are hurt, and be with mom?” He shouts, wiggling in her grip with excitement. “Why didn't anyone say that earlier!?”

Ah.

This is bad.

“Hurry up! Put me down! Let’s go!”