Bertie the Caterpie

A heartbeat of worry hits your ribs, and with a quick pivot, you see the Caterpie from before having quietly made his way to you with the staff at the ready. Your sudden twist is enough to make him shrill, wiggling his hands in a quick thrash that makes him lose the grip of his weapon. The scream he makes is like nothing you've heard before, in any fight. His eyes even pinched shut with his chubby body staggering back without knowing what to do.

"W-WhuahAH! I'm sorry! I-I'm so sorry!" The fat caterpillar caves in completely, falling to his knees in an immediate surrender and announcing, "The Golden Hive bow to you! D-Don't eat me Intruder Mammal, I'll just slow you down in your e-evil campaign...!" He swallows nervously, still refusing to even open his eyes, "...I-I also taste bad! And uh, hoh gosh, I uhm, I'm also poisonous... But worse than a spider! B-But don't take that like you should eat Trapsmith Valentina either, sh-she's good when you get to know her!"

You cock a brow at that.

He even seems to register it without looking. "...O-Okay maybe she's just mean, but pl-please don't eat her! She helps our Hive!"

"......." You pause in ever giving an answer, staring down at this short caterpillar. It would be against what you promised yourself when it came to protecting others, even if he was an enemy for all but a moment. Here, on his knees, sounding like he's going to cry, he's still pleading for Valentina's life. Perhaps honor did exist in this place; the good kind at least, and not like that of obsession that the Ariados showed. "I'm not gonna eat her."

The Caterpie finally begins to blink his large eyes open. The dilated saucers gaze upon you from down below, glossy with how full they were. His eyes were like two solar eclipses with how vastly large the black irises were, rimmed with a golden yellow. It was...stupidly such an innocent look, it catches even you off-guard. "You're...not?" His eyes blink with a look of hope, before wincing, whining up quietly but enough to be known, "...c-cause you're gonna eat m-me...?"

You roll your own eyes and gently step on his dropped staff, scooting it off to the side and away from the both of you. "I'm not eating you either, I'm not here to eat anyone." It was true, but there was a pang of desire in the back of your mind, stewing somewhere out of the way and cast in some long shadow. The desire to swallow that woman down. To take vengeance and be exactly what she was; a predator catching its prey. What better trophy than taking her to your own body and adding her to it? Surely that would be the permanent lesson deserving of her. Food is food, as with the events before with the Pinsir, or the-

You shake the feelings off. Anger burns in your blood. Adrenaline pumps in your muscles. Poison stings at your scrapes. You needed a moment to cool off and let go of this aggression.

Seeing that Bertie isn't posing as a threat any longer...if he ever did to begin with, you find gravity convincing you to drop, as you plop onto your rear in a sit-down in front of the Caterpie. You heave some air into your body, hoping to chill your body heat and exhaust this stress welled up within you. Compared to when you were first captured, you looked ready for a much-needed nap, but you barely made it through a couple of rooms in the Hive's nest so far. How much bigger was this place? Could you save Jackal and Gold still? What could you do about your condition if you're meant to duel with the Queen or any of her guards? You sigh. This entire venture started with you accepting Gold and Jackal's desire to travel with you, and now they're paying that price. Despite your efforts to spare them from an Infected eager to snack on them, a crazed group of people are now looking to make treats out of you all. The world's fallen worse than you expected.

You stare your lap for the moment, resisting the notions of guilt and hopelessness as best you can after one can after an intense fight and an intense situation. It doesn't even strike you in time of the bug before you, when you hear scooting all of a sudden. The Caterpie, also on his rear, drags himself to sit right next to you. "Uhm...why are you here then, if you ain't gonna eat us?" The concern he once shared for Valentina is now being expressed...to you?

Bewilderment paints your face, as your eyes have to stare in the direction of him, but stare ahead at nothing. Your brain needed a hard reset to register his question. "...My friends were taken. I'm gonna find them and take them out of here." Ignoring the tinges of poison in your body, you grimace and try to avert the focus of your pain, "You keep suggesting otherwise. You think I'm here just to eat you all?"

"O-Oh! Well...uh...I mean you're a mammal from outside and stuff, so, I guess...I just...assumed..." Bertie answers, rubbing his cheek and now having to reconsider some things.

Your eyes shut, feeling another surge of the spider's toxin. It wasn't helping the notions of hunger as a means to ignore your body's aggression. You inquire why the Caterpie bothered to sit down next to you then, in which Bertie pauses his thought and answers, "...I mean you sat down, s-so I guess, I thought I should too." You weren't expecting such a gullible gesture, but perhaps it was a more empathetic one than anything. He looks up to you with such genuine worry, he adds, "Do you wanna stand up instead? I could do that."

Shaking your head, you decline his request. Standing would be a terrible option right now. You needed to do something about this poison. A dry growl escapes your mouth as you clench your shoulder. Bertie takes notice and leans in, cupping at your arm from the sign of your duress. "H-Hey, you look like you're in some pain."

"No kidding." You utter. In the few strikes the spider landed upon you, she certainly made them count. Had the fight furthered, you may have easily ended up in her position, if not worse.

The Caterpie suddenly gets up on his own to gesture his hands in place, "Just uh, just sit tight then, I know Trapsmith Valentina has a cabinet for injuries!" Before you can inquire on anything, the caterpillar goes off on his own deeper down the workshop to shift a wooden panel aside from a waxen case, and from it, begins to arm cradle some items. You can see some berries plucked into his chest, along with a vial of some kind. As distrustful as it should be to let a stranger suddenly play nurse for you like this, you'd take anything you could get at this point. If the bug was this generous, you wouldn't question him. Why he was quick to abandon his belief code, you didn't know.

"Poison..." You mention. In a grip of your shoulder, you repeat the word a couple times to inform him of the infliction.

"Pecha Berries! Got it." Bertie huffs, adding the peachy items to his collection and hurrying back to you. An anxious thought strikes your mind of the clutz tripping over forward and smashing your saving grace under his stomach, but he thankfully catches himself when nearly overstepping himself. He settles onto the ground in front of you, offering the peachy fruits first. "This'll help clear those toxins. The lady bit me once when I accidentally set off one of her traps on the perimeter." Before you can even reach your hand for it, he pushes the berry at your lips, getting your head to push back until you bothered to open your lips in surprise. The berry is poked in as he feeds it to you, already fishing out another for good measure. "...Her poison hurts pretty bad, and I thought she was gonna let me have an antidote like this, but she wouldn't. She said if she did, it'd stop...uhh...what'd she say? I think she called it like, 'the culling of the weak' or somethin'."

You nearly **** on the berry when he recalls that memory, getting him to show worry again and pushes the next berry in. **** to fit it in, the fruit buries behind your cheeks, all for him to suddenly cup your face and massages the fruit in as though you needed the help to chew. Your **** probably made him assume as much. You don't want to talk with your mouth full, nor interrupt him as he continues, "So...I thought that meant I had to get tougher through her poison. You know, cause she really values our insect pride. If I'm gonna be a strong Butterfree one day and protect everyone, I'll need to be real tough, tougher than Trapsmith Valentina's venom. So I settled with what she probably meant, it was really inspirational. But uh...Warden Talia was there and ordered for me to get these berries anyway. I guess the Warden wants to toughen me up a different way."

Again, you want to **** on that notion. The bug couldn't see anyone's intention even if they wrote it out for him. If he was a perimeter guard caught by their own traps, it's likely why he's **** to loiter around in a place that didn't really need guarding.

Still, you found yourself letting him thumb your cheeks, squishing the fruit into a fine juicy paste until you swallow it down. A line of peach juice trickles from over your lip, in which the Caterpie perks up and thumbs it aside to clean it for you. "Give it a few minutes, it'll work, I promise." He assures you. You already believed him. Peculiar as it may be, you end up sitting with him for these few minutes to endure the stinging sensation to dissipate off.

"You want to protect people, yeah?" You ask as a subject in common.

"A-Absolutely!" He lights up at the notion. "Well, I uh, tried to be a Hunter...but that didn't really pan out, so they have me as a Guardsman instead." You can already picture him failing to chase anything down as a 'Hunter' if it meant running a double-digit number of steps; though it does make you wonder if that means the Butterfree and Ledia that were with Razz were Hunters as well; people of the Golden Hive that collects locals or deal with Infected.

"...I think I do too." You tell him. A weak smile grows a bit better on your face at the notion. "I wouldn't do a very good job at protecting people if I just wanted to eat whoever I saw, right?"

Bertie sees your expression, and despite his pucker mouth, you can tell he beams with some recognized joy with that. "Y-Yeah, hah, I guess not. Sorry about that... Queen Vexna says that mammals outside our Hive are always looking to dine on our hides. Says since we have what most people don't, they wanna take it from us. Bug Pokemon are strong, so all other Pokemon wanna eat us and be just as strong as us."

With a dogma like that, you can perhaps see how some people would be fooled into that line of thinking, but did all of the Golden Hive actually fall faithful to such an anxiety. From what you've seen, they're incredibly safeguarded in this massive haven of theirs; and if people fear the Queen as Razz has bespoken, perhaps it doesn't matter what the dogma is. Everyone else but you is on the menu as long as you feed into the Queen's crazy ideals. Being a Bug Pokemon within her walls in which Bug Pokemon are idolized...maybe that's the safest way to have a life, even at the cost of others. With Bertie here, you want to come to terms with him. Perhaps diplomacy has its chances in this nest after all.

You tell him your name, without warning. The Caterpie blinks, and even though you know of it already, you let him introduce himself all the same. "Lace? W-Well I'm Guardsman Bertie. Pleased to meet ya...!" He looks over at the bound up and hanging Valentina, seeing her sway...but you remain where you're seated, showing now sign of aggression towards her. "W-Wow...you're really cool Lace, heh."

An ear flicks from your head. Cool? Doesn't sound bad, but...you weren't a gloryhound.

But the caterpillar shuffles a bit closer to you, inquiring next, "...You must be really tough to beat Trapsmith Valentina like that. I didn't know mammals were that dangerous."

"Infected Pokemon are the most dangerous." You remind Bertie. "Bug or not, everyone out there count as people too, and they're all dealing with the Infection. You can't reason with an Infected Pokemon, they're just too far gone. But if your people didn't spend their efforts hunting other people down, I think you all would find that we're actually pretty reasonable beings. While I wouldn't trust all of them, we're all trying to survive, like you. We deal with the self-serving ones as we can, but it sounds like your Queen is the most self-serving out of everybody. If she sees everyone outside of her walls as just food, what makes her any different than the Infected outside?"

The Caterpie rubs his hands together nervously when having to contemplate that. "I...don't think you should...talk bad about the Queen, she-"

"Bertie, my friends were taken by some of your Hunter people, after my group and I were just fighting an Infected out there in the wild, and your Queen's going to eat them today unless I find them." You stress the importance of it, hoping the good will sees through to him. Reaching forward, you rest a hand at his shoulder, perking his head up in response. "They didn't do anything wrong and we're looking for a cure to the Infection. I want to help everyone, but right now I need to help them first. I can't protect them if your Queen has her way, Bertie."

Bertie looks as though he's going to well up again. The faint glimmer in his eyes appearing wet as his pucker mouth winces a bunch, pinching in on itself. "I-I..." He starts to nod his head, before violently doing so and holding onto your arm, "...I-I know you're right, I'm sorry! The Queen's pretty scary, b-but the world out there's pretty scary too; I guess I just...figured she was tellin' the truth about the stuff outside. M-Maybe she's just scared too..."

That's a bit of a stretch, but his heart is in a good place. Even if the queen is just scared of the world outside, it's at the cost of other innocent people. She likely just wants to keep her throne, for whatever that's worth. You just needed your boys back and to be on your merry way.

"Maybe...but I need to get going if I'm going to protect them." You answer, subsiding the poison's effects for the time being and rising to a stand after bracing your hands to your knees.

Bertie straightens right up with you...even if he only comes up barely above your own sitting height. "I-It'll be dangerous ahead though, the other guards, they won't know you're a good Pokemon like I do, so maybe I should go with ya-"

You've seen the kind of help Bertie offers first-hand, and having that alongside Razz...could spell some disaster. Again, you're aware that his heart's in the right place, but you need to ensure this remains a stealth operation without any notion of conspiracy. "I wouldn't want you getting hurt Bertie. Besides, I already have...special help from someone in here already. They're gonna help me get my friends, guaranteed, but I have to get to them first, under no suspicion. So if there's any trouble, we'll handle it, that way you don't get in trouble. Is that fair?"

The Caterpie is crushed as he looks down in dismissed defeat. "...I...wanna be like you and learn how to protect folks."

Damn. You can't ignore that. Glancing around, you look for a means to have something for Bertie to assist you with, or to at least participate. "...How about some advice? You can help by letting me know what and who to look out for."

"O-Oh, you'll want to avoid Marshal Razz for sure! He's a Beedrill, and a really tough guy, fast too." Bertie warns firsthand. "Folks can't outrun him cause he just buzzes like a lightning bolt and bam, he's got you locked up in his legs and stuff." The caterpillar claps his hands hands hard together to signify the impact...before wagging his palm from striking it too hard. "His stinger looks like it hurts real bad too..."

Well at least that concern wasn't an issue for the time being. But Bertie continues to ramble his 'advice',

"If he sees a mammal, he's gonna divebomb ya on the spot. Actually...anyone will! People like you aren't ever allowed in the nest, so if you're just spotted at all, you're gonna have the Golden Hive all over you if it means protecting the Queen, or getting a reward out of her. Folks here are always looking to get good favor with her. So unless you're captured, you'll be spotted in the pretty open spaces we have ahead, and-"

His eyes dilate even larger, like the shiniest empty voids you've ever seen.

"...Unless you're already captured~! That's it!"

You perk a brow at the suggestion.

"Bertie, I'm not looking to be caught-"

"Nor will anyone wanna catch ya if you're already caught. Taking a prize from someone's gonna be a big no-no if the Queen finds out!" Bertie says with excitement, puffing his chest up with great pride for his newly concocted plan. Although, it simply bloats his belly a bit more forward in the gesture attempt. "If I say you're my prisoner, people will leave us alone, and I can take ya where you need to go, no cause for alarm!"

"That-" You cut yourself off at the suggestion, now having your imagination run the prospect of being led by the Caterpie in chains as the Golden Hive's patrons all collectively stare at your fake demeanor of defeat. There wasn't a chance it'd work. You didn't want it to work, it would be at the cost of you showing up to Razz bound by a Caterpie. A Caterpie in the stature of Bertie. Had he been a well-built Scyther or someone of a proper given rank, you could potentially humor the idea, but the caterpillar is a self-proclaimed fuck-up who couldn't guard a wall outside, let alone a circular room that you managed to sneak by without consequence. He-

You happen to stare at him. Those eyes, the full eyes of admiration and optimism.

He can't simply lead you by a leash and everything will be merry, without question-

Bertie blinks, expecting an answer.

He...