//------------------------------// // Chapter 8 // Story: Courage Will Pull Us Through // by Cloudy Serrano //------------------------------// ~Chapter 8~ Somewhere around two hours later, time found me trotting merrily through what appeared to be a staircase, a small, pink, unconscious feline cradled gently in my magic. My notes, having been taken after I had lost all compunctions of using a leaf for parchment, and berries for ink, lay flat against my back, firmly held in place by magic. A smile graced my lips as the previous two hour’s events ran through my mind. <~> *Tree of Beginning, Crystal Caverns. Two hours earlier* “All of them.” As soon as the words left Mew’s mouth, he knew he had made a mistake. The look that came to the lavender pony’s eyes told him so. And if that hadn’t been enough of a tip-off, well, the scream of pure ecstasy that shot forth from her gaping mouth should have told him him everything he needed to know. Unfortunately for him, said lavender pony was his new friend, and so he didn’t use Teleport to escape. That was his first mistake. His next mistake came in the form of listening, and doing what the pony asked of him. “Show me.” Pupils dilated, and mouth attempting to catch as many flies as possible, Twilight watched in awe as Mew held out his paw for her to see, and it became engulfed in red fire as if it were a match. The blaze began in the center, and quickly spread until it covered the entire region. Flames gently licking at the air around his paw, Mew twisted his paw to allow Twilight to see the other side. There, the plasma seemed to cover all of the area, and the red flames looked to be a more orange in tone. From here, Twilight could see the flames did not go up his arms, and stopped at his wrist. His final mistake happened when he decided that, no, that was not enough. He wanted Twilight to see what a true Pokemon could do, so he decided to make something special happen, something he knew that, if she had really had never before seen a Pokemon, would leave her quieter than a Rattata in the den of a Raichu. And just as fast as it had appeared, the blaze popped out of existence. But it did not leave a space of emptiness, for a trade-off had occurred. As the flames left, a cold presence made itself known. Mew’s paw took on a shade of black, darker than the night sky in the ocean, and a sinister feeling emanated from it, more so than Sombra’s presence did. The blackness was a sharp contrast to Mew’s entire personality, and it tormented Twilight to no end to feel it. But she did not move, at first from curiosity and child-like wonderment, and now from being paralyzed with fear and apprehension. And yet, the same thing happened yet again. The darkness was quickly overcome, this time by ice. Freezing, and harder than a blue school chair, a thin layer of ice replaced the darkness, and Twilight’s mind-numbing fear was gone. Small icicles covered the areas in which claws could protrude, and the air around the paws began to become vapory. The light blue ice coated the paw, making little ridges and lines where his fur was. A huge smile appeared on Twilight’s face faster than a moth to a lantern on a new moon as she imagined all the applications and implications for Pokemon. As Mew used move after move, a small grin crept its way onto his face. He didn’t know why, but it felt… nice to be able to help someone. As he smiled joyfully, he remembered the last time he’d helped someone to be happy. And as he thought back, he realised something. He hadn’t left the tree in a while, not since the Pikachu, his trainer, and his trainer’s friends had come to help him. He hadn’t seen them in so long; it had been almost twenty-five years since they’d met. And he hadn’t made anyone smile like them, laugh like them, happy like them, in twenty-five years. The more he thought, the more his eyes began to water like a fountain. Twilight, too distracted by the sphere of blue energy formed in the palm of his paw, noticed nothing odd. Knowing she could look at his eyes at any time and see how watery they were, Mew summoned a bone in his paw, tossed it in the air, and floated in the air above the lavender unicorn’s head. As expected, she immediately looked up to follow it, just in time for him to move it barely enough for her to be facing the opposite way from him. Having bought himself some time, Mew continued to think about his situation. No one had come to the Tree for two and a half decades, but was that really a reason to not have any social contact outside the Tree? Sighing heavily, he realised that, no, it wasn’t. If he had really wanted to, he could have simply left the Tree as he’d done before. But in truth, he didn’t know why he didn’t want to be with people. Maybe… maybe she could help him understand. This lavender unicorn. She was the first one to come to the Tree in so long, so maybe… just maybe… she could help him. He had already promised he would be her friend. Maybe he should deliver on that promise. Renewed with more happiness than before, Mew Teleported the bone away, and waited for Twilight to turn around. When she did, he began again. Finally, his paw changed to it’s final form: lightning. Twilight had no words to describe it. Few unicorns had the finesse to harness lightning, let alone the sheer magnitude of power necessary as well. To see something do just that, and to be able to concentrate it all on one area as small as a paw, was just unheard of in the magic world. Small arcs of power occasionally shot forth from the glowing yellow paw, although they never once got close enough to actually shock Twilight. The entire room was lit up as though an illumination spell had been cast where Mew floated. And then, it was over. Just like that. All power had ceased flow into Mew’s paw, and instead Mew floated there, awkwardly smiling. He watched as Twilight’s eyes slowly looked into his, boring a hole through his head. “So, um, did you like it?” He waited for an answer, one which quickly came. “Did I like it?” Twilight emptily said, as if she wasn’t talking to Mew, but merely thinking aloud. As she continued to stare at him with wide eyes, a grin slowly crept its way onto her face. “I didn’t like it, Mew. I loved it. Now, I think I’ll take you up on that offer for the leaf.” <~> I chuckled as I brought myself out of my reverie. Oh, after Mew had shown me some of what he could do with just his paw, well, I was hooked. So, I had him show me at least over a hundred, maybe even two-hundred different moves. Of course, I had him do only those that would not cause too much of a commotion, seeing as how we were underground and all, but Celestia, were they absolutely mind-blowing. So many different possibilities and applications, all from just one move. I shuddered as I forced myself to stop. I needed to get to the room that was in here so I could look over my notes and let Mew sleep, and by Celestia I was going to get there soon! Before Mew had passed out from using so many moves in such a short amount of time, he had told me where it was he slept, and how to get there. As I reached the end of the stairs, I saw a door that seemed to be made of wood. Remembering Mew’s instructions, I opened the door, and was greeted with a room about the size of the Library’s second floor. A disturbingly large amount of toys littered the floor, from small brown cat Pokemon similar to the ones I had seen earlier, to large, fearsome looking dragon-esque Pokemon. One of these dragons even appeared to have three heads instead of one. A small, fire red table sat against the wall off to the right, the paint seeming to move as if it were a live fire. A painting on the wall above the table depicted two large dinosaurs in the midst of battle, claws flying and teeth bared. Off to the opposite side of the room a simple wooden desk stood, with several leaves haphazardly placed on it. And in the middle of the room, a large pink sphere laid, one of the same kind that lay within the Travel Trees. Deciding the sphere was the best place for him, I placed Mew in the middle of it as gently as if he were a foal. Leaving the pink feline to lay on his sphere of rest, I walked over to the desk. Sitting on one of the cushions placed at the base of it, I pulled out my notes. “Alright, so it looks like some of these moves have things in common with each other, but at the same time are unique in their own way,” I mumbled, too low for Mew to hear. “Both Flame Charge and Flare Blitz involved Mew’s body igniting, but Flare Blitz looked as though it was causing him some discomfort. Could Flare Blitz perhaps be causing him pain in return for being stronger? Or is it Flame Charge giving up strength in return for causing no pain? I’ll have to look into this in the future…” Ceasing my ramblings, I started to look over my notes once more. As I worked, a low rumbling began to emanate from Mew. Deciding to ignore it, I continued working, only for it to steadily progress until it became unbearable, such as how hooves on a chalkboard can only be withstood for so long. Sighing, I quickly cast a mute spell on Mew to stop the noise. Satisfied with my work like a foal who had finally conquered their math homework, I smiled and began to study once more. As I powered through my work, I thought of what Mew had taught me. He had shown me what various moves were capable of, the different Pokemon types and how they worked, and he’d told me what I should expect when seeing a new Pokemon, but… “Oh Celestia, why did you have to fall unconscious?!” I moaned, remembering to cast a deafness spell on Mew right before the first word. I may have learned about their moves plus their types, and a bit about what a Pokemon is, but I knew next to nothing about the geography, not to mention the humans who supposedly were evil, but at the same time not! Peering over at Mew from the desk, I saw he was still fast asleep. “Well, I suppose I should study while I can. Even if it is getting late…” <~> “Wait, Twilight, is- is that magic?” Twilight looked up from her leaf, a manic look in her eyes. “What was that, Mew?” Her quill never stopped moving. Tired as he was, Mew was still struck with child-like wonder at the sight of the mare before him performing something that was usually reserved for only psychics, and psychic types: moving objects with but a thought. Although he had only been showing Twilight different moves for the past hour or so, he hadn’t been paying much attention to how she had been writing, focused as he was at using moves he didn’t normally use, some of which he had never before used. “Right now, with the quill. How are you doing that?” Confused enough to stop writing, Twilight brought the quill up for Mew to see. “What do you mean? All I’m doing is a simple telekinesis spell.” “So you do know magic!” Mew exclaimed, a smile forming. “I’ve always wanted to see real magic, but most of the time I only see psychic types. So how are you doing it?” Twilight brought the quill down, unsure of how to answer him. Most of the time, foals had some idea of how magic worked, but they never had no idea of even the basics of it. Even an Earth pony foal could explain some of it, explaining usually being, “They just cast a spell, their horn lights up, and then magic.” But either way, Twilight was fairly certain she could still explain the basics of it to Mew; it’s not like it was temporal magic. “Well, you see Mew, magic is centered in the horn of a unicorn’s body. This is caused by our constant use of magic, and it needing to be more concentrated there. Then, the magic can be released in the form of a spell. When released, if it is at the correct level of power, then the spell is performed, and that’s that.” “But why would you need a spell? Can’t you just let out the magic, and have it work?” Mew asked, puzzled from her explanation. “Spell’s are needed just as much as magic is needed, Mew. A spell is a sort of guideline to how much power a spell needs. This is why most foals learn how to levitate objects at an early age. The lighter the object, the less magic needed. Now, if a unicorn were to be constantly using telekinesis, then they would progressively get better at it. Think of magic as like a muscle. When you use a certain spell more, you get better at it, until you reach the point where you don’t need to use so much magic that it can be cast with little more than a thought. Also, just because two spells require the same amount of power, doesn’t mean if you cast one, you cast the other. A spell also acts as a sort of buffer, to prevent a unicorn from casting multiple spells at the exact same time. When a pony casts the spell, they need to envision the spell happening at the same time. This’ll stop other spells from happening. Only the greatest and most powerful unicorns can cast more than one spell at the exact same time.” Just managing to get more confused from her explanation, Mew said, “Yeah, sorry Twilight, but I think you lost me somewhere around the part about spell’s being a guideline.” An awkward smile appeared on his face. “Could you explain it again?” Giving Mew her best, “Really?” look, Twilight said, “Mew, I just gave you one of the best explanations I can using memory alone. I don’t think it’ll get much better than that. Also- wait a second. Earlier you said something about psychic types. How about we do a trade-off? If you explain to me what you meant by psychic types, then I’ll give you a much better explanation in writing tomorrow after I cast a memory spell on myself. Deal?” “Alright! I mean, that seems easy enough. A psychic type is one of seventeen different Pokemon types, and all of them are super cool! The types are fire, water, electric, normal, steel, rock, ground, ice, grass, bug, poison, flying, dark, ghost, psychic, fighting, and dragon types. Every type is really fun to play with, but dragon types can get really, really mean when they get older. There are a lot of rumours of other types, like the fairy type and the light type and even something about a sound type, but there’s no actual proof of them. Rumours are all they are. And sorry, I don’t know a lot about them. News doesn’t get into the Tree much.” Mew paused for a couple seconds to allow Twilight to catch up with her notes. Seeing her look up at him from her notes, Mew continued. “Next, each type is either weaker, stronger, is normal against, or doesn’t affect each other type. Now, this is really, really easy to see when you think about it. An easy example would be: fire is weak to water, water is weak to grass, and grass is weak to fire. The good parts and the bad parts of each type pretty much even out, so there is no way to have one type stronger than all the others. Most Pokemon are just one type, but sometimes, when a Pokemon tries really, really hard, they can be more than one!” “A Pokemon that’s more than two types can be stuff like fire and ground, water and flying, and fighting and psychic. When you have two types, you would think it would make you a lot stronger, and in a way it does. But at the same time, when you are two types, you can be even weaker to certain types than you were before! Like a water and flying type would be double hurt by electric, since water and flying are both weak to electric. This makes them good, but not too good.” Looking up from her leaf, Twilight asked, “And what if they aren’t weak to any moves? Can that happen?” Grinning, Mew said, “Actually, yes, it is possible. I think there are two Pokemon that are naturally resistant to all others, and one that has to use a move to be, although he’s not very important. They’re both dark and ghost type, and use all of their pros to cancel out their cons, leaving them with just the pros.” Finishing up her notes on the different types, Twilight looked back up to Mew, a smile plastered on her face. “Alright, so now that that’s out of the way, what do you say we go back to the moves?” A soft smile coming to his face, Mew said, “Alright, Twilight. Anything for a friend."