-Equus, Ponyville, Jaded-
“So as you can see, Ponyville is still much weirder than Airship Mauled!” Pinkie stated while slapping a pointer against a chalkboard. “What have we learned?”
“That it’s just you being you Pinkie Pie.” I stated blithely. “Seriously constant weirdness is not a competition and if it was, why do you seem to be the only one concerned with tourism?”
“…” Pinkie just stood there silently looking at the board and the number of conspiracies taped to it, some of them I was aware of. She then looked back to me. “Ponyville is still weirder than Airship Mauled.”
“If you say so.” I stated blandly as I cuddled Silvers to my chest, the little chimera gurgled happily. They really liked fish jerky so it wasn’t hard to feed them, especially when mom makes a nutritious variety of the stuff. The only thing I still don’t know was… where did mom keep getting all the fish for it from?!
“I know so!” Pinkie stated angrily.
“Right-… do you need to be hit with the anti-Pinkie tranquilizers again?” After I said that Pinkie immediately wilted. “Still can’t believe Mayor ‘Yours Truly’ Mare managed to keep that within the town’s budget.”
Said tranquilizers were put into Ponyville’s unusual budget because of the Pinkie Pie clone incident, they also helped with any monsters that sometime wandered into or near the town. You had to be something special to require a specially made tranquilizer that was graded for mega fauna like Hydras or Terra Tortoises.
“No… I’ll be a good pony.” Pinkie grumbled while looking away.
“So, after forcing me and my chimera daughters through a three hour presentation on the so called weirdness of Ponyville, can we get back on the topic of Silvers spending time with the Cake Twins?” At least the two little ponies were curious about Silvers as they were of them. I was going to try and socialize my daughters and get them to make friends, didn’t want them to be friendless growing up and I wanted to make sure their heads had a healthy relationship with each other like Bloody Maries did. “Also when are you and Cheese Sandwich going to get much closer to each other? You two are like peanut butter and jelly all the time around each other.”
Now Pinkie was blushing and twiddling a hoof on the floor in slow shy circles, her hair even seemed to get a bit curlier for a moment.
-Pokémon Realm, Nixtorm, night, heading northeast through Icy Valley, Pom-
It was cold, but I don’t think that’s what was causing me the shivers and to look over my shoulder every now and then.
We hadn’t talked much since we were attacked and I hadn’t seen too many Pokémon around, apparently Quetal thinks that was a good thing and a bright side to our travels. The less we see the less trouble we could get into.
Aside from the usual every weather Oran Berries, food doesn’t grow much out in this frozen landscape. I also did not need to hear Quetal’s commentary on Ice Types eating freshly frozen dead bodies as a main source of food for some. Cannibalism was still somewhat frowned upon around here… but eating a Pokémon outside your given evolutionary line was okay.
“How are you holding up Quetal?” I asked earnestly.
“About the same as you I expect.” Quetal immediately riposted. “We might even see where my brother might still be buried… provided his grave hasn’t been disturbed for food.”
I winced audibly, the cold did help in keeping the swelling from my injuries down… not like we had much medical supplies to cover the kind of injuries I keep getting. Thinking about how Curdle might be able to help with that, I was astounded as much as appalled to have found out that Alcremie blood was apparently anti-septic and still safely edible at the same time… goodness knows how, why or if anyone would ever actually want to eat a Milcery or an Alcremie on purpose with just knowing that one fact.
We had already discussed the reason why we knew the beast we fought was an outsider.
For one, no Pokémon moves were used by it, an oddity considering knowing at least one move was universal to all Pokémon that exist… even feral Pokémon could use moves, albeit with little intelligence behind the use of said moves being appropriate for a given situation.
Feral Pokémon only showed up around the Mystery Dungeons of which there were none around on the Ransei continent as far as anyone knew.
Another tell for the beast being an outsider was apparently being supernaturally resilient to it’s weakness for an Alternative Zoroark, whose primary weakness was a Dark Type attack like Beat Up.
The last was fairly obvious to me, despite its wild nature it clearly had far more intelligence than it was letting on and there seems to be an eerie feeling about the beast. Like it was sizing itself up against us in some way. Though the others questioned its intelligence, I certainly didn’t even after we knocked it out cold.
“Are you alright Curdle?” I asked as I looked to our Alcremie friend looking like a colorful walking ice sculpture.
“Oh I’m just fine, feel like a pile of iced cream though.” Curdle was still the ever positive attitude, apparently being splattered everywhere in a gory fashion didn’t put a damper on her mood. “Also why didn’t that beast want me, is it the smell? I can always switch to a cinnamon smell instead of brown sugar!”
Curdle did always smell nice at the very least.
“I don’t quite think that’s the problem…” Trudging through the snow, so what could I say, I’d rather avoid that beast and never see it another day~.
Why am I thinking in the tune of Hearth’s Warming songs now? Must be the winter year round kind of feeling around here, because it was just that cold.
Yes, I was going to ignore that Curdle was more upset that the beast that attacked us didn’t want to even taste her. As a sentient pile of vaguely edible cream her priorities were quite skewed, but being splattered like that did apparently hurt a lot… but not nearly as much as not being eaten even a little bit.
“I’m still the emergency rations here right?” Curdle asked with a hopeful lilt in her voice.
Nobody dignified Curdle with a response… it was then that I realized how quiet Dolly was being.
“Dolly?” I looked at the Dalmatian trudging along with us, a slightly upset smile on her face as she looked to me with a wagging tail.
“Huh, did you need something Pom?” Yeah, Dolly needed to get something off her head if her smile and exuberance is that weak. It’s not the cold getting to her either, she was functionally immune to freezing temperatures and that was fairly useful as she can share her body heat with anyone that might need it without personal issue to her own health. “I know it’s been a while since I’ve had kibble, but I’ve been doing great without it… really!”
Who was she trying to convince, me or herself? Also the mentioned lack of kibble made her a bit twitchy, which was going to be a problem for later as she could survive without it easily.
“Okay Dolly, besides an obvious lack of kibble and the availability thereof, what’s wrong?” I stated as we continued the trend of heading towards the northeast. We started at the western end of Nixtorm and were heading northeast and inward into the frozen mountains, it had to be my imagination that it was warmer the closer Dolly was to me since it was quite literally freezing out here.
We were going towards the center of Nixtorm. Quetal had stated that despite all the ice and snow, Nixtorm had a large hollow that’s not as frozen as the rest of this place. Our current destination was called Hail Hollow, what limited sunlight there was made the place a lot warmer than ninety percent of Nixtorm by reflecting off the nearby polished ice. Anything would be warmer than out here at night.
Dolly was looking thoughtful with a small frown on her face and was pulling away from the group slightly, likely to think of a response… she could just mentally share what the problem was with me if it was urgent. It apparently wasn’t urgent, so I didn’t prod much further.
If we were lucky we could stumble upon a random hot spring to stop at. Said springs pop up out of nowhere, quite literally as in the hot spring didn’t exist seconds ago kind of deal and doesn’t disappear until it has been thoroughly used. A few Ice Types and a number of visiting Pokémon relied on finding random hot springs to stay warm in.
Really don’t think many Pokémon were visiting this kingdom this cold without a good reason to, but I wondered what would even make this kingdom a tourist spot. Didn’t seem to have much at first glance aside from trees and tons of snow and low temperatures.
That Vanillish back in The Dream was really good at making stuff to drink or eat, but I doubt food was a major selling point here given the limited resources of Nixtorm. I wondered just how limited they were now with all the constant monster attacks.
“I um…” Dolly tried to say something as she wandered back to being closer to me and the area grew slightly warmer, I paid attention to her and wondered if she was going to actually talk about what had her down. “I’m sorry I’ve failed you quite a few times.”
“Huh?” I wondered where she was going with this and where it was coming from. “If you ever failed me Dolly, then it was probably outside of your control and if it’s outside of your control then you did your best and shouldn’t worry about it as much.”
“Isn’t it hypocritical to say that when you worry about the things outside of yours all the time?” Dolly asked looking up at me. Well she did somewhat have me there and I lowered my head slightly. “I got taken out on the bridge, I… I made the whole golden glow thing worse. There’s also the fact that I couldn’t do much to stop that whole abominable beast thing from coming after you.”
“Dolly the bridge thing was you protecting me, I saved you in return without a second thought about what I was sacrificing. You wouldn’t have survived long enough for the second Gilgamesh and his Greenkidu to appear. I’m pretty sure we were bound to get as badly creamed, as Curdle was just recently, no matter what we did.” I wasn’t exactly batting a thousand either Dolly, yet here we are on a quest to hunt down a monster and I have no idea why I’m doing something like this aside from feeling vaguely responsible for it being in this world. I’m always head towards trouble, so I’m not exactly safe to be around. “Also the beast that came after us is a Ghost Type, not sure how we could deal with it otherwise without some unusual abilities geared for it.”
“Yeah my wind didn’t hurt them much, my gravity spell barely slowed them down at all and it was like they were getting stronger the more aggressive we were being.” Yeah, that was something to take note of Dolly, I’ll keep that in mind. “It sucked feeling entirely useless… again… like when Cruella kidnapped my entire family to put them through a killing machine.”
“Good job Dolly!” I really should be praising you more on actually paying attention to the things I might miss. “Also I feel useless a lot of the time as well, but we still have to at least try to do something and you did try here and have been doing a lot for me by being there as an emotional support animal. It’s not hard to see why we’re bonded partners, family and possibly best friends for life.”
“Wha…?” Dolly looked confused, right forgot to explain myself.
“You noticed something that I didn’t, the beast got stronger and faster when Curdle attacked him for a few seconds.” Which was odd as the beast seemed to immediately slow down afterwards when coming after me. “After that his speed dropped drastically when he turned on me again. It’s actually something to think about and why, because let’s face it, he was after me from the start… and probably still is.”
“Well don’t know how much help I’ll be against a living ghost, still don’t understand how that’s considered normal around here.” Dolly mumbled and latched my wool onto the para-lance so that I could pet her gently as we moved.
“Normal and Ghost Type Dolly, it’s more of an elemental energy system with some relation to the words used for it. Anyway you still did a great job in helping Quetal get us out of The Dream.” That did seem to perk up Dolly a bit.
“Heh, yeah, now that was something I enjoyed doing.” Dolly grinned in thought. “Oberon dodged most of it though, but we were absolutely counting on that.”
“There’s the smile… your ‘can do positive attitude’ is really helpful to me, considering it balances out my near chronic pessimism. Currently my pessimism says that the beast is going to come after me regardless of the peace offering we left behind.” It was a major concern that we’d have to fight the beast and it was a legitimate concern that it’d be much smarter this time. “In fact he’ll probably be on us in the next minute or so.”
“… Don’t know how I can help with that if he shows up again, but I will sure try. Maybe flow-motion to add magic to my body… Aero still had some effect on him even if it doesn’t hurt him much.” Dolly grumbled and continued alongside me and rubbed herself lightly up against my gently caressing leg.
“What exactly are the chances that he can actually find us all the way out here?” Curdle asked innocently. “He doesn’t know what direction we went in. We’ve put a lot of distance between him and us, he shouldn’t be able to find us after we covered our tracks so well and how would he even go about tracking us so far away? I’m sure we’ll be fine! Besides what make you think he’d catch up to us so soon anyway? He’s probably miles away and getting lost somewhere in the tundra.”
Quetal, Dolly and I immediately groaned quite audibly and then wilted in defeat at what was coming.
“What?” Curdle asked confused by our sudden disappointed and scathing stares at her. “What did I say?”
“You just tempted fate… around Pom… multiple times in a row.” Quetal stated as slowly and succinctly as he possible could, he looked like he wanted to drag his own claws down his face. “Multiple times, IN, A, ROW!”
“What does that have to with anyt…” Then Curdle was immediately splattered into cold chunks violently when the white haired beast landed on her. I don’t like that it happened, but it felt quite deserved and I hoped Curdle was okay.
The beast was on all fours and he reared back his head and roared to the night sky, afterwards the beast was immediately looking at me specifically.
“Fou!” Yep, the voice saying that still sent shivers down my spine.
The outsider beast was starting to sound like a living recurring nightmare and I won’t recover from my previous injuries for a few days if left to heal naturally. I’m so glad this world had healing berries, abilities and the like, I desperately needed them all right about now.
I took up the para-lance and held it defensively as the beast more cautiously approached me while paying some attention to Quetal.
“Look, can we not fight? Please?” I asked while shivering, and not because it was cold.
“Fou.” I’ll take that rumbling growl and glare as a definitive no, Dolly still took up a protective position even if she couldn’t do much to stop the beast aside from repeatedly used Gravity and she only had so much magical capacity for doing it.
“Didn’t think so.” I stated as he crouched down to lunge, however as I inhaled I noticed the twitch in his muscles. “Quetal!”
Quetal immediately dodged by rolling to the right at my warning, avoiding the sudden turning lunge from the beast and attempt at a heavy swipe with its left claw. Quetal didn’t even think twice about it and had avoided a nasty claw swipe for his efforts as he fired a point blank Beat Up that staggered and knocked the beast back, he hadn’t been able to get up a substitute yet.
Given the shadow copy of Curdle still appeared to fire a blast, this meant Curdle was fine…ish. The generated shadow copies of me and Dolly really rammed into the beast in a powerful straightforward manner after the beam.
Suddenly the pushed back beast turned and was unleashing a lunging swipe at me. I deflected his right claw upwards and tried to stab forward at him with the blunt end of the lance, he dodged backwards and out of the way.
I tried to press forward and he effectively dodged me while I sped up into Dancing Flame speed to put pressure on him, he then slapped me in the chest with his left claw while trying to steal the lance with his right.
I managed to prevent him from stealing the weapon outright with a quick shift in how I held it, but he still sent me and the weapon flying in two different directions.
Before I knew it I was flopping onto my back in the snow with a bruised chest that was making it hard to breathe.
Laying back first in the snow, I was trying to inhale slowly with freshly bruised lungs while going over the interaction of what just happened. He had learned from our previous fight and he obviously didn’t like the lance, Sir Mik had helped me discover that it was a magical weapon of some kind and its appearance was based on what I would want in a weapon.
This recent interaction proved I was right, the beast was smart given he changed his methodology in how he approached fighting me by striking at my friends and then coming for me when he thought my guard was down.
Less rabid beast and now more of a colder calculating monster, given he disarmed me so easily.
The beast basically landed on top of me and opened its mouth wide to take a bite out of my mostly unprotected face.
Only for him to change what he was going to bite by suddenly turning his head and grabbing onto the lance below the tip. Dolly was swinging it at him with her teeth and he sent her flying off to the side. If Dolly had been swinging that for full momentum impact, then this beast was more terrifying than I previously thought to be able to be able to stop her cold like that.
Dolly looked so surprised, that it might take her a bit to realize she needed to recover after hitting the snow from being tossed like that.
While this was happening Quetal pummeled the beast from the back with another Beat Up attack, trying to distract it off of me, he got his substitute up and running and Curdle was busy pulling herself together.
Given that the beast was still on all fours and pinning me, Quetal wouldn’t be able to get him off of me by toppling him to the side.
I quickly held out my right hoof straight alongside my body and quickly slammed myself in the right shoulder with my left hoof sharply, using what little space I had under the beast to strike myself.
The wobble counter would be only like a quarter of the strength it usually was, but in this case… I added a golden glow to my wobbling right leg and quickly angled my hoof to strike upwards with a self-inflicted wobble counter. I really did not want to be bitten in the skull by this beast, goodness knows where its teeth have been or if they were ever cleaned.
The beast launched away from me and slammed into the northwestern slope, he rolled onto his claws and the echoes of his growls could be heard throughout the valley.
“Fou!” He shook his head and roared out at me in an aggressive manner.
I looked further up the slope after his angry roar and blinked at something in the light of the moon above and the lance Dolly was dragging back towards me, all the while rubbing at my aching right shoulder.
There was some personal disbelief that I just pulled off a ‘one-inch’ hoof attack that Arizona would be proud of, she was likely capable of pulling off such a feat with Cow Kempo through raw muscle alone. I needed some help from my Chrysomallus side to even do what I just did.
I really shouldn’t rely on something that is going to eventually kill me, but in that situation the use was quite warranted.
“Quetal gather up Curdle and start moving to the northeast now!” I already let Dolly in on my plan mentally and I started trying to find the frequency. She had already dragged the lance past me and was following Quetal, who thankfully didn’t question what I was about to do. “Rrrrrr-yip… no… RRrrrRRRr-yip… maybe a little more.”
Come on, come on, I could do this, just needed to concentrate more and find the right frequency before my throat gives out. The glowing eyes of that monster were getting closer.
“RRRRRRrrrrRrrrrrRR-yip.” The icy snow covered wall of the valley shook and the world started vibrating violently as the beast was on approach for me after seemingly being ditched by my friends.
I smiled with relief, pried myself out of the divot in the snow and inhaled. The beast lunged forward to get into my path as I started to turn towards them, unfortunately for him I wasn’t running… I was jumping to avoid what was coming.
I leapt up inflated what little wool I had and then two walls worth of snow avalanched slammed inwards on the beast smashing him between two masses of snow to sweep him southwest.
To add insult to the sudden injury as I exhaled, I dropped and violently kicked off the beast’s head with all four of my hooves to make a huge leap away from the flowing mass of white beneath me. Thus burying him completely in the avalanched flowing to the southwest and landed on higher ground to start galloping as the snow from the northwest and southeast side of the valleys walls came tumbling down in a disastrous manner.
Luckily we were heading up the valley instead of down it. Given there were no Pokémon around, I was less worried about causing an incident that could hurt someone and more worried with getting away from the beast safely.
I had to jump several more times landed on some snow that wasn’t moving or shifting and quickly caught up with Quetal, Dolly and Curdle as we ran for the northeast with more snow avalanching behind us in such thick quantities that the beast would need an hour or two to dig himself out of it to catch up. That is if we were lucky and by this point I don’t see myself as such.
There was no place in my heart to believe that that would actually be the end of ‘The Beast’ who says ‘Fou’ or ‘Foe’.
We managed to safely get out of the avalanche zone and looked back at the massive wall of snow building up behind us.
“Do you think that will keep him?” Dolly asked through the lance in her mouth, which I quickly took back.
“Sadly… no.” I answered with a shiver. “Let’s keep moving.”
-Twenty minutes of being buried later, southwestern end of the valley-
A claw erupted from the snow, slowly the beast pulled himself free and took on sniff. His head immediately turned in the direction of the Anti-magic and the Chrysomallus that wielded it.
The beast, once it fully crawled out of the snow, roared in frustration.
The beast hoped that she could hear him, he was quite angry. He slowly started trudging in the direction of his quarry.
-Northeastern part of Icy Valley, Pom-
“So that went well, could have gone worse and it’s a good thing I can use recover so often!” Curdle stated with exuberance. “Though I’m still angry he didn’t want to eat me, look at me… I’m all lemony goodness! At least we won’t have to deal with him for a long time after that.”
The sudden roar we heard in the distance made us freeze.
“Honestly, you should really stop tempting fate around Pom and never do it again… like ever.” Quetal stated with a flat stare while looking over his shoulder at her.
“Maybe I should make a pamphlet that says, no fate tempting specifically around the ewe known as Pom Pawdore Lambchop.” As I said this Dolly was looking behind us as well.
“How strong do you think that thing is?” Dolly asked with actual terror in her voice.
“More than enough for us combined if he is angry enough, to the point that I didn’t even think twice about fully planting all four of my hooves into his skull with full force while using Dancing Flame at full tilt to get away.” That the beast already managed to get up from that while being swallowed by an avalanche spelled my doom. We desperately needed to either get to civilization or figure out how he’s tracking us. “That he’s up already tells me that we should try to stay consistently ahead of him. Quetal how far?”
The beast definitely seemed intent on attacking me for one reason or another. Maybe we can cool his head in our next fight? Not likely, but I can try… because I really didn’t want to kill that beast and hunger is not the most forefront thing in its mind concerning me for whatever reason.
“At the pace we’re suddenly going to be setting? Well… we’re going to need a full eight hours of sleep and I don’t think that beast will let us do so. At most we still need more than a full day to reach Hail Hollow from here and it’s going to take even longer if we have to fight that… thing… off.” Quetal seemed to be worried about the beast as he kept looking back as we kept up a relatively quick pace. “That’s definitely one of the oddest outsiders I’ve ever heard of. Makes me wonder why it’s after you, you certainly haven’t done anything to it before we got here.”
“Maybe the beast sees me as a rival?” Who would want to be my rival, I’m not very confrontational unless I see something that would obviously make me act that way.
“I hate to say this, but you’re not exactly rival material Pom.” Quetal stated gruffly.
“No I agree with you wholeheartedly and onehundr… ow…” I hissed as a shooting pain shot from my right shoulder.
“So was that a new ‘sacrificial’ technique you did back there?” Quetal asked with concern.
“If you mean hurting myself to set up a powerful attack, then yes.” Sacrificed some of my own health and used my Chrysomallus side to do a not so standard wobble counter. Any sacrifice I make does have greater value than it would for anyone else, always at a cost though. “Spur of the moment thing, now I have a bruise shoulder to go with my bruised chest… oh….”
“What is it?” Curdle asked as she likely saw a look of shock cross my face.
“The beast deliberately aimed a hard blow at my chest in an attempt to prevent me from using Dancing Flame technique to the fullest.” The sudden cold realization made me shiver as I quietly picked up the pace, the beast was already preparing for our next match ahead of time and I couldn’t keep continually sacrificing myself to beat it if I wanted to survive. I think the beast actively wanted me to do something like that and if I do it enough.
-Thirty minutes later, hilly flatlands-
So we were in a less mountainous region that wasn’t a valley of this frozen Tartarus of a kingdom when my ears twitched. I immediately stopped in place, after a few more paces from everyone else, they stopped too and nobody said a word.
We all stood in place waiting and I could barely hear a faint rumbling of a gurgling noise.
Was it him, was it the beast? Did he already catch up to us?
“Not ‘HIM’… crab.” When Quetal said this we all looked at him with curious gazes.
“Crab?” There was a notable confusion in my tone.
“By the sound of it, big crab.” Quetal hissed quietly as he back up towards us or more specifically towards… Curdle? “Dazzling Gleam will be effective if they are a threat, they are just watching us so far.”
“Crab?” Dolly asked in confusion as she looked about and pulled her board from her back as I readied the lance. “How big could this crab really be?”
“Dolly, didn’t we just get finished with telling Curdle not to tempt fate by asking questions like that?” I tried to stay calm, I really did but I let a bit of frustration into my voice.
The immediate result of me talking louder than a whisper was an eruption of snow occurring behind us and I just looked up at the looming figure over me with large boxing glove limbs, denoting a ‘Fighting Type’ if anything and it was indeed a big crab. A ridiculously large one with four legs, thick white fur, blonde hair at the top, blue colored in the parts that weren’t as fur covered, it’s claws that looked like boxing cloves with built in brass knuckles, the most daunting thing of all was the piercing glowing red eyes.
“Alpha Crabominable… back away slowly.” Quetal stated out the side of his mouth through gritted teeth quietly as we all started to slowly back away from them, even Curdle didn’t look like she wanted to be eaten by this thing.
I was told Alpha’s were incredibly aggressive, well it certainly looked the part with the blazing glowing red eyes of pure malice. I wonder what Ocellus would have to say about meeting this thing, I could use her emotion reading skills right about now to know what it was feeling. Did we look appetizing or was it angry we were just near it.
“Holy Crab…” Sure it was not nearly anywhere near as big as Gilgamesh got, but yes, quite big Dolly. “Pom, I hope you can forgive me for any future slips if there are any.”
There was a subtle shift and I quickly hopped back as its claw snapped closed around the snow in the spot I was just standing and, with a flick of the same claw, I was sent flying when the blast of snow struck me.
Coughing and sputtering as I shoved the snow off of my cold body, I witness the suddenly decoration covered crab was sent skidding back slightly by a Dazzling Gleam blast from Curdle. Quetal was spitting Swift stars into it as well.
Dolly grinned sheepishly as, with a jerk of her head, she tossed me the para-lance that I caught in my left hoof. I was beginning to think of the lance more as more the word ‘paranormal’ than shapeshifting ‘parasol’ now.
“I am so… so very sorry Pom.” Dolly stated while whining and looking at the crab monster’s claw started glowing with ice and when it struck out a huge pillars of pointy icicles burst out of the ground at the point of contact where it struck.
“We’ll likely do courses with Curdle on why actively tempting fate is a bad idea later Dolly.” I sighed out as I tried to pry myself into a standing position using the Para-lance.
Quetal grunted as he was scratched across the left shoulder by one of the flash grown icicles.
Another Dazzling Gleam was fired off by Curdle who managed to knock the giant crab back before it could encroach on Quetal.
At least the ‘Crabominable’, as Quetal called it, was quite slow mobility wise otherwise in a close up range its arms were moving much faster than its legs. Fighting Type guaranteed, wonder if being an Alpha makes its Fighting Type nature worse?
Speaking of arms it gather energy and suddenly encased its left limb entirely in ice and raised the resulting mass high above its head and slammed it down sending waves of snow in every direction.
I crouched and opened the lance up to block the wave of snow from battering me and Dolly as the parasol form made for an excellent shield.
“Can we run from it now?” I asked from behind the safety of the parasol as a flailing Curdle flew overhead.
“Yes!” Quetal stated as he ran by, Dolly and I turned to start moving too… only for the Crabominable to make an impressive leap for something of its size and land in front of the way we wanted to go.
Curdle, who was behind it, struck it with another Dazzle Gleam that seemed to daze the monster quite a bit. It swept its right arm around blindly for Curdle, but missed hitting her.
I angled the parasol behind me and with a swing I scooped up some snow and sent the entire mass of flying into the monsters mouth, it immediately started choking on it.
“Dolly!” I called and she reacted to what I wanted her to do immediately.
“Gravity!” Dolly was staying well away from the ‘Alpha’ monster and near me, as soon as the gravity sphere exploded the giant crab became bogged down in the snow and its arms became much hard for it to lift or move.
“Let’s see it try and jump after us now, come on!” I ran around the monster and gave it an absolutely wide berth as we did so by staying outside its reach to find Curdle waiting for us and she blasted a Dazzling Gleam into the crab as it slowly turned to continue attacking us.
It struggled to attack us with its claws or move, given its size the Alpha had problems with weighing however much gravitational force Dolly added to it.
Once we were a fair enough distance away from the slow moving giant snow crab, Curdle was about to say something.
“Don’t!” I stated harshly and Curdle grinned sheepishly with her arms behind her back.
We were on our way to getting away from the first Alpha I’ve run into, don’t know about Totemics, but I know Dazzle was at least a Noble in more ways than one.
This is when I heard something from behind that chilled me and my friends to the bone, quite literally as we were all sprayed with ice cold water and suddenly I found my movements becoming sluggish and my body was freezing up.
“What’s wrong with me, I feel so weak?” The water definitely had hit us hard, but there was something else about it.
“The Crabominable knows a move Chilling Water, weakens our ability to attack physically…. But at these temperatures.” Don’t need to explain much further Quetal, it doesn’t take many guesses why it was bad to be hit with water that weakens you physically when dealing with a large Fighting Type. Speaking of he was still able to stand and continue spitting stars at the giant enemy crab.
If the Crabominable was particularly hungry and wanted to catch prey that were not immune or highly resilient to cold temperatures like Ice Types, then it is this very scenario we’re dealing with right now that would happen.
“Really… I just feel wet.” Dolly was seriously the only one unaffected by the cold water and it didn’t help that the low temperatures were already making being wet even worse for the rest of us barring Quetal who seems resilient to it.
As for Curdle, she looked to halfway to being frozen stiff. Her evolutionary biology is still really questionable to me many times over.
The crab was slowly on approach with the effects of gravity making it too hard to get its body off the ground with a jump so it had to walk over to us.
“…!” Idea just came to me. “Dolly think of a warm summer breeze and hit us with it!”
“Uh, like a fur dryer, okay, but I’m going to need a recharge after this Pom. Aero!” Suddenly the chill threatening to freeze me solid left and my body dried up immediately, as did Quetal and Curdle as warm air suffused an area around us as did several temporary air shields that likely wouldn’t last half a minute. “Huh, need to remember this the next time I need to dry off from a bath… of course my fur is getting a little bit puffy, but the quick dry seems worth it.”
“Less chatty more moving!” Quetal stated as we started to move away from the Crabominable and it sprayed water again, just not at us.
Crabominable instead sprayed a massive amount of water in front of us and with an icy fog on its fists it punched into the water stream and swept it from side to side. Suddenly were being blocked off by a wall of ice that was practically a curved iceberg and we were once again cornered.
I turned around and sent a Bark Blast at the crab only to have it be blocked by the monster’s claws, I charged and rammed the Para-lance forward at it.
It simply grabbed it and flicked me back into the half dome ice wall with a painful crunch as I cracked the ice.
“Look, are we really worth all of this trouble?” I asked, but the Crabominable didn’t seem to be listening to me.
“Obviously, or else it wouldn’t have bothered.” Quetal answered sadly before firing a wide spread of Swift move stars into the crab. Curdle used Dazzling Gleam and knocked it back a bit. “We’re probably the first meat to wander close enough to it in quite a while.”
“So if I’m hearing you right, it can understand us and is in fact smart enough to know we’re intelligent too, but it just doesn’t care and wants to eat us anyway?” I asked dully to clarify the situation we were in.
“Yes, that’s about it and is kind of the ideal first Ice Type meeting.” Ideal Quetal says, makes me wonder what’ll happen when we meet Pokémon that are a little more sophisticated around here. “Other Ice Types might try to act more sophisticated and might just play with their food more.”
The crab thrust its claw forward and I quickly opened up the lanced and blocked its attack that send a cold chilly air at me only to be rebuffed by the warm winds wrapping around me. We were stuck in close quarters having to fight a crab battle because it just wouldn’t let us go.
“We are hurting it though, just give me more time to wear it down completely!” Curdle that was a big ask considering how close it was getting to us, despite being weighed down and being hit with multiple effective attacks. Thinking of, another Dazzling Gleam blast dazed and staggered the crab to falling on its backside slightly. “Also, if it wanted something to eat…”
“Then you wouldn’t be able to travel with us anymore.” I answered swiftly.
“Choices, choices…” Curdle actually seemed to consider letting it eat her. “Eh, I could do better than being consumed by an Alpha, I’m going for a legendary Pokémon to find me tasty!”
Another blast of Dazzling Gleam kept the crab at bay and Dolly’s ‘warm wind’ shields wore off letting the cold back in.
The Crabominable raised a frost covered claw and was about to either smash it into us or hit the ground nearby to skewer us with sharp bits of ice. Neither sounded pleasant.
It brought its claw down and was stopped mid swing by the beast showing up and knocking it aside by ramming right into it.
“Fou!” The beast stated while glaring at me and then he quickly changed targets to the Crabominable after it quickly attacked him with a nasty right hook to the face. Aggression certainly drew his attention a lot.
After being sent sliding backwards, I noted that the beast’s muscles seemed to flex and he suddenly appeared to gain strength as he stared down the Crabominable without fear. Hmm… inconclusive, I needed to study this guy more if he kept coming after me.
“Fou-” After glaring at me once more while growling, the beast did something clearly understandable and showed it's intelligence to the others. It first pointed at me with a claw, then at himself while nodding, then he shook his head no after pointing at the Crabominable.
I understood what he was saying quite clearly, his message was delivered. Nobody could kill me except him now and he would definitely fight anything that tried to encroach upon his prey until he finally manages to end me. How very nice of him to declare my death so openly.
So I was sort of safe… not from him, just everything else while in his general vicinity that wants a piece of me. Good to know, not that it'd help much.
I felt like crying, probably would after we do some more running, I’m never paranoid at this point as things were absolutely out to get me.
The crab attacked again and the beast met them head on without worry.
“I suggest we move while the Alpha Crab keeps him distracted.” Despite the Alpha being bigger, I didn’t think it was stronger than… what should we call the Beast? Fou? After the sound he states every time he’s come after me? Would someone really name a monster just like that based on vocal patterns? Why that’d be quite ridiculous, but I’m willing to do that for some levity from this horrible situation.
We carefully skirted around Fou and the Alpha Crabominable brawling it out and from the looks of it... Fou was definitely giving much better than he got. Yeah I’m a bit more terrified of the outsider beast turned Pokémon that was an average sized alternative typing Zoroak now, it was meeting that Alpha Crab head on and actually harming it and it was already doing a bit abysmally after several Fairy Type attacks from Curdle.
Still, we managed to get around the ice wall dome proceed to run a fair distance away from the fight without notice and then continued running for all we were worth.
The night had to end soon and we would need sleep after all of this and I didn’t want to be killed in my sleep so we had to put as much distance between us and Fou as we feasibly could while still getting rest, food and bathroom time as well.
Hopefully Fou would be too tired after fighting that crab monster to really come after us instantly.
“I think your rival is pretty neat.” Really not the time or place Curdle!
"You call that a rival? I call it a eventual death sentence, but sure, what's one more on top of everything else Pom is dealing with." Grumbled Quetal who was clearly afraid for me and kept leading us in the direction we need to go in at a steady pace of get away from what was chasing us, more specifically me, down. "She's not in a good mental place right now and neither am I for that matter, just being in Nixtorm is giving me headaches and I'm not talking about the trouble we've already run into."
"I kind of actually wanted to stick around to see who won that fight..." Which would be dumb, because staying near the fight would be bad Dolly. I even mentally shouted that at Dolly for it as we kept running away from a major problem we currently couldn't deal with. "Alright, alright, we'll keep running, sheesh!"
Speed of cowardice don't fail us now!