//------------------------------// // 366. Hail Hollow. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Pokémon Realm, The Dream, Oberon- “So… have we found a member to replace the traitor on the Ponyta Prowlers?” Possibly as a leader, because Lumber Spry isn’t exactly what I would call an authoritative leader. “Yes, we have a Rapidash that can take up a leadership position for the unit.” My lovely wife Queen Titania stated as we sat next to each other working on things. Getting my wife into the same room as me does make me smile truly. “We’ll start sending relief efforts to Illusio, I hear that Chrysalia is already working on it. Violight is supporting most of the western kingdoms on the continent proper. They are currently the least damaged western kingdom.” “Yes, have we received news of the quarantine of Valora yet?” Quite sure Titania noted that her most noble friend Sir Mik wasn’t here. I had him routed to circle back around and check the situation in Valora. “Not yet, but Sir Mik is already working on that. He’s only supposed to do a quick scouting mission. A flyby if you will.” Hopefully our knight doesn’t do more than that out of boredom, he was a good friend of mine and well loved by the populace at large. He was quite popular despite being among those who are the naturally cursed Pokémon known as Mimikyu, even Pom was able to relax in his presence. “I’m fearing the worst, we may have to help the western nations subdue the eastern side of Ransei which has been mostly thrust into war before whatever is causing the quarantine breaks through it by force… so about that cult that started up?” “Pom has been said to be popular with all canid species… that is no less true here, the cult is fully benign as far as I can tell.” Though you were a little perturbed by the fervor with which they were praising what were once one of our guests Titania? Even I was a bit disturbed at how fast every Canid within The Dream and the Fairy Dust Islands came together after very little interaction with Pom. They were quite protective of the idea of her very existence. -Currently in Nixtorm, Hail Hollow, Pom- I sat here meditating and sighed audibly when a shadow fell over my eyelids, I opened them up and yep… trouble found me again. At least it wasn’t Fou trying to attack me again. “To protect the world from devastation.” Meowth started off making me think something was wrong, I was quite curious as to what happened to Jessie, but I guess I’d figure after they were done. I basically just tuned them out until they got to the part they usually start wrapping up. I noted Jester and Scourge were lazily just staring at me. “At least you’re humoring us this time.” Scourge grumbled as he flexed his crossed arms and his muscles bulged comically. “Team Pocket, stealing stuff at the speed of spite, surrender now or prepare for a fight!” Meowth finished up their general introduction motto. “That’s right!” James followed up. “Okay, I surrender.” I stated and then waited, it took them a full minute to realize what I said and then they finally reacted. “What?!” They all exclaimed and flopped into the snow in surprise. I rolled my eyes and then gazed at them lazily. “Didn’t think that would actually happen.” Meowth pulled out a notebook, or was it a journal, and started to write down something in it. “Today, we finally got a victory… oh right, you don’t have much on you to steal right now do you? Eh, still counts. Hey, where are your usual friends, the whole entourage thing?” “We’ve… had a couple of issues before arriving here in Hail Hollow involving a fight back in Illusio, I got separated from most of my friends and I’m only here with three others. One’s a new one, one family member and one I’ve been traveling with for a while now.” I previously thought Quetal was exaggerating about how cold Ice Types could be. That was no longer the case. “So what happened to Jessie?” “That’s just the question we were waiting for!” Meowth stated with a raised paws, then began a fanfare. “Introducing our newest member of Team Pocket, Wobbuffet, the love-love dancing machine!” That’s when a familiar blue blob came out from behind a tree outside the walls of the city I was at with an equally familiar snake wrapped around his neck. Jessie looked to be still alive and was quietly snoring away. When he started dancing, I couldn’t help but find him even more familiar somehow. “Ah… I take it cold weather is making Jessie sleep more often, despite how hot blooded she is, because she’s a snake?” It was clearly intriguing that Jessie would even come here, did she not know that the cold was a problem for snakes? “Wait a minute… you’re that Wobbuffet that was sent plummeting to your death!” “Wobba wubba, fet.” Answered the blob that threw me a cheerful salute and bright open mouthed smile. “How?!” I asked as I looked at him. “He fell out of the sky practically on top of us, smart guy here survived the fall using a move to block against the ground and basically safely flopped into some water, then he ended up saving our lives from this humongous explosion by forcing us into a hole we dug, quite friendly… but we can’t understand a single word he’s saying.” Meowth stated with a shrug and a shake of his head. “At least we know we’re friends and he’s a member of Team Pocket.” Wobbuffet nodded while smiling cheerfully as he continued to love-love dance in place. “So why exactly are you guys here of all places?” Hail Hollow wasn’t exactly a friendly place to be… actually seems kind of like the perfect place for Team Pocket to appear really now that I think about it. On third thought Team Pocket is way too friendly for the locals. -Flashback montage- We had managed eight hours of sleep and arrived at Hail Hollow surprisingly unmolested by another Fou attack. Also there weren’t any guards at the gates or anyone really caring that we arrived at the city underneath a veritable mountain of ice. The ice looked pretty at least, but the city certainly didn’t. “Hello there, I just wanted to…” I tried. “Not interested.” The Pokémon stated and then wandered off with a snoot in the air. I believe it was called a Swinub, a heavily furred pig. Generally their evolved forms were the walking tanks of the Nixtorm military, heavy on the physical prowess, but weaker in doing special moves. Quetal had a lot of interesting fact to share about the locals. He was from here and thought I would like to hear what he knew, I did in fact enjoy these little tidbits. Quetal was trying to share his culture… or at least the very reason why he left Nixtorm previously after his brother was killed in cold blood by a Bearctic. That was more information than I had previously on what happened to Quetal. I remember that Cubby was the prior evolution, from Jiri’s bear unit and wondered how a Pokémon with a constant snot bubble problem can turn into such a fearsome beast. - “Excuse me, I…” I tried again. “Word of advice, I suggest you go away outsider, we’ve got enough problems without one of you running around as it is!” Stated what I’m told was a Delibird. A red feathered, white furred penguin that is almost always carrying a large sack they make themselves. “Maybe that monster might even be lucky enough to kill you.” Quetal’s tidbit was that they were usually seen in parcel delivery as couriers or more often outright supply management specialists for the kingdom, usually they get the best supplies for personal use. If you need something delivered a Delibird was a way to get something somewhere fast as long as it was within their weight limit. Still found it hard to accept that a Delibird was part Flying Type, their wings didn’t look like it would get them off the ground… yet they could in fact fly, with one wing, even when that clearly didn’t make any sense I chalked it up to Flying Type energy making up the difference in natural capability. It was a fun fact to learn that Delibird’s only ever learned two moves naturally, Present and Drill Peck. The rest they needed to pay to learn how to do, but at least the variety of what they can learn was said to be good. While the Pokémon weren’t friendly thus far, Quetal made them sound much more approachable than they were with his tidbits. Though I was noticing a trend with everyone letting me try to do the talking. - Third times the charm they say! “Hey…” I started, I didn’t even get two words in. “Take my advice… quit before you even begin.” The Sneasel stated nastily and just walked off. “You’re likely to die here no matter what you think you’re trying to do.” “That was a cheerful personality.” I stated dully. “Welcome to my world Pom, I don’t like being here either.” Quetal stated with his arms crossed and he was twitchily looking around as if expecting someone to recognize him. Fun tidbit about Sneasels… Quetal was an outlier, not an example of the species as a whole and there were Sneasel alternatives around as much as regular Sneasels. Said Alternatives tend to grow taller and were Fighting and Poison Types, an odd combination but not too different from Fire and Poison like Dazzle was. - “Can I just take a moment of your…” I was beginning to get the feeling that most Ice Type of civilized society, if we can even call it that at this point, weren’t very nice like Quetal was. “Whatever it is you want, no.” The Pokémon left immediately by clamming up and bouncing off. Tidbit about Shellder, the purple shell Pokémon, they could apparently attach themselves to Slowpoke and form symbiotic relationships that cause the Slowpoke and Shellder to evolve into one strange being. Quetal tended to keep to himself, but I think thawed himself out for us. Possibly out of desperation to make something of himself, which is why he has been a very good friend since. These Pokémon they were quite rude and or upsetting to try and talk to. Maybe it was just the Skull Chaosdramon X problem going causing it? If I were to believe Quetal, it’s always like this unless you had some business to do with some Pokémon and there were very few Pokémon that were nice around here. “Excuse me but…” I tried again with another. “Whatever you want, it’s probably not worth the effort to listen to.” After hearing that from an Ice and Steel Type variant of Sandslash… I simply just gave up and told the others to find out what we needed to know and or figure out how to get more supplies while we were here. "Also go die to the monster if you want to be a hero, you outsiders tend to do stuff like that right?" Tidbit dropped here was that the variant of Sandslash was weak to the more commonly known Sandshrew line of Terrera and should I ever need to fight one, they were weak to both fighting types and fire. I’d be at a stupidly huge advantage against one despite how scary they look with sharp spikes of ice that were as hard as steel coming off of the cold blue hedgehog shrews backs. Quetal set off with Dolly and Curdle went to sell herself… and was literally selling bits of herself. The Ice Types, in a surprising twist to me, weren’t very picky about where the sugary dessert fluff that made up Curdle’s body came from and would happily buy chunks out of her to eat since she was clearly offering quite openly. I eventually settled outside the west side of the city walls, if what was left of them could even be called walls at this point, having barely heard a conversation about the direction the ‘Monster of Nixtorm’ kept coming from. We were basically in Nixtorm Central and the monster we were after kept coming from the west. Looking at the city, anyone could see how devastated it was, but the fact that it still held was a miracle thanks in part to Articuno protecting the Ice Types in vicious battles with the nigh unstoppable nightmare that was apparently an undead informational being. That’s basically what the 'Skull' designation tends to mean when it comes to informational entities from the way Yggdrasil.Sys tells it. Still don’t know how information can become undead, but I wasn’t going to question it since at this point I’ve seen way too much to really question the possibility of anything. Like two versions of one being existing in the same time and space… I wondered how Elli was doing. The grass here was blue and covered in a light layer of frost and the trees were alpine, I decided to just relax, for once in my currently miserable life, and wait for my friends to come find me. Dolly always knew where I was, but Curdle might be a bit more of a problem to find and she was going to be earning supplies for us. The ruler of Nixtorm was not likely to be seen by me, because I’m not interested in meeting him. It was some guy named Mitsuhide who has at least something of a companionable relationship with Lord Nobunaga of Dragnor, not that the ruler of Dragnor was helping things here and was busy elsewhere. Dragnor was said to be in a bit of a bother with Spectra and Avia, but was ignoring the crisis’s going on here and whatever was happening in Valora right now. -Present- “Well… we enjoyed a nice few days of vacation on the beach on one of the Fairy Dust Islands, but we really couldn’t find out where the mythical kingdom of the Fairy Types was. Since Jessie suggested that as a place to go, it was my turn to suggest a place and I wanted to come here to do some snowboarding.” Not exactly what one expected Meowth’s answer would be or the reason why they came here. Honestly I thought they were following me or trying to get ahead of my group to plant traps or something. It just seemed that at most Team Pocket seemed… vaguely annoying I want to say. “So you didn’t just come here because Jessie would be incapacitate fifty percent of the time due to her biological nature making her constantly sleepy in cold weather?” I asked with a slight smile tugging at my lips. “Well that would be a good reason, but I wouldn’t do that on purpose now would I? Goodness knows James is upset that Jessie isn’t awake.” Meowth stated while sending me a wink and lightly elbowing me in the chest with a grin. “She’s a sadist and he’s a masochist… I’m thoroughly surprised the two aren’t married yet.” “Please stop telling people I’m a masochist!” James complained quite audibly. “You’d have to be a masochist to even be Jessie’s friend, geeheeheehee!” Jester’s laugh is still haunting coming from a small green caterpillar. “Wait… what does that say about me that I’m part of this group?!” “At least Jessie isn’t the sole leader of this group or I would have quite some time ago.” Scourge followed up with a serious expression on his face. “Like being the muscle…” “Wobba wobba, fet wobba wobbuffet.” Wobbuffet included despite being completely incomprehensible to anyone, aside from another Wobbuffet possibly and then he laughed a bit. “Jessie’s not... that bad…” James tried to defend, poorly. “Says the guy who is spine head over body in love with her.” Meowth ribbed. “So now that we’ve won one, a victory, against you, what can we take?” “All I’ve got with me is some food...” I answered dully. “We’ll take it!” Jester immediately insisted and I heard the gurgling of multiple stomachs and sighed. “Please?” “You do realize that if you were hungry, you could have just asked me for all the food I have on me and I would have just given it to you freely.” We were going to get more supplies anyway and Team Pocket was… vaguely frenemies with me. They were a wandering, mildly threatening, circus troupe. I’m sure if Mr. Beezy were to join them, then I would lose all respect for them as a vague threat. “Well aren’t you the friendly outsider hero type.” Meowth stated pleasantly. “Please don’t call me a hero.” I whined out, really did not want that kind of reputation even if it was getting worse over time. “… I need to snuggle up against you or I’ll die…” We all blinked and looked at the big blue eyed, white furred, six tailed fox that came up to me and sniffed me several times, she then started to snuggle up against me. Eventually she curled up in my hooves to start snoozing and I picked her up to hold her against my belly. “Um…” I didn’t know what to say. “So about that food?” Meowth stated while staring at me with some hint of hope. “You can have it. If it helps you sleep at night, you won it or something as I recall you writing down.” At this point I was willing to go along with Team Pocket’s farcical victory to get them to leave me alone. “Again you could have just asked.” I had much more things to worry about, like future attacks by Fou or how to deal with a Skull Chaosdramon X without dying. -Twenty minutes later- The Team Pocket group was happily eating, aside from the still very out cold Seviper, and I had a napping alternative Ice Type Vulpix sleeping in my hooves as I relaxed. Its eventual evolution led to it adding Fairy Type to it and I figured that that makes sense, this cute Pokémon was outrageously adorable. I guess not all Ice Types were bad, just a number of them were exceptionally grumpy, supplies around here were not exactly doing great and overall what few friendly Ice Types there were might be just as grumpy as the ones that already are in general. Though I’m not sure if it was the constant monster attacks or the stress of building back up from them that is making them like this. The housing around the west side of Hail Hollow was quite messed up. Of note, the buildings here used stone and ice, possibly with a few other materials. Ice was an easy building material for Ice Types to keep up with and if you had a home that was made of ice, then refrigerating food wasn’t hard. Stone was the other major building material, wood seems to be rarely used aside from making roofs of some buildings, others used thatch and some were just made of ice which again could be readily replenished by local Pokémon moves. Ice Types could make a home anywhere in the cold, but finding food and or water out here was a challenge in the frozen environment. Hail Hollow had a small stream or river, one that was barely above the temperature just enough to not freeze over. I think ice fishing would be a pastime around here. “I wonder how many canids I can find in every part of the world.” It wasn’t unknown to me that Eevee evolutions were practically everywhere, but Eevee weren’t and that was something curious to think about. I’ll see just about all of them if I survive long enough. I calmly petted the napping Vulpix and sent a mental message to Dolly to not freak out, but Team Pocket was here. … Dolly I said not to freak out… … They aren’t even do anything right now! … Yes, right here, where I am. Not doing anything to me, in fact they are just eating and are chatting amongst themselves. Really don’t know how they stay friends when the only thing keeping them together is an angry and highly aggressive danger noodle. … Yes, I thought that would sound amusing to you. Look, Dolly, if I was in danger do you think you wouldn’t have noticed through our bond by now? I would even be screaming for help by now if I was. … Dolly, I think Fou would be more of a problem, given he hasn’t show up yet I’m completely fine until that occurs. Then I’ll actually need help, so don’t come rushing over for nothing if Quetal and you are still busy. … Yes, I’m sure. I am perfectly fine to continue relaxing as the fights we have ahead of us are going to be soul melting, at least for me. Team Pocket isn’t actually being a problem… given I could take all of them in a fight even if they had gotten stronger from the last time they bothered us. … I actually tapped you because I wanted you to find Curdle since she went off entirely by herself. Also we both know what she smells like already. Shouldn't be that hard to find unless a nearby bakery serves lemon flavored peach tarts. … Well there you go Dolly, find a way to let Quetal know you need to find Curdle to check up on her. Now that that was settled, I was going to think on what to talk to TIanhuo about this evening. Hail Hollow was sort of nice and I really couldn’t do anything until the monster showed up here, which means having to deal with it when it came up. Until then we could be dealing with Fou and I really don’t think I can fight that beast alone by myself. Sure some of the people around here may have hinted or wished that I would die, others didn’t like me because I was an outsider given the connotations of trouble there in brought about just by the existence of said outsiders and many were grumpy outright with some good reasons behind the grumpiness. I’ll give them the excuse of the constant monster attacks, then if by some miracle I manage to solve the problem without Fou killing me, if they still acted the same way and didn’t have any reason at all to act the way they did. Well I wouldn’t know what to think or do, but we’d probably start heading towards Valora… there was some talk of strange happenings over there. Despite all of that, there’s the fact that nobody here would or could ever be grateful towards me for it, but I would still warn everyone and lead the monster away from here if I saw it. Though I’m sure there would be a few that would make it worth it. -Inside Hail Hollow, inside a local bar, Dolly- This place looks busy, but aside from looking busy not much was actually happening here. “Pom checking in on you, you look a little worried there for a moment?” Quetal asked and I nodded. Not really doing much here aside from making sure my board was in working order and that my helmet was tight on my head. “Did she need anything?” How do I go about answering that without needing to use Yiggy Sis. I got a fun idea and made several random gestures with my paws and then looked at him with a smirk. “So Pom wants us to look for Curdle after we’re done listening around for news here, got it.” Quetal stated with no hint of misunderstanding from me and I just sat there with my jaw dropped. “Oh don’t act so surprised. If Pom thought of Curdle wandering off on her own might be a problem, then it quickly occurred to me as well. We’ll go looking around for her after we’re done here, is she having any problems…” I raised a paw and tilted it to the left and right, don’t know how to take it that those Team Rock It guys were around, but having seen Pom decimate them more than once I wasn’t exactly as worried as I might have been. Mostly because Pom told me she was fine. “So she ran into a problem, but it’s not exactly an emergency issue that she can’t handle on her own… judging by the expression on your face I got it right.” Okay, that was getting kind of freaky Quetal, but then again he did know Pom pretty well. “We still need to know when the next monster attack will occur.” -West side of Hail Hollow, Pom- “I’m kind of surprised you don’t want the spear.” I said honestly as Team Pocket was still hanging about. “We don’t need a weapon… by the way if Jessie asks you later, we beat you while you were using it and that’s where we got the food for her from.” Meowth was quite amiable as were Jame, Jester and Scourge, so Jessie was the driving force behind these… can I really call them bandits? They really weren’t exactly successful at robbing people and the most success they had was in Arbora Town where I first ran across them. “Besides I feel like there’s something up with that spear and we probably shouldn’t touch it. Another reason is that none of us even know how to use a spear. James has no hands, Jessie already has her tail blade, Scourge has his girder and do you really expect Jester to do anything with a weapon?” “Fair points, but wouldn’t you just try to sell it for money?” That was another angle and… wait… why was I trying to convince him to actually do something nefarious? Did I actively think so little of them that I actively wanted to start coaching them? I really needed to get my head examined, I wonder what a psychiatrist would find out about me that they wouldn’t already know from examining other lambkin. Some of the best Psychiatrist come from Meadow Hills, basically if you can survive a few weeks of talking to lambkins as a mental health trainee, then you’ll come out an expert in the field provided you don’t mentally crack. “Looks too unique, anyone we would try to sell that thing to would ask where we got it from and would want to compare prices.” Yeah, that might admittedly be a problem Meowth. I would never say Team Pocket didn’t have brains among them, it’s just that they didn’t use them often or well enough to make a normal living of which I’m just noting that they are absolutely and entirely capable of. So… did that mean they could be living normal lives and are instead doing this team of thieves’ shtick just to be different from the rest of the world? My guess is whatever works for them is what works for them, though it apparently leaves them hungry. “In any case, call it a feeling, but something tells me it would be a bad idea to try and take that thing from you. My gut feelings are usually not wrong, even if we are acting or doing wrong things a lot of the time on purpose. Is it even a spear, it looks almost like a parasol.” “Fair enough, so are you going to continue bothering me and my friends for the time being?” I asked seriously, because frankly I could use more time to breathe before being tossed into the deep end of a self-imposed monster hunting mission. “No, we better be getting while the getting is good and we had a victory today. Sure it’s not much of one but we’ll take it all the same.” Meowth motioned to his friends and then they waved goodbye as they started leaving. “I hear some slopes calling my name to the east waiting for me and I might even meet some nice Buneary girls on those slopes to corrupt into joining us. Might even meet a nice female Litten, Glameow or Purrloin. Wish me luck nemesis!” “Those are some of the oddest people I think I will have ever met…” That would probably become an understatement later on should I see them again in a week or so. I heard a yawn and looked down at the Vulpix I still held and they began to squirm and then opened their eyes to realize I was holding them. “Oh… uh… are you seeing anyone?” I gave them a flat look and dropped them into a nearby pile of snow. “Aw… the good ones are always taken… maybe I should tell my Glaceon friend about you, I’m sure they would love to meet you at least.” “Here we go… can I just say one thing, please don’t make this a thing.” The stared at me as if what I was asking was foreign concept to them and then started to smile brightly. “I’m so totally going to make this a thing, all Ninetales, Vulpix and Glaceon must know of and acknowledge your existence!” State the ice fox loudly while raising a paw to the sky. “Can you just go away and say you did?” I asked tiredly. “No! You are like, the most perfect being ever, so cuddly, soft, sweet and easy to sleep on.” Oh for the love everything, please save me from this adorable blue eyes mess of a fox. “Why… you’re like the best thing to ever exist, EVER!” “No I am not, you are just saying that because I have an unnatural magnetism to canid based animals and you are one of said canid.” I really didn’t like where this was going. “But… you’re so wonderful!” The Vulpix stated while looking at me all watery eyed. “Do you not know how easy it was for me to get a nap away from my nightmares of that monster besieging us for once just because you were here?!” Dolly, this is quickly turning into an emergency, help me! … I sent Dolly an idea of what was about to go wrong around me. … It’s not that funny!