A Pokemon Problem
(8) - Every Day I'm Snufflin'
"Well," said Ryder. "That went better than expected."
"Took the words right outta my—uhh... thoughts right out of my... cranium." Ugh. You'd think that I'd have this whole not-in-a-human-body thing down at this point, but no.
Ryder grinned, and it didn't look creepy at all, what with his sharp, pointy teeth and big, white eyes. No-siree. Not even in the slightest. "How'd you know? With using Lick, I mean."
"Well, I-uh..." I began. "I... didn't."
"You didn't? You didn't what?"
"I didn't know: I guessed."
Ryder's grin turned into a trademark Gastly frown. "You guessed? You put my life in jeopardy on a guess?!" he exclaimed.
"It wasn't so much of a guess, really," I explained. "More like an educated hypothesis. Y'see, I knew that those Windigoes were spirits... and we both know that Ghost is super effective against Ghost, so..."
I'll be honest: my reasoning sounded a lot more sound and actually reasonable in my head. Saying it out loud made me realize how much I had bet on a simple inference.
Ryder sighed, shrinking a few inches. "...Alright. That makes sense, and I won't hold it against you. After all, those... what did you call them?"
"Windigoes. Angry horse spirits that siphon negative energy which in turn powers their storms and causes even more negative energy to be produced. It's a vicious cycle."
"Oh, ha-ha. I get it. Wind-igoes. Clever. So, what I'm trying to say is... sorry for saying what I said."
"I'm sorry too. I guess those stupid fucking spirit horses just bring out the petty and selfish sides of us, don't they?"
Ryder chuckled. "Yeah, I suppose they do." He looked up at the now-clear sky and asked, "So do you think they'll be back?"
I hummed (literally) and hawed before answering. "Probably not: I don't think they'll try that again, at least not until there's like, five of them or something. And if that happens, we'll have bigger problems."
Ryder shivered. He opened up his mouth, went cross-eyed, and let his tongue hang loose, as if to check that something hadn't stained his fruit roll-up of a tongue. "I think I left some of my tongue on that last Windigo," he said after he stowed his pink appendage away. "Those things are colder than dry ice."
I mentally burst out laughing. I couldn't help it: the sheer ridiculousness of the situation got the better of me. I was literally rolling on the ground, rocking back and forth, unable to contain myself. "Like licking a frozen pole in winter," I managed to think. "You like licking cold horse poles, Ryder?"
"Shut up!"
\/\/\
When I had sufficiently recovered, Ryder and I continued our way north by northwest-ward—the terrain remained, for the most part, the same, with the exception of the steepness gradually increasing.
A little over three hours after resuming our progress (give or take; time was still weird for me) we reached the apex of the mountain range. The sun had reached its zenith about an hour before, and was slowing making its way down. As Ryder and I hovered at the peak, three eyes looking out over the vast beyond, white and green beyond, I heard something that wasn't part of nature—voices.
I strained my hearing to the max, and was only able to pick out one word: 'Dinner.' I told Ryder.
"Dinner? What's there to eat up here? And why would there be ponies up here, anyway? There's nothing here..."
"I don't know," I replied, "but I'm awfully curious. Should we go see what they're up to?"
"Yeah: let's. My Ghost sense is tingling..."
"Oh, stop with that."
Following my impeccable sense of direction, we sneakily hovered (it's possible, alright?) across the small plateau that made up the top of the mountain. It a while, but we eventually came within sight range to a sort of bowl-shaped crater, possibly from an asteroid or a meteor, that looked like a de-facto campsite.
Inside the crater, ponies hustled and bustled around a large fire, tents and benches surrounding it. All of them were Pegasi, and all of them wore those snow goggles that were practically planks with tiny eye-slits carved out of them. I assumed that the reason we weren't snow blind was because my eye had some sort of protective covering, and Ryder's were technically dead.
"What the hell are all these Pegasi doing up here?" I wondered inside my head.
"They're preparing for something, it looks like," said Ryder. "But what?"
A glint appeared in the corner of my eye, and I swivelled to face it. Three frost and icicle covered cages stared back. Two of them were empty, but in the third one, there was a brown mass of fur that seemed extremely out of place amongst the white and occasional green.
"Ryder, look." I pointed my body in the direction of whatever was locked up in the cage.
"Dinner," I mentally whispered, remembering what I had heard. "They're preparing dinner."
"B-but... they're ponies!" exclaimed Ryder. "Aren't they supposed to be vegetarians?!"
I nodded. "They are."
"Maybe... maybe that's one of their pets," Ryder reasoned. "Maybe it's just on time out, or... or..."
He gulped.
I sighed inwardly. "I hope like hell that you're right, but I got a bad feeling about this in the pit of my abdomen. Let's go check it out."
Ryder agreed, so we slowly but steadily drifted our way towards the cages, dropping into snowdrifts or phasing into the ground whenever a pegasus came too close. I'll let you guess who did what.
The Pegasi didn't look like how I'd imagined them: instead of the delicate wings without a feather out of place à la Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, their wings were more flayed, rough, and looked like they'd seen much better days. I mean, yeah, they're on top of a freakin' mountain, but I at least thought they'd pay some attention to their wings.
Finally, after evading what seemed like every goddamn pegasus in and around the crater, Ryder and I made it to the cages without being seen.
I took a closer look at what was inside the cage...
...And immediately realized that it was a Pokemon: a Swinub, to be exact.
Suddenly, our investigation just turned into a rescue mission.