While investigating a strange magical signal, the Element bearers (along with an unsuspecting Spike) are scattered throughout a strange world filled with even stranger creatures. The one who brought them there is very interested in catching them all.
Mewtwo, the strongest being in existence. A creature of unmatched power, a twisted product of science and mad ambition; now free from its former masters, it has only experienced defeat once: by the hands of a young human boy wearing a red hat. Now, he foresees the coming of a new trainer that could threaten his power, and he knows he cannot face it alone.
In Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle and her friends are investigating a mysterious magical signal that has been plaguing Unicorns all across Equestria for days. Instead of finding its source, however, they are drawn into a mysterious world by a strange, pale creature, and scattered to the winds one by one. Now they must find a way to survive in this strange world...and eventually, a way home.
In Johto, unnerving rumors of Team Rocket's resurgence bring unrest to the people, and three mysterious beasts roam the land. Meanwhile in Kanto, the legendary birds grow wary, and its ever watchful Gym Leaders are starting to realize not all things are as they may seem.
In Canterlot, Celestia will soon be informed that all the six Element bearers have mysteriously gone missing... And in Pallet Town, Professor Oak is about to get a call from his grandson about the discovery of a strange, new Pokémon species.
Are you ready? Your very own tale of grand adventure is about to unfold. Fun experiences, difficult experiences, there's so much waiting for you! Dreams! Adventure! Let's go to the world of Pokémon!
I'll see you later!
**FEATURED on 8-10/3 2013** **NOTICE TO ALL READERS - This story follows the storyline of the GAMES and NOTHING ELSE. If I change that policy, you will be notified, but until then PLEASE STOP ASKING ABOUT ASH KETCHUM or things like that. It gets really annoying after a while.**
The ruined, burned remains of the old tower creaked precariously in the wind, watching the young boy climbing a worn-out wooden ladder to reach the bottom floor. The wind stirred uneasily as the mind commanding it, for the first time in three years, was burdened with an unfamiliar emotion.
Recognition.
It wasn't the kind of recognition one would expect, of course – while appearances were somewhat similar, those were features most humans shared, and the only outward thing that really tugged was the strange, yellow headwear the boy wore. It wasn't the same, of course; this boy wore it the wrong way around, and the color – irrelevant as it may seem – wasn't right either.
His was red.
What really stood out was the boy's mind. For someone with enough psychic power, such things as humans considered hidden were in plain sight – and if there was one thing Mewtwo would never lack, it was power. He was the strongest being in existence – above the power of any and all that the humans could put against him, freed from the shackles of his creation that had once bound him to them. All that remained of their ties to him was his definition – his name – and their unending, inevitable fear of his peerless might.
And yet, the boy in the red cap had bested him.
The broken tower groaned as the wind gouged its remains with sudden fierceness, whipped to action by the uneasiness in its master's heart. He always felt strange, remembering that day – yet, he had to acknowledge it. The boy in red had, by virtue of his bonds to his companions, managed to overcome the strongest being in the world. Mewtwo had looked upon the boy's mind then, and been confused by what he'd seen. Nothing like the greed and power-hungry desires of his creators, or their blatant disregard for the ways they treated their companions as little more than slaves; or the ruthless ambition of the man that, by trickery and clever deception, had once been his master.
Now, here was yet another boy, with the same devotion to his companions, and the same strength in his heart. This time, Mewtwo knew the meaning of those feelings – and for the first time in his life, he was worried.
For a third time the wind screamed in fury, echoing its master's unruly heart – but this time, its roar was echoed by the cries of three enormous four-legged beasts hidden in the deepest bottom parts of burned tower. Just as the boy's feet touched the rocky bottom of the basement floor, their calls rung through the building's wooden beams as they rushed up past the astonished boy, feet finding ground on the air itself as they ascended toward the sky to the humans' amazement.
Mewtwo watched as they ran, and in the depths of his cave, he worried.
Eventually, however, his worries came together forged themselves into a plan. This time, the strongest being in existence would not be caught off guard.
This time, Mewtwo would be ready. With his power honed beyond possibility itself, he would be prepared for whatever tricks the humans could come up with to stop him.
Yet again, the memory reminded him that even that might not be enough – and his worried entrenched themselves deeper in his already turbulent mind.
A small, twisted smile curved the corner of his mouth as a thought came to his mind, and took root. If his own power, as vast as it was, wasn't enough, then it was time he took a page out of the humans' own book of tactics; time he played their own cards against them.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Rainbow asked for what was probably the sixteenth time this morning – Twilight's mind had a tendency to try keeping count of these things even if she didn't tell it to.
She wasn't entirely sure about the number, but it didn't matter at this point. The message had gotten across. Rainbow doubted her, and if Rainbow was voicing her doubts, there was definitely one or two more of her friends who were keeping them quiet. That was bad. And just like everything that was bad, it had to be dealt with.
Heaving a long sigh, the Element of Magic started explaining to her friends why everything was going to be just fine, why they didn't need to worry, why the Thaumatron was absolutely perfectly safe to use, and why there wasn't anything special whatsoever about this strange magical signal that every unicorn in Equestria had been picking up for a week now.
Admittedly that last one was a bit hard even for her – especially seeing as the reason they were down here in the first place was that Celestia had assigned them to investigate the thing – but stars mark her, she did try.
After a long-winded description of their assignment – riddled with excessive arcane detail on purpose, to ensure her friends were bored instead of worried – she finally put her hooves to the levers of the device she had created for the purpose of this investigation. She couldn't use her horn for this; all of her magic would need to be focused on the spell inside the Thaumatron, and it would do her no good if she lost control of it mid-cast just because one of the levers were off.
Well, “no good” is probably a bit of an understatement, Twilight admitted to herself as she planted herself in the Thaumatron's seat, putting all the levers in place for the spell she was about to cast. Reaching inward for a moment, she found herself surprised over how much power she was about to wield. While it wasn't unheard of for unicorns to keep growing in strength until well up in their middle years, she hadn't really been keeping track of her own capacity lately – and as far as she could tell, it was almost double what it had been a year ago.
Twilight gulped, a sound that ironically spread through the library's quiet cellar clear enough for all of her friends to hear it. Definitely an understatement, Twilight concluded before gathering her considerable reserves of magic and starting up the device.
“The first thing we're going to do,” she explained to her friends as the Thaumatron started spinning up, “is probe the signal's nature. If it's using multiple types of magic – we know it's using unicorn magic, but we need to detect if there are any pegasus or earth elements in there as well – you four will be able to pick that up, and that will give me a reading through the device's sensors. Rainbow, Fluttershy, Applejack, Pinkie, take your positions on the Thaumograph.”
The designated spots on the floor, circles of metal inscribed with various runes, were quickly populated by four of her friends. A brief sense of relief instilled itself in Twilight's mind – perhaps she'd been more successful than she'd thought in allaying their doubts about her plan. That was quickly replaced by the ever growing concentration needed for the spellwork she was now doing, and it took serious effort for her to start speaking again.
“Rarity, you will be acting as receiver for the unicorn part of the signal. Since I'm powering it, I can't do it myself – and I can't really be in two places at once, either. Take your position on the Thaumograph, and focus on the signal as much as you can.” In the corner of her eye she saw Rarity flick her mane a bit before prancing into place, taking her spot right opposite of where Twilight was sitting in the bottom end of the circle. The Thaumatron was big, but not really all that high; which really was the only reason she'd managed to fit it into her basement in the first place.
“Spike,” she continued, “you will be the focus of our signal transmission.” The dragon had insisted on taking part – he'd practically extorted a promise out of her in exchange for helping her build the device – so she'd been forced to accommodate. Not that there wasn't much of a change of plans needed, of course, but Twilight disliked unnecessary risks something fierce. Involving a young, spirited dragon boy in what might be the most delicate magical experiment of the century wasn't really the most sensible thing she'd done in her life. “Once we have identified the nature of the signal we will need to ping it back to determine its point of origin, and we will use your magical signature as our transmission. Take your position in the center of the Thaumograph.”
Admittedly the last bit was completely unnecessary, seeing as Spike already was just about frozen in place right in front of her, throwing nervous looks at the rapidly spinning metal circles surrounding him every other second. At her words, though, he met her eyes and immediately stood up straighter, sending a brief smile to Twilight's face. At least somepony still had faith in her abilities, even if he wasn't a pony.
“All ready, girls?” She dared a brief look around the room, and over the spinning shape of the Thaumatron she could see confident smiles accompanying her friends' nods. Finally, the concentrated frown fled her face, and was replaced with a small grin of her own. “Then, let's do this!” She tapped into her magic as deep as she could, and forced the pulsating power into the Thaumatron's core.
Ten minutes passed, with nothing but the whirring of machines and the soft humming of Twilight's horn making a single sound in the somewhat crowded basement.
Fifteen minutes passed, and when Twilight finally spoke, the entire group sighed in relief. “Okay, I think I have it.”
A few words of encouragement were passed around, but were quickly silenced by the unicorn's stern look. It wasn't over yet. Twilight was only starting to get a clear grasp of the signal, which didn't have any of the distinct features of unicorn magic as far as she could tell – or anything else she'd seen for that matter. It wasn't like the princesses' magic, both of whom had very recognizable signatures, or like what she'd seen of changeling magic during the invasion. Sombra's magic had been pretty much like a mixture between the princesses' magic and the changelings, with a few quirks thrown in. Even dragonfire and its inherent magical properties seemed familiar in comparison to this.
The signal was entirely alien in nature, pulsating in a strange way whenever she focused on it, making it hard to concentrate properly. It was almost as if it was fighting back, trying to deny her efforts from making any progress toward understanding it.
This only spurred her on, however – Twilight Sparkle would not be beaten in magical prowess by some mystery signal out of nowhere!
Redoubling her efforts, she once again set about trying to make sense of the signal.
It took almost half an hour before she finally gave up her efforts of probing it – during which her friends had all been blessedly quiet, but wielding pained and bored grimaces that pleaded for her to stop dragging this out any further. She gave a frustrated groan, and shook her head. “Okay, we're moving on to the next step. Spike, we're going to transmit your magical signature to the source and see where the signal originates from.”
Spike, who had almost managed to fall asleep standing, blubbered in surprise before snapping his claw to his forehead in a sloppy salute. Twilight rolled her eyes – it wasn't like she needed him to be particularly alert for any of this, but it was rather irritating to have him act like this despite all his insisting to take part in the experiment. Where was all the enthusiasm he'd shown just an hour ago? She snorted briefly before moving her focus to the young dragon's magical signature – just a habit, really, since she'd memorized all of her friends' signatures long ago – and patterning the signal she sent into the Thaumatron just so.
With a brief prayer to Celestia that everything would work as she hoped, she pulled the big, red transmission lever with her hoof and fired up her signal.
Two seconds later, the gates of Tartarus swung wide open on her. The signal had suddenly changed, gone from pulsing to throbbing like the heart of an Ursa Major, and it was writhing in her grasp like it was alive. Her own counter-signal, meanwhile, had flung itself far off her expected target – she had no idea where it was going, but from all she could feel it was trying to pull her along.
Last, but not least...
“Wh-What's going on!?”
“Twilight! What's happening!”
Her friends had obviously noticed something was amiss, too. She opened her eyes briefly, and was met by a shocking sight. The basement was flickering in and out of existence, the Thaumatron and its parts almost completely fading from view erratically. In their place were a rocky, barren cave, seemingly turned up-side down, the enormous chasm opening underneath them shining with sunlight.
Her friends were all there, still, and entirely solid too. There was something else there with them, however – she could make out a strange, off-white creature hovering in the air above Spike, head-to-head with the dragon and well over three times his size.
Three times the size of a dragon, but with magical power so far beyond anything she'd ever felt before she could not even begin to measure it.
They were being pulled in by this creature – she was fairly certain of that – and there was nothing she could do about it. The Thaumatron, flickering or not, was using up all of her magic – she didn't have anything at all in her to try keep herself in place with, and she had no idea how to accomplish that in the first place. Struggling with all of her being, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried desperately to guide the flows of magic into something resembling order.
“I...can't...control...”
The words made their way across her lips almost by their own accord, but when she heard herself say it Twilight knew it was over. Resigning herself to whatever fate had in mind for her, she let go of her magic and...
Nothing happened.
Twilight slowly opened her eyes, and found herself back in the basement – she felt like the world was about to explode, but they were there, all seven of them together. Fearful looks were exchanged all around, but the strange creature that had been hovering over Spike was gone.
At least, so she thought until a small, bright pink something suddenly appeared right on top of the dragon's head, staring right at her with big, blue eyes.
“Mew?”
Twilight had no time to respond, however, for the very next moment her basement dissolved into a blurry mess of noise and movement as she was sent hurtling into the sky.
-/-/-/
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
A scream that was way too girly for Rainbow Dash echoed through the sky. It was quickly cut off as she realized how embarrassing it'd be if anyone saw her doing that, and she broke out of her fall with a practiced maneuver of simply flaring her wings and going into a glide.
Once she'd regained control of her flight, she looked down – and what she saw was worrying. She was pretty familiar with just about every decently sized city in Equestria and how they looked from the sky; this was very obviously not one of them. Uniform purple rooftops were packed into streets and alleys, and a strange, swaying tower reached skyward to the north. What worried her even more than her lack of geographic knowledge, however, was the fact that there weren't any ponies around. Even on an early morning like this, there ought to be ponies walking around a village of any size.
It didn't make any sense to her. None of it did – beginning with the strange magical signal, which she'd felt nothing of, and including everything up until those weird creatures in Twilight's basement appeared. Rainbow Dash didn't like things that didn't make sense, and her usual fallback method – ask someone who understood – wasn't available at the moment, since the airspace around her was very much empty of any ponies other than herself.
“What the hay just happened?”
Feeling desperately in need of some time to think, Rainbow set her trajectory for a small lake to the east of the sleeping town,
-/-/-/
“AAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
A scream that was way too desperate for Rarity tore through the sky, as she hurtled uncontrollably toward the ground.
No, not ground! Rock! Stupid – vile – rock!
The scraggly mountain beneath her did not care for her desperation, however – it remained stoically in place, opening its stony arms for the hardest embrace she'd ever faced.
As well as what she feared could very well be the last one she ever had.
I'm going to die. I'm going to die! Celestia help me, I'm going to-
A sickening crunch echoed across the mountaintop as Rarity crashed into its rocky surface. The echo was followed by silence, and then a bustle of activity as the mountain's inhabitants scurried to find out what had happened; this was soon followed by a pressured silence, however, as the mountain's other visitor made itself known, and quickly scared the shy creatures back to their lairs.
Now undisturbed, a lone, lanky being made its way down toward the freshly made crater to investigate its bounties.
-/-/-/
“Weeeeeeeee!”
Like a comet on a sugar rush Pinkie Pie cruised through the air, comfortably kept airborne with an emergency balloon. It was a green one, so it could've been better, but the only other ones she had on her were in gray and desert camo, and she really preferred more colorful alternatives whenever available.
Below her, a vibrant green forest was passing by. She was fairly sure it wasn't the Everfree since her Pinkie sense hadn't alerted her to any nearby ghostrees yet, but she could be wrong. Some part of her actually hoped she was, because if this was the Everfree it would mean-
“Oh look! There's Ponyville right...now?”
At first glance it was similar, but it was obvious enough once she got close enough that “similar” would be as far as that idea got. She was approaching a large town filled with trees and green rooftops, but she couldn't see any ponies whatsoever wandering around.
Three buildings stood out from the rather uniform green-roofed ones dominating the town's streets, however. The first two, at the other end of town opposite from the one facing the forest she'd come from, were rather similar in size and shape to most of the green ones – except that they had rooftops of blue and red, respectively. Not very interesting compared to the enormous box-like shape that dominated the entire area closest to her; a monolith in various shades of brown and gray, indicating that whoever built it had no sense of fun – or possibly, was colorblind.
Feeling extremely sad for anypony cursed with that particular disability, Pinkie went in for a landing right in front of the brown-gray building, bouncing down on the ground as her balloon deflated itself back into her emergency compartments. She walked through its big double doors while humming a happy tune about the word viridian she just made up. She felt it fit the occasion nicely.
-/-/-/
“IIAAAA-oof! My, goodness.”
Fluttershy did thankfully not have to fall more than a meter or two before landing on the stony surface of the immense tower's roof. She really doubted she would've been able to break her fall on her own – she had been very surprised by suddenly appearing in the air like that, and even if her flying had become better lately it wasn't quite yet as instinctive as with most other pegasi.
A quick look around presented her with an impressive view of the ocean, cresting waves sweeping by on their way to the shore below her. This kept her fascinated for a few moments, before she realized how far this meant she must be from Ponyville.
“Oh. Oh...my.”
She spent a few moments searching frantically for something she could recognize – she greatly feared being completely lost, and adding that to being completely alone would be a total disaster in all ways – but was suddenly interrupted by a pained cry from behind her.
“Paloo...”
She swung her head around, and suddenly realized that the plateau she was standing on wasn't the top of the tower, but rather that role was filled by the tiny little hut-like construction in its center. More importantly, however...
“Oh my goodness! Are you all right?”
Something was inside, and whatever kind of critter it was, it was hurt badly. Her dislike for flying completely forgotten, she fluttered her wings and flew into the small chamber as fast as she could.
-/-/-/
“Aaaaaaoh for landsakes-!”
Applejack just managed to straighten her body into a reasonable diving pose before striking the water's glittering surface head-on, narrowly avoiding being hit with blunt force trauma of a pretty fierce degree. In her own opinion, however, blunt force trauma was nothing compared to the sheer degree of nuisance that was salt water. She'd only experienced that particular horror a few times in her life, most of them during her short-lived stay with the Oranges in Manehattan, but they had been well enough to convince her that staying out of the sea was more than worth the sacrifice.
She sputtered out what little she had swallowed of the foul substance as she broke the surface again, trying in vain to shake out as much of it as she could from her mane. “What bright-eyed little schoolfilly thought of the wise idea to fill Ponyville with saltwater anyway?” she asked herself out loud, trying to fit the strange situation she was facing into her head. First they'd been in Twi's basement, then there'd been the strange lights and creatures all round, and then...
Then the implications of what she had just said hit her, and Applejack went wide-eyed, even forgetting to tread water for a second. That had the ever disgusting effect of her being submerged in the salty liquid yet again, and she once more sputtered out a mouthful of seawater as she broke the surface.
“What in tarnation is goin' on here?”
The sea was hardly going to answer her questions with any clarity, though, and after taking a few frustrated, confused looks around her in search of land, she started swimming toward the nearest shoreline. And when she found someone who knew what was going on – or better yet, one of them consarned white-legged critters – they'd darn well have a lot of explaining to do.
-/-/-/
Twilight was prepared for the teleport – she knew that feeling better than many others, and even though it was involuntary she was well used to the slight disorientation it brought most users of that type of magic. Being up-side down in mid-air was surprising, and would have been problematic had she not been a unicorn well versed in gravity manipulation spells.
As it was, she merely fired up her horn. While she was fairly drained from the long, exhausting and ultimately fruitless hour spent investigating the signal, it didn't take much to spin herself around and safely hover down towards the ground.
At least, she'd been expecting ground beneath her – her hooves touched solid matter far before she was all the way down, however, and she gave her surroundings a surprised look. She was standing on top of a massive structure of dizzying height, reaching so far into the sky it would even have dwarfed the towers of Canterlot Castle had they been next to each other. It wasn't the only one around, either – several of these towering monstrosities painted the area around her, their flat tops dotting the skyline in a series of gray square plateaus.
For a moment she wondered what in the world these structures could be, but daring a look across the edge she could easily make out an ordered system of arrow-straight streets, dotted by a few ordinary rooftops besides the enormous towers.
“This is...a city?”
It was enormous, if that was the case, and the technological implications of these gigantic buildings were immense. Wherever she was, she was sitting on a goldmine of knowledge...
She just had to get it home.
Along with all her friends, who she had no idea whatsoever where they were, and could very well be crashing towards their doom at the moment if her own start was any clue – something only Rainbow could be counted on to avoid with any reliable ease.
A horrible feeling of nausea gripped her insides, and she snapped her eyes up and away from the distant ground to avoid tunnel vision setting in. Her eyes landed on a wide but relatively inconspicuous building at the edge of the enormous city, its simple browns in stark contrast to the steely gray monstrosities filling the majority of the city's streets. She didn't want to face whatever secrets they hid quite yet – she had to familiarize herself with whatever creatures resided here first, and if what she'd seen had been any clue they would most probably be nothing like ponies.
“As good a place to start as any, I guess,” she murmured to herself, firing up her horn yet again to search for whatever powerful magic there could be here aside from bringing her safely down to earth.
For some reason, she had a feeling this would not end well at all.
Falkner, leader of the Violet City gym and possibly the most proficient Flying-type user in all of Johto, was not having a good day.
To begin with it had thrown a fistful of angry sages from the Sprout Tower at him as soon as he woke up, demanding an explanation for the disturbance in the weather that these past few days had the Tower sway like mad most of the time, forcing them and their apprentices to stay on the bottom floors and greatly restrain themselves in their training. “A day or two of your Flying-types playing around with the heavens is bad enough, but this has to stop,” Elder Li had huffed impatiently at him as Falkner, still in his pajamas, was rubbing sleep out of his face best he could.
He had patiently tried to explain to the normally wise and understanding elders that he had nothing whatsoever to do with it, and that aberrations of this level wasn't within his power to create anyway. Yes, his pokémon were well-trained and could probably bring about a decently sized whirlwind if they tried, and his Natu would be able to do even more once he had managed to train its psychic powers to their full potential. Covering all of Violet City in a ravaging storm for days without end was well beyond his capacity, and he would be surprised if any other trainer could, for that matter. Possibly Lance, but the prospect of the Champion of the Indigo League taking time off his duties to randomly screw up the weather of a small town in the backwater of Johto for no apparent reason was, frankly, quite absurd.
He had barely managed to get himself dressed before being ambushed by his twin gym trainers Abe and Rod, who basically wanted to ask him about the exact same thing. While his own Pidgeot and Noctowl were strong enough to maneuver the fiercest winds the skies could throw at him, his trainers' pokémon were in the same boat as his own Natu and Murkrow. For an entire week their training had been confined to the gym, and as spacious as it was it simply wasn't enough. Flying-type pokémon needed to be able to spread their wings in the open – it was how they lived, and the only way their trainers could learn to live with them.
With considerably less patience than he'd shown the Elder, he'd repeated his message to his subordinates – he didn't have any such power over the weather, he had no idea why it was happening, and he certainly wouldn't open the gym's wind shutters until the weather actually calmed down. They really should know better – they oversaw all of his battles against the trainers challenging the gym, so they were well aware of the limits of his abilities – and with all the time he spent with them, the bird keeper twins were probably closer to him than anyone except his own pokémon.
Not that there was a lot of competition, seeing as he was an only child with parents as distant as they came, but that was a different matter.
In sheer frustration at learning from his Pidgeot that the city's mayor was lying in wait right beside the pokémon center – to inconspicuously walk up on him with the exact same question as the others in mind, without a doubt – that usually was the first stop on his usual morning routine, Falkner stormed off east toward route 31 to vent some steam.
His Pidgeot came down to perch on his shoulder as he walked through the gate, and he patted its beak absentmindedly. The gate guard had a look of open disbelief on his face, but at least kept composure enough to keep the doors from malfunctioning on him. “Look at them, heckling you just because you've gotten bigger,” he said with a shake of his head to Pidgeot, who gave him an understanding coo in return. It was the first pokémon he'd received from his father, and the first one he'd trained on his own; he was hardly going to stop it from perching on his shoulder just because it had evolved once or twice. “They ought to wear a backpack once in a while. Most of them could sure use the training.”
Pidgeot cawed once in reply as they exited the gate, before taking wing to resume its usual scouting. The bird was restless by nature, but Falkner had taught him early on to use that gift for something worthwhile; nowadays, nothing ever managed to surprise Falkner.
“Pjyoo!”
Well, almost nothing.
The wind wasn't quite as fierce today as it had been before, but it still battered him with a good amount of force as he came out into the open. It was a refreshing feeling, if anything – Falkner had always enjoyed feeling the wind in his face, and since he'd taught Pidgeot how to Fly with him on his back, it had only gotten better. Today, however, it worried him. The sky was deceptively clear of clouds, but he knew well the feeling of low air pressure that heralded and followed any storm. And this storm had stayed for far too long to be natural.
“I need some time to think,” Falkner said to himself as he started to make his way toward the small lake that held his designated thinking rock.
The only problem was, he discovered when he entered the small glade at the north end of the lake, that for the first time ever since he'd discovered it, someone else was already using it.
Or rather, something else.
A strange, blue pokémon like he'd never seen before was curled up on the pointed slab of granite, gazing off into the forest with large, violet eyes. All the colors of the rainbow covered its mane and tail, and it bore a mark that looked like a tri-colored lightning bolt on its side.
More importantly for Falkner, however, it had wings.
Barring some mad twist of fate like whatever curious circumstance created Sudowoodo, this meant that he was looking at a Flying-type pokémon. A flying-type, and one of a kind that never had been seen before. He was sure about that part, at least – while he had never been studious enough to learn the entire pokédex by heart, it was his duty to know every pokémon of his own type, and he did not shirk his duties.
His careful approach did little to hide him from the typical sharp senses most Flying-types possessed, however – the strange pokémon swung its head around only a second after he'd spotted it, and immediately gained a wary expression on its face. It stood up, and to his surprise Falkner realized it hadn't been lying on the rock itself; rather, it was somehow standing on a cloud.
Its shape and size were rather similar to a Ponyta's, in some ways, but that was as far as his reasoning went in that direction. He had other things on his mind now – namely, to make sure his newest discovery didn't simply up and fly away on him. Drawing a circle in the sand under his feet as he assumed his battle stance, he whistled for his Pidgeot's attention and fixated the pokémon with a pointed finger and his best stare.
“You there! Pokémon! I, Falkner, challenge you to a battle!”
-/-/-/
Rainbow's frown deepened as the strange, blue creature raised its stubby claw at her and let out a gibberish of barks and howls. She hadn't gotten anywhere with her thinking yet, and before she knew it this weird thing had come up and disturbed her.
I haven't even had a chance to nap on this cloud yet! I mean, what gives?
She'd never been good at understanding random animals the way Fluttershy could, but when an enormous bird – larger than herself! – crashed down beside the weird creature, her confusion quickly disappeared. After all, there was no mistaking that wing posture – this bird was looking for a fight.
“Ohoho, aw, man. You sure you wanna take on the one, the only, the Rainbow Dash?”
A wide grin split her face as she started warming up her wings. She hopped off the tiny cloud she'd pulled together and made it disappear with a snap of her tail, and landed on the sandy beach with a dull sound. Smirking, she tapped her hoof against the big rock behind her, and made a low, taunting gesture with her wings at the bird.
“'Cuz, honestly, if you don't, you really chose the wrong time to stumble up on the world's fastest pegasus. I haven't even had my nap yet, and this has been a real crappy morning. I don't really think you've got what it takes to even come close to beat me, so unless you're really in the mood for taking the biggest defeat in history and rubbing your face in it, I suggest you take your pretty little tail feathers and run...”
With the single most offensive wing-gesture known to any avian, she tapped her hoof against the rock one last time.
“Chicken.”
The bird shrieked in fury as it charged at her with its wings flared, but she just took off and let it fly straight into the granite. It was a lot more agile than she'd expected, though, and banked up before it did more than clip its claws against the stony surface.
Well, this would've been real boring otherwise.
“What's wrong, ya dodo? Why're you so slow?”
She slowed her ascent just a bit to let her opponent have a chance at catching up. The bird wasn't sloppy, however. The moment she did it sped up tremendously, and she had to make a sharp bank to the right to avoid being rammed by one of its enormous wings.
“Alright, birdy! You wanna rumble? Let's rumble!”
With lightning speed she set off in an upward spiral around the bird's trajectory, trapping it in a fierce whirlwind. It only took several seconds before the thing managed to bank out, and it looked visibly exhausted. Its wings told a clear message, though – it wasn't done yet – and today, Rainbow Dash was not going to refuse that offer.
“Man squirt, you're looking awful tired over there! But don't worry, I've got just the thing to spark you right back up!”
Building up enough vapor to make a decent thundercloud on a day like this took a few seconds even for Rainbow, but with her opponent slowed down she had all the time she needed for that. Before long she was speeding along right above the surprised bird, who obviously had no idea where she'd just come from.
“Much – better – than – stupid – coffee!”
She slammed her hoof down on the cloud, and a jagged bolt of lightning struck her opponent right between the wings. The bird let out a cry of pain, and dropped several meters before making a sharp turn. First Rainbow thought it was going to run away and she simply banked upward in response, but realizing it was following her ascent in a spiral of its own she quickly recognized its pattern as a tornado spin.
“Using my own tricks against me, huh? You're one damn – cheeky – little – chicken!”
Breaking out of her ascent in an instant, she dashed downward. She found her target with ease, and her hooves connected with the bird's chest with a satisfying thump. Pumping her wings she kept speeding up, carrying them down together until she was only a few meters above the lake's surface, where she gave a final push with her hooves and thrusted the great bird into the water with an enormous splash.
Satisfied with the result and fairly sure her opponent was all finished, she gave her wings a few steady beats and looped around, landing on the large rock she'd started on with a loud noise.
“You had enough yet, you stupid overgrown chicken?”
She wasn't really angry at it – she was actually rather thankful for having someone to vent her frustration at – but as far as frustration went, there was plenty more of that emotion buzzing around in her head thanks to this stupid morning. She was hardly going to run out any time soon.
In all the ruckus of her duel, however, she'd forgotten all about the strange blue creature, however. She heard it bark, and before she knew it a bright beam of translucent red swished past her. It shot into the roiling waters of the lake with an eerie sound, and suddenly she could make out the form of the big bird, shining with the same color for a few seconds before disappearing entirely.
She swung her head around and stared at the blue creature, who was holding some sort of ball in its hand. “Hey! What sort of creepy magic was that supposed to be? And what the hay did you do to that bird anyway? I mean, sure, it lost the fight, but come on!”
Conversation was fairly useless at this point, and she knew it, but if some weird magic creature was going to start flinging spells around she needed to distract it before she could escape. As fast as she was, she knew well how easy Twilight could catch her if she wanted to, and she wasn't going to take any risks with this thing either.
The creature grunted something in response, and fastened the ball at its side in some sort of belt-like device. Now that she could get a closer look, it was probably just wearing blue clothes – it was obviously fabric, not fur or skin covering its midsection. She'd been a bit confused by its pale blue mane at first, but it was clear enough now that she thought about it that its skin was actually of the same pink color that covered its face. It looked like a strange, skinnier version of Harry the bear, without all of his fur.
Rainbow didn't have much time to think about this, however. The creature retrieved a second, identical ball from its belt and threw it into the air. There was an explosion of the same red light as from before, and suddenly there was a massive owl standing before her, even larger than the bird she'd just fought.
Once the initial surprise of having yet another enormous avian appear in front of her subsided, however, irritation took its place with gusto.
“Oh come on! Why didn't you just bring this guy out to help in the first place? You might've actually gotten a few hits in on me if you teamed up, you dorks!”
The owl didn't respond to her taunts, however – it simply stared at her with the same, unreadable eyes that had always made Owliwiscious seem rather creepy to her.
“Oh, noooo, you're staring at me, I'm so afraaaid. Whaddya expect me to do, fall down from...boredom or something...?”
For some reason she couldn't even begin to comprehend, Rainbow Dash felt very compelled to do just that. Just lie down and snooze for a bit. Take a nap. Yeah, that felt like a really good idea. A really, really, really good idea.
“Wha... don't think this means...you won...'r n'ythn...”
Just take a little nap. I haven't had mine yet. I need to sleep. Sleep right now. Sleep. Right. Now.
An enormous yawn cracked her jaws, and in the corner of her fluttering eyes she could barely spot the bear-creature holding yet another of those ball-things.
A vague movement of one of its paws was the last thing she saw, before the world disappeared in a flash of red light and she fell asleep.
Brock, gym leader of Pewter City and on his off days fifty percent of the Moon Mountains’ human population, stared patiently at his stove.
The man who made up the other fifty percent for most of the time, Bruno, would have made fun of him for using it, he was sure. Sure, the Elite Four’s Fighting-type master spent just as much time out in barren wilderness like this as Brock did, but Bruno’s reasoning was entirely different from his own. Like many Fighting-type trainers he honed his body as much as he honed his bonds with his pokémon, and “testing his might against the unforgiving harshness of nature” as he put it, was a fairly standard method of doing so as far as Brock knew. Chuck, Johto’s Fighting-type gym leader, even had gone so far as to install a waterfall inside his own gym, so he could spend as much time as possible for his rather ambitious training.
Brock had nothing against Fighting-type users, and normally found them to be reasonably down-to-earth people he could easily find common ground with in most cases. However, his own philosophy – regarding this mountain, at least – had little to do with testing his power, or training at all for that matter.
Brock sought to understand Rock-type pokémon better than anyone else in the world. To learn how they thought, felt and reasoned was his lifelong dream – and the limited success he’d had achieving that so far was the very reason he’d managed to become a gym leader in the first place.
Understanding his pokémon meant understanding their strengths, and that meant understanding their – and by extension, his own – abilities. Understanding the lengths and limits of your power was the first lesson of any trainer, but Brock had always felt it stood to reason it was also the last – simply because as they progressed in their lives, many trainers seemed to forget it. So he had taken the old axiom to heart, and vowed to understand the heart of Rock-pokémon on his own.
That meant spending a lot of time in their habitat, and behaving like them – and while he couldn’t survive on sediment alone like a Geodude, he wasn’t going to follow Bruno’s lazy example, no matter how much he praised his fire-breathing Machamp’s cooking prowess. He hadn’t believed it the first time he’d him say it – it had taken him a visit to the man’s rather permanent camp to realize it was actually the truth. Seeing that four-armed mountain of muscles dressed up in a frilly pink apron and spitting flames at a frying pan had radically decreased Brock’s respect for the older man, and he had seldom talked to him since then.
Instead, Brock spent his time like many of his fellow Rock-type trainers: hiking. Moving his tent from one spot to another, climbing the massive mountain and exploring its many passes and peaks one by one. And, of course, using a portable stove to cook his food on. Dependable, sturdy and usable in almost any weather, but tediously slow.
Patience was a lesson any aspiring Rock-type trainer needed to learn early, however. That old saying about trying the patience of a stone was, after all, quite appropriate.
He was just about to once again remove the lid from his kettle and see if the water was anywhere close to boiling yet, when he heard a loud crash from across the crest of the small peak he’d spent yesterday scaling. This immediately caught his attention – this was normally a very quiet part of the mountains, and neither other trainers nor wild Onix normally ventured this far up – and he swiftly killed the stove to save fuel before scrambling off across the rocky terrain.
He was fairly surprised when he managed to spot a pair of wild Clefairy just as they rushed out of his path – they were normally very shy pokémon, and he had no idea they inhabited any peaks other than that of Mount Moon itself – but the sight that met him once he reached the top was all but astonishing.
A fine spread of shattered amethyst, several meters wide, covered the grayen rocks that made up the peak. More to the point, however, in the middle of it lay a creature of pure white and amethyst purple, sprawled out and unmoving.
Brock had never seen anything like it before, but it was obvious that whatever it was, ramming its head into the mountain hadn’t done it any favors. He approached it cautiously, but broke into a jog the last few meters. He disliked seeing pokémon hurt, and the state and circumstances of this one made him fear the worst.
Thankfully it was still alive when he reached it, but it wasn’t by much. Its breath came in shallow gasps, and its pulse was weak. This pokémon needed medical attention, and soon.
While there wasn’t any coverage on normal phones out here, his emergency radio could easily reach tens of kilometers away even without the booster back in his tent. Pewter City was clear on the other side of the mountain from his present location, and the pokémon center by the entrance to the Mount Moon Caves didn’t have any helicopters, since it was specifically outfitted to cater to trainers taking the underground route through the mountain range. He could clearly see the Cerulean River snaking through the countryside to the southeast, however, and his signal should be able to reach Cerulean City without problems.
He took the radio off his belt, and it powered up with a humming sound when he flicked the switch. Fiddling with the controls took a bit longer than usual since he wasn’t familiar with the station, but he got a decent connection within a few seconds. Eyeing the creature one last time, he got up and raised the device to his mouth.
“Trainer 21815311 calling Cerulean City, this is Brock calling Cerulean City. Are you receiving, over?”
A few seconds went by with only the wind going through his ears, then the speaker crackled to life. “This is, um, station PC-K05, Cerulean City, we read you. You are using the emergency channel. What is the proble- wait. Did you say Brock? Pewter’s gym leader? Um, over.”
He got an irritated frown on his face at the operator’s obvious inexperience, but then again, it was hardly surprising. Cerulean was geographically close to the mountains, sure, but none of the valleys or peaks were easily accessible from the southeast. This was probably just an ordinary city nurse, and at best she’d be accustomed to directing ambulance calls. He sighed, before raising the radio to his mouth again to speak.
“That’s me. I’m at the peak of Mount Seldosin with a severely injured wild pokémon. Not sure what species, but I haven’t seen it before. I need a helicopter dispatched immediately to my location. Over.”
The speakers crackled once to acknowledge, but it took a while before a response came. “We don’t have any helicopters on standby at the moment, I’m afraid. I will see what I can do, though. Give me a moment.”
Brock cursed silently at his bad luck as he waited for the operator to return, and for a moment he started to fear that they’d be forced to call in a craft from somewhere further south, which would inevitably end up taking a lot more time – most likely too much, if his assessment of the pokémon’s health was anywhere near accurate. However, it took only half a minute or so before the speaker burst to life again.
“You’re in luck. Misty is en route from the coast, and is about ten minutes north of the city. It’s her private craft, but it has basic medical equipment and better speed than any of our helis. She should reach you in about half an hour or so. Over.”
Brock frowned a bit at first, but shook it away as she kept going and nodded as he gave his final transmission. “Good to hear. I’ll be available on this channel in case anything comes up. Trainer 21815311, over and out.”
The operator responded in kind and the radio went silent. He didn’t turn it off, but he returned it to its spot on his belt, fastening it with a clip. Then he returned to his quiet vigil over the strange wounded pokémon.
He wasn’t entirely happy about being forced to involve Misty in this, but that might just be his being annoyed at the lack of proper ambulance helicopters from Cerulean talking. They weren’t exactly close, but he’d spoken to the young gym leader at most of the Indigo League Summits since she’d been appointed. Not much, true, but she was undoubtedly a less annoying person to be around than many of the others. Sixteen gym leaders from all across Johto and Kanto made for a rather diverse group, after all, and there were plenty of personalities in there he just couldn’t stand. Like Surge. Throwing the Elite Four in there just made for even more trouble, and he didn’t think anyone could really like Lance as a person. It wasn’t that the Champion had a bad personality, he was just...too much.
Hoping this encounter with the girl wouldn’t prove his old assumptions about her wrong, he sat down on the amethyst-covered rock and waited for her arrival.
-/-/-/
Misty had almost snorted an enormous laugh when she heard the recording of Brock identifying himself with his trainer number, like some backyard nobody of a hiker who’d packed too little food and was too ashamed to call the pokémon center using his name. She’d managed to hold it in, though, and with the situation being was it was that had probably been for the best.
Her craft was a recent donation from Bill, Cerulean’s famous resident Pokémaniac and likewise the maintainer of the Pokémon Storage System for the Indigo League. He always kept himself up to date in just about every conceivable area of technology conceivable, and what he didn’t buy himself he usually got from one of his friends at Silph or whatever. Sometimes that meant he had a slight bit of overabundance – a grave understatement if there ever was one, but that was the words he’d used – of things just lying around his house, particularly when there’d recently been a boom of new developments; and while that usually wasn’t much of a problem, not even his enormous mansion on the Cape could hold two state-of-the-art VTOL aircraft at once. So, he’d given it off to Misty after hearing her complain about the price of commercial airliners from Cerulean to the small coastal town where she had her villa.
Misty had obviously been rather surprised by this seemingly senseless act of generosity at first, but after giving it some thought she'd managed to get the right of it. While she didn't regard Bill as a very close friend herself, he probably thought of her as such. He wasn't a very social person, after all.
As it was she was hardly going to complain about having a private VTOL jet to use at her leisure. Thanks to its internal power source fuel costs were negligible, and while the maintenance routines for the thing gave her nightmares, nothing had even started showing signs of wear yet. So far, it had done nothing but drastically reduce the time, money and frustration she spent at transportation, and she was nothing but happy about that.
Besides, flying it was awesome.
When she got the call she'd been going at low speed to prepare herself for entering the city without causing too much of a ruckus. Now she was doing just below mach 2 and cruising through the countryside on a completely different course than she was used to, heading southwest straight towards the easily recognizable mammoth that was Mount Moon. Seldosin was one of the lesser mountains in the range, but most of the Moon Mountains had fairly flat peaks. As long as she kept her cool, she shouldn't have any problem with the landing – her instructor had been an absolute asshole while teaching her, but in hindsight she was thankful for it. She could land this baby anywhere, including the floating platforms in the swimming pool of her gym if she was in a rush.
Once the lesser peaks became discernible to the naked eye, she eased up the throttle and started going through her instruments. Her map wasn't the easiest to read – she hadn't gotten around to installing a GPS or anything for this thing yet, and her helmet didn't exactly have an HUD or anything – but thankfully Brock had left his radio on, so she just had to look for a few moments to find him on the radar. Bleeding speed as fast as she could she pointed her craft toward Seldosin, and prepared herself for a rough landing.
Thankfully the peak turned out not to be as uneven as she'd feared, but due to the wind she was still forced to use the stabilizer clamps; even then it was a bit of a hassle getting the landing gear all in place safely. Finally she put the engine drivers on standby and unstrapped herself, before exiting the jet.
She kept her helmet on as she made her way toward her gym leader colleague, who stood squinting at the wind and covering his ears against the screaming turbines. She stumbled a step or two when she got out of the jet's wind cover, but regained her step with well-practiced ease. Brock gestured for her to follow him, and she did so with a nod.
It took some ten seconds before they were far enough from the craft to be able to speak to each other, and she popped the helmet seals and took it off. With a sigh of relief she shook out her hair, before returning her eyes to her colleague. “So, what have we got?”
Brock – who had finally stopped squinting – rolled his eyes at her, and motioned for her to follow again. “I'm not entirely sure. It looks a bit like an undersized Rapidash, but it's fairly obvious it's not a Fire-type. I'd even say it could be a Rock-type, from the way it seems to have shielded itself from the impact. It must've fallen quite a way, though, from how things look...well, see for yourself.”
Misty did see for herself, and it was a pretty impressive sight altogether – once she saw the pokémon, however, she cringed.
“Wow. And I thought I had a rough landing.”
A visible, foot-deep impact crater surrounded the white-coated pokémon entirely, and the ground was covered in cracked amethysts – the crater itself seemed to actually have turned from rock to crystal in the crash somehow. There were no wounds on the creature's skin, but its position and the way it made a generally good impression of a heap of broken sticks told her the same was most likely not true for the inside.
Brock's description of it looking like an undersized Rapidash was probably the best thing she could think of as well, but the mane was entirely wrong. Aside from not being on fire, it was purple, and had curls in it that looked like someone had spent a lot of time on. That only increased the mystery as far as she could tell, but this was hardly the time to start thinking in that direction. Right now, they had a life to save.
“Okay, help me lift it,” Brock said impatiently after a few seconds. She understood his feelings – he'd been here for some half hour with nothing to do but stare at this broken creature in pity, after all, and she knew he was pretty softhearted on the inside – but shook her head in response.
“That wouldn't be a very good idea. No matter how careful we are we'd just hurt it further, and we can't afford that now. This is looking pretty bad.” She opened a zipper on her flight suit, and retrieved a pokéball from its rather stuffy depths. “Starmie, lift our patient,” she commanded as she pressed the button to release her pokémon from its confines, before closing the zipper again with a brief shiver as the cold morning wind made its presence known.
With the help of Starmie's telekinetic powers they made their way back across the rocky mountaintop, and soon Misty was strapping herself back into the pilot's seat while Brock fastened the creature best he could to the craft's stretcher – the first time it was used for anything other than a makeshift table, as far as she could remember. Cradling the stretcher in his arms he gave the safety belts on the copilot's seat a long, confused look, before redirecting it to Misty with a questioning frown on his face.
“Look, we're not going to go all too fast anyway, so you don't really need to strap up. I'm not using my helmet, either. Just keep your hands on the stretcher and don't fall over, and you'll be fine. Starmie, return.” Pocketing the pokéball, she flicked a switch to reengage the engine drives. However, an important thought came to mind just as she was about to finish her takeoff checks.
“Oh, and if I see you touching the controls, I'm going to beat your ass to next Tuesday.”
With all parts of the necessary pre-flight routine finished, she focused her mind on the joystick and released the stabilizer clamps keeping them secured on the ground. A gust of wind rocked the craft slightly as she throttled up and slowly let the aircraft take to the skies, but she kept her calm without problem. This was hardly the first time she'd dealt with bad weather, after all.
Angling the thrusters back she began to raise the engine input – far slower than she was used to – accelerating as gently as the craft could handle as she set course for Cerulean City.
Applejack cursed loudly as she finally got something that wasn't saltwater under her hooves. Not because of that, but because the change broke her out of the apathy she'd been stuck in for the last hour or so. She was an earth pony – not a bloody seahorse! – and yet she had spent every minute since she mysteriously vanished from Twilight's basement swimming. In saltwater. And on top of everything else her hat was gone, probably having flown off while she was falling.
Without a doubt, this was the worst morning she'd had ever since the time Discord turned her corn field into a chocolate milk-covered exploding disaster – and considering that the year that had passed since then hadn't exactly been peaceful, that was saying something.
Mounting the low sand bank carefully to ensure she kept her footing – her head was out of the water, but nothing else – she took a few moments to gauge her surroundings. All things said they were still pretty much the same as they'd been when she landed, but there was one big difference to be had that broke the monotony of azure sea and unclimbable jagged spires of rock poking out of it. Not too far off in the distance she could clearly make out a beach, even dotted with a few blue slate-roofed houses. She thought she could make out some movement in the water in the distance separating them, but as far as she cared that didn't matter squat.
“Thank Celestia,” Applejack murmured, before giving her sodden ponytail a shake and resuming her swim with renewed vigor.
It took her about an hour or so before she finally reached the shore, however, and by then the absurdly strong water currents had swept her completely off course. The town she had seen was on the other side of the island – for an island it was, she was pretty damn sure of that – and in her way was a wickedly jagged cliffside that she wouldn't have a snowball's chance in Tartarus of climbing across safely.
Still, at least she had solid ground under her feet, and she wasn't dunked in saltwater anymore. That was a start, at least.
Just as she thought she had managed to lose all of her immediate troubles, however, a small tickling sensation around her neck drew her attention. Craning her neck around she spotted a big, red claw sticking out of her mane, and a pained expression found its way onto her face. “Why you darned little...”
Several minutes of torture later, she finally threw the giant red crab back into the sea. “An' don't let me see yer consarned face ever again, ya hear!?” she yelled after it, before letting out a string of curses that Granny Smith would've spanked her for as she sat down on a rock and started going through her painfully crab-molested, salty mess of a mane.
-/-/-/
“You...won't escape me this time...mark my words...”
Eusine kept ranting with every step he took, just to keep his motivation up. Today was an important day – the most important day of his life! – and this stupid bloody cliff was not going to get the better of him. It was not!
Pausing to regain his breath, he leaned against one of the jagged pillars jutting out of the ground. He was trying desperately to control his breath – few knew it, but he was an asthmatic – and black spots swam through his field of vision whenever he made the slightest movement. Finally accepting that he may be overdoing things a bit, he sat down and let the darkness take him.
As soon as he regained consciousness he checked his watch, which revealed he'd only been out for a few minutes. Not as bad as he'd feared, but a few minutes here and there could spell the failure of his expedition if he was down on his luck; and judging by how the last week had been, he wasn't expecting any sort of good fortune to come his way any time soon. Ever since he'd met the boy in the Burned Tower, ever since he'd seen them with his own eyes, the world itself seemed to have turned against him.
Perhaps it is their doing, he thought for a moment. Perhaps they are bringing this misfortune upon me, in order to make me fail.
That thought sent him jumping to his feet, and now that he'd rested for a bit he didn't have to worry about the dizzy spells anymore. “I won't let you stop me,” he hissed as he resumed his trekking. “Just you wait. I'll take everything you can throw at me – I'll take it, and then I'll catch you! Just you wait, Suicune!”
A small flock of Pidgey that had gathered around him scattered at his sudden shout, but he paid them no heed. Compared to a legendary pokémon, they didn't matter at all.
Some ten minutes later he was starting to feel the signs of his weakness returning, but just as he was about to slip into another rant cursing his abominable fate of being born with a defective respiratory system, he heard a strange call from the direction of the shoreline. Immediately all his exhaustion was gone with the wind, and with renewed effort he quickly scrambled across the last few lines of jagged rocks separating him from his quarry. Finally, he was going to come face to face with Suicune!
Or at least, so he thought.
What awaited him at the rocky beach he wound up on, however, was something different entirely. At first he thought it was a Ponyta – aside from its odd color, the resemblance was fairly obvious – but only a moment after he started wondering how a Ponyta could get all the way out here on its own, he realized it was absolutely drenched in water.
Its mane wasn't the fiery blaze he'd expected, either. Instead it appeared to be quite normal hair of a bright blonde color, and like the rest of the creature it was soaking wet. It seemed to be grooming itself, somehow managing to run its hooves through the hairs without breaking its legs; a feat that on its own would've astonished any decently accomplished pokémon researcher.
Eusine may not have been a professor, but he damn well knew a new species when he saw one. For a second the thought of his original quarry escaping made him consider leaving it alone, but ultimately he decided that would be a most stupid decision indeed; while Suicune would never cease being important, there was also no guarantee whatsoever that he would actually have found him here today.
Admitting that to himself hurt a bit, but even with the technology he had in the field to track the great beasts there was plenty of room for error when it came to when they'd actually turn up at any given place. Like the winds themselves, their movements were erratic indeed, and impossible to understand or follow – only predict, and even that was only to a severely limited degree.
So he decided that while Suicune would inevitably keep running if he did not catch it today, it would also inevitably continue to be tracked by his systems. Whatever this pokémon was, however, would not. No matter how he looked at it, this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; and no matter what, he had no reason to miss something like that.
Considering his actions for a second, he produced the ball containing his Drowzee from his pocket, and let it out as quietly as possible.
Of course, being a pokéball, it wasn't very quiet at all. The only real difference was that he didn't bother with the oh so counterproductive, tacky and ultimately startling cry of 'I challenge you!' or whatever that most trainers insisted on these days. They behaved as if they thought capturing a wild pokémon was an official league match or something! Eusine, master hunter of pokémon mysteries, would never stoop to such levels of stupidity himself.
The pokémon gave a startled noise and got to its hooves, spinning around to face him almost immediately. This creature was a seasoned fighter, he could tell.
Now, the hunt begins, strange pokémon, he mused quietly before giving his Drowzee its first orders. And Eusine will not let you escape. “Drowzee, Confusion!” he cried out, and his pokémon happily complied with his request.
-/-/-/
Applejack was about to ask the strange, pig-like creature what the hay was going on when a strange nausea hit her, and made her want to throw up every last bit of breakfast she'd had before leaving the farm many hours ago. She forced herself to stay on her hooves, however, and staggered forward. Focusing her eyes took several seconds, but she finally managed to get them both locked onto the snout-nosed creature's own tiny black orbs. When she did, there was no doubt.
“Yer' doin' this.”
Shaking her head made the wet, unkempt mess that was mane even messier, but she didn't care much at this point – if anything, the feeling of hair coiled together in sticky, wet strands lying across her back like a bucket of eels made her head very clear of any sort of creepy magic-induced illness.
“Just so ya know,” she growled as she took a step forward, and then another, “I don' like it when ponies are messin' around with mah head!” She broke into a sprint, and in a second she reached the strange creature, who now bore a very surprised expression on its face. “So take yer darn snout and buck off!” Spinning around on her forehooves, she delivered her patented Applebuck straight to the creature's face, and it was sent flying through the air.
Admittedly that was not the end of the fight, but it sure was decided at that point. She figured the strange bipedal creature must've been using some magic to keep bringing out new monsters out of nowhere – conjuring them up and then putting them straight back into whatever void they came from like a magician plucking rabbits out of a hat – but neither the strange, hovering mass of black with a wicked grin on its face nor the big red-white ball critter was able to put up much of a challenge against her.
She bucked, bucked and kept bucking. Her kicks had gone straight through the hovering face's, well, face, but apparently whatever ghostly powers it had to make it ethereal didn't protect it from being impaled by an Applebuck in any real way. The ball-creature had spun so fast it almost made her dizzy and she could've sworn she saw it give off a few sparks of lightning at some point, but once her kick did connect it went bouncing off the rocky cliffs, and didn't move again.
The bipedal magician made its red-lit spell one last time, making the ball-creature vanish in a ray of crimson light before scurrying away as fast as it could. Applejack didn't mind – she'd had enough of senseless violence this morning as it was, and didn't even think of giving chase as it scrambled across the cliff side with an agility she could never hope to replicate. As it finally disappeared across the ledge, she sighed heavily and sat down on a rock.
“What in tarnation is goin' on here? Where am ah? What are all these...”
She couldn't even find a good word to sum them all together – they were all so strange, so alien in concept and behavior to all that she knew of the world. Even the more unsavory species in the world she was aware of were well capable of at least communicating with ponies – the diamond dogs, dragons and all the other strange beings she'd met since befriending Twilight were proof of that, if nothing else – and the ones who weren't were not really much more than dumb beasts, in the end.
Thinking back on memories like that ultimately brought her own fears to the surface, fears which she'd been suppressing best she could ever since she'd arrived. The concept of being lost alone in a strange world where nopony understood her and without a way back home was, to the farm pony, a horror far too great for her to withstand. An image of Applebloom appeared in her head, standing alone by the barn and looking anxiously toward town, watching, waiting for a sister that would never come home.
Never, ever again.
Applejack sniffled, and as images started gathering in her mind the tears started flowing across her cheeks in a silent cascade that she could not possibly hope to stop alone. And alone she was – more so than she had ever been before. What's the point of me even livin', like this? What sort of Element of Honesty am I supposed ta be, when there ain't even nopony around to be honest with?
For almost a minute Applejack sat there, silently wallowing in the misery that had decided to haunt her this morning. Staring tear-eyed at the sand and rock beneath her as it grew wetter and wetter, until she was beginning to think that surely, she would soon run out of tears. And then–
“What gives you such sorrow, brother?”
Applejack hadn't heard anypony approaching, and she whipped up her eyes from the ground in surprise. Before her stood a magnificent creature of blue and white, much like a huge wolf on its light-blue paws. It was easily twice her own height, even larger than the Princess; and on that note, above its red eyes sat what she thought must be an immense, crystalline crown. Its violet mane flowed like Celestia's too, without a care for the lack of wind, and the two narrow, white bands making up its tail did much the same.
More important than any looks in the world, however, the gaze it gave her as their eyes met was one of wisdom and understanding. She couldn't get any words out of her own mouth, leaving it to flap uselessly for several seconds as she stood simply awestruck by its sudden appearance.
Then, she remembered what it'd actually said, and her brain slowly started kicking itself back to life.
“Now y'all listen, big fella...” She stopped for a second to sniffle a bit and wipe away what tears she could from her eyes before going on, “It's mighty kind of y'all to be concerned for a cryin' mare an' all, but bein' a mare, ah sure ain't ever been anyone's brother. Ya hear me?” she finished, sniffling again and finding herself extremely embarrassed for some reason she couldn't comprehend. A vivid crimson worked its way across her cheeks as the wolf's face took on a quite puzzled look.
“You have no brothers? You are alone? I would lament as well, were I, but...” He – judging by its voice the gender question seemed fairly obvious to her – tilted his head at her, apparently oblivious to her present emotional turmoil. “Are you well, brother? If I may refer to you as such, but I myself would welcome such a gesture, were I without my own.”
Applejack struggled to get control of herself, giving her head a violent shake as she fought to push the last of her tears back to where they'd come from. “Ah'm fine! Y'all just...surprised me, is all.” She shot a harsh look at the creature, fixing its eyes with a her own. “And ah never said anythin' about havin' no brothers, either – don't you go around sayin' like Big Mac doesn't exist, ya hear! He's just...not here right now.” She broke away from the stare, and ended up looking out towards the ocean; its immeasurable, endless width was just the same distance she felt like she was from anything else she knew in the world right now.
“And neither is anypony else. So ah guess... ah am alone. Fer now.”
The wolf gave Applejack a compassionate look as it walked up beside her, and for the first time this morning she felt like something was, at least, not going entirely wrong. That reminded her of the fact that he'd still referred to her as 'brother', however, so she thought to remedy that before he prompted to speak up again.
“An' call me Applejack, because that's what my name is. Ah don't mind the gesture, but it feels mighty awkward fer a mare to be called a brother all outta the blue. No offense.”
“None taken. I am Northern Winds. It is a pleasure to meet you, Applejack.”
They stood there quietly for a while, with the silence only being broken by the brief sea winds and the gentle churn of the waves rolling in. Eventually though, Applejack decided there was a question she very much needed an answer to.
“Now Northern Winds, about this here two-legged feller...”
In the hour that followed, she sat down with her new friend as he explained what he knew of the world to her. She was both shocked and amazed at many of the revelations – notleast at the mention of this Emperor character, who apparently had returned Northern Winds and his two brothers from the dead! – but most of all, the rule of these strange two-legged magicians, who the wolf only referred to as Dwellers, disgusted her.
“So let me get this straight. These Dwellers, they enslave innocent critters with their magic? And then pit them against each other in dogfights fer fun? What sorta twisted mind came up with this dung?”
Northern Winds frowned at her, clearly not agreeing with her summary of his explanation. “Not quite. There are many cases of Beasts attacking Dwellers, as well, and from what I've understood the Dwellers use their Beasts, once tamed, in many ways other than combat. Some even form emotional bonds of sorts with them. While it is true that battling is a prime form of both entertainment and status among Dwellers, the situation is a great deal more complex that you give it credit for. Neither party is entirely without fault in the conflict – the Dwellers simply have the upper hand.”
Then, to Applejack's surprise, his frown deepened, and he looked away, with a doubtful expression clear on his face. “At least, that is what Emperor tells us. I am not so sure I can believe those words, at times, but I try.”
He kept gazing towards the sea for a few moments, then whipped his head back to her. His eyes were brimming with curiosity, now. “But enough of the Dwellers. Tell me, Applejack. How did you come to be here?”
Sighing, she told him a fairly condensed version of the events of the past week, this morning in particular. A glint of recognition showed in his red eyes whenever she mentioned Princess Celestia, and she assumed he was comparing her to whoever this Emperor character was.
After a drawn-out description of Twilight's device and the events that transpired after it was activated – he kept asking for more details, especially about the mysterious pale creatures that turned up toward the end – she finally got to her crashing down into the water, swimming to the shore and duking it out with what she now knew had been a Dweller. “An' then you showed up, and well, y'all know the rest already,” she finished, with a tentative look toward his canine face.
Northern Winds spent a good minute thinking after she had concluded her story, before giving her a reply. “You saw the Progenitor.”
Applejack raised an eyebrow at this statement. “The whatnow?”
The wolf fixated her with a stare, and for a moment she could not manage to look away no matter how hard she tried. “The Progenitor. All beings descend from it. It is the origin of life.” He dropped his intense stare and she pulled her eyes away, panting, but he kept talking as if nothing had happened. “I have never seen it myself, but your description sounds identical to what Emperor has told me of it.” He shook his head, and his violet mane billowed out like an enormous cloud, flaring out in the air and staying there in blatant disregard of the earth's pull. “If the Progenitor has something to do with bringing you here...” He frowned for a second, before giving her a resolute look. “You would do best to seek it out, I believe. Possibly, your brothers may have been brought here as well, even if they are not with you at this moment.”
A flame of hope lit up in her heart at his words, and for a moment she cursed herself for being so stupid. Of course the spell would've pulled us all over. I just have to find the others, and we can all go home. Can't be that hard! A stray thought pulled at her attention as she formed her reply. “They're mah friends, not– nevermind. Thank y'all kindly, Northern Winds. You have no idea how much this means to me. Though ah guess I'll have to swim all the way to whatever mainland there is before I can start searchin' – from how this mornin's been so far, ah doubt things would be as convenient as to leave us all jumbled up together on this here island.”
A grim expression took hold of her face as she thought of the prospect of even more swimming, but Northern Winds only smiled back. “That will not be at all necessary, good Applejack. While I do of course have my own duties to perform and cannot help you search, I am certainly not averse to lending you a bit of...help, so to speak.”
Without warning he leaned his massive head down, and she felt the touch of his strange, crystalline crown against her forehead. A touch, a small, shining blue light, and...
And then, she had a horn.
That's what she thought it was, at least, and it took her a few frantic moments of thinking she'd been magicked into a unicorn somehow before she realized that wasn't quite the case. Running her hooves over it, she could tell it was different – the shape was off, for one, and it also leaned backwards, not jutting straight out like a unicorn's horn. Nevertheless, she could feel it. It was a part of her, not just another weird hat or anything.
After some searching she found a puddle, and looking in the reflection revealed she now bore an almost identical copy of Northern Winds' blue crystal crown thing on her own head, with only the size being different. Which, of course, meant that it wasn't a crown thing at all, but rather his own variety of a unicorn's horn. Or however that was supposed to work.
She gave the wolf a very alarmed look, and raised a demanding eyebrow, but the huge creature simply kept smiling at her. “What didja do to me, Northern Winds? You'd best tell me straight out, and mind you, the Element of Honesty don't like no liars.”
Northern Winds smiled serenely at her, and shook his head as he walked up to her. For amoment she was a bit scared when he raised his giant paw, but he simply laid it to rest upon her newly decorated head. “Fear not, Applejack. I simply gifted you some of my powers. The water will heed your commands, and the wind will run by your side. You need not swim to the shore. If you wish to submerge yourself you may do so, but I seldom see the need to, myself.”
Applejack stared at him, trying to comprehend what he was saying. Eventually, a memory of her trip to Cloudsdale came to mind, and she thought she understood. “So it's like cloud walkin', then? Except on water? Ah suppose that'd be useful, and that's mighty helpful of y'all, but didja have to tack this thing on my head? Feels a bit...iffy.”
Northern Winds raised an eyebrow. “That would be my brother Storm Cloud's power. But I see the similarity, if you are familiar with that. And while I could have simply blessed you with that ability alone for a short while, you will need more time than I can give that way to reach the shore. So, yes. It was needed. I believe you will grow used to it as time goes by, however.” He gave her a confident smile, and put his paw back on the ground.
For the first time in what felt like ages, Applejack smiled. The candle of hope he'd lit was now a burning bonfire, and she felt the worries and fears in her heart start to melt away before its fiery light. A small question remained in her head, but for some reason she had no doubt the answer to that was as easy as they come. “How do I know where to go, then? The sea's a fairly large place, I reckon. Where is this Progenitor of yours hidin' out?”
Northern Winds nodded at her, gesturing with a paw at her crown. “With that, the winds will show you the way. There is a tower of light in the nearest Dweller settlement on the coast – it will be straight northeast of here. I do not know where the Progenitor sleeps, but I believe my brothers can show you one who does. Go to the tower, and one of my brothers will meet you. Now that you have my powers, they will sense your presence and seek you out. Tell them what you told me, and they will aid you in your quest. I am sure of it.” He said this with such conviction that she could not doubt him, and her own confidence was only bolstered further.
Realizing what inevitably had to follow next, however, she felt a hint of tears starting to well up in her eyes. Blinking them away furiously, she shook her head and raised a hoof towards the giant wolf. “Northern Winds...Thank y'all so much for this. All of it. Y'all have no idea how much this means to me. Not only helping me, but just being here to listen to me...” She shook her head again, trying not to get all too sappy, and steeled her resolve. The time had come to say her farewells, even if she very much dreaded the concept of being alone again. Like he'd said, she had a quest to complete.
“Ah hope I'll see you again someday, Northern Winds. Maybe when I've found my friends again – I think you'd like them, too. They're real good ponies, they are. Thank you, for everything.”
Northern Winds smiled back at her, and nodded sagely. “Fare well, Applejack, and I wish you the best of fortune in your search. Maybe one day I will meet your brothers, as well, and I thank you for the tales of them you gave me. It is not often I have others to speak to like this, either.” He met her hoof with his paw, and she felt something tingle in her crown just as his gave off a sparkling light. “Now go, and run with the wind.”
With a nod she turned around, steeling her resolve for the inevitable test of her new powers. Northern Winds was right beside her as she took her first, careful steps into the water, but her fear was ultimately ungrounded. It felt like stepping on mossy rock, and she thought it should've been a lot slipperier than it was, but the water held her aloft without question. She took another step, and then another. Her careful walk became confident, and turned into a light trot as she found her footing on the strange new surface. Soon she was galloping at full speed, and only kept on going faster and faster until she really was running with the wind, speeding across the ocean's blue water like a swift winter breeze. Small splashes of sparkling drops sprung up in her wake, and the world flew by before her eyes.
This must be why Rainbow likes flying so much, she concluded.
As the jagged spires of rock sped by her, she looked back on the morning's events so far, and felt strangely content with it all. I've got a strange crown thing on my head, I'm lost at sea mostly alone in a world full of weird creatures I can't talk to, and nopony knows where I am. That was countered with the inevitable reflection of what she was doing right now, and all her worries evaporated. But I can walk on water. I can run, heck, as fast as Rainbow can fly! I have a goshdarned compass in my head! She could feel the pull of the earth on the crystal crown, and besides having a pretty good sense of direction to begin with, she knew that this pull was the pull of the north pole. She knew, and all in all she felt quite happy about things for once.
Things coulda been quite a lot worse, I reckon! A bright smile bared her teeth against the dazzling white spray of the waves, and she raced across the sea laughing.
Tears ran down Jasmine's cheek as she opened her eyes, exchanging the horrible dreams of her night for the waking nightmare of her day. Why, she asked herself yet again, even though she knew there was none to answer her plea for salvation; even though she knew so well that there was no answer for her to be had.
The world was cruel, and when it could not find courage to hurt her, it hurt the few things in the world that she cared about. That she dared care about, only because she thought them strong enough to weather any storm the world might throw at them, any misfortune they faced.
Yet again, her foolish assumptions had been wrong. Oh, so horribly, terribly wrong. The world was a cruel and spiteful place, and it had its eyes set on her. No matter what, it would find new ways to hurt her when she had shielded herself from the ways she'd been hurt before.
All I can do to stop it is to simply not be hurt anymore, she told herself. For if there was no way to harm her, what choice would the world have but to stop?
“All I have to do is become as hard as steel.”
Wiping her tears off on her bedsheets, she forced the harms of the world out of her mind and made herself ready to meet the day. Not with a smile – no, not ever. The day did not deserve that. But she had more than enough steel to make up for the lack of shining teeth. The day would not be disappointed, and it would not give her any further grief.
She would never give it the chance to try.
-/-/-/
“Paloo...paa...”
Fluttershy was slowly but surely approaching a state of total panic. The big yellow-black animal wasn't like anything she'd seen before, but that didn't stop her from understanding it; and the pain it was in. The pain, the arduously slow choking and the disease that caused it, the danger of letting it go untreated. This poor creature that she'd just met was going to die, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“Oh goodness, oh goodness, oh no, oh no...”
Restlessly she circled the little chamber that housed her newest patient; one second on quiet wingstrokes, the other on hooves that clattered against the tower's stone floor withevery step she took.
“Oh, I don't have my medicines, or my friends to help you, or even a bed for you to rest in, oh, this is not good...”
So distracted was she that she didn't notice she was only making the poor creature dizzy with all her moving around, on top of the pain it was already in. So distressed was she that she didn't spend a single thought about her friends or what had happened to them. So completely enclosed in her own thoughts Fluttershy was, that she didn't notice the strange rumbling noise coming from the center of the chamber, nor the quiet ding that followed when it stopped.
When a pair of doors suddenly slid open and revealed a strange, two-legged creature without the least resemblance to her good friend Harry – who would ever have made that likeness? – Fluttershy kept ranting and circling for a good ten seconds before she realized that she was not alone with her patient anymore.
At which point she naturally squealed in terror and hid herself behind the first sizable object she could find – which of course, seeing as her patient's little chamber was quite a stark and undecorated place, was the patient itself.
-/-/-/
Even before the doors slid open, Jasmine knew something was up. Nobody else had access to the elevator, and she'd certainly have noticed anyone making their way up the stairs. After all, one did not simply walk past a good dozen battle-thirsty trainers without making a great big fuss with an accompanying lightshow that could be spotted from halfway across town, and the lower levels of the Olivine Lighthouse had all been peace and quiet from the minute she walked out of the Gym. It was hardly difficult to keep track of the tallest building in the city, after all.
A few of the sailors residing on the bottom floor had – as usual – given her hearty greetings and cracked a few jokes to try and cheer her up, a plan that was as well-intended as it was doomed to fail. She had responded with apologetic half-smiles and well wishes that were as genuine as they were empty and meaningless. That part of her morning routine done, she swiped her key card and entered the elevator in silence, fully prepared for the next.
That was, the part that involved her staying up at the lighthouse's top all day, and doing nothing but cry inconsolably into Amphy's yellow fur until one of her Gym trainers came along to make sure she at least didn't starve herself to death while mourning her dying friend.
I tried, she pleaded, I tried to be hard enough. But I can't.
And now she would lose the last of what was left of her short, lonely childhood, to some mysterious curse that the pokémon center staff couldn't wrap their heads around. For a curse it was, the same curse that had followed her as a little girl, the same curse that had killed her parents, the same curse that had burned down her old house with what memories she had left of them; that same curse was now killing her oldest friend, slowly and painfully, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Why am I so powerless?
That thought and ten others like it wandered around her gloomy mind as the elevator started pulling to a stop, but she was broken out of her reverie by a strange, humming sound. It was not Amphy's pained, breathless cries, or any of the familiar sounds bird pokémon normally made when they managed to get themselves trapped in the little chamber that served – had served – as the lighthouse's beacon room. This was the ups and downs of conversation, this was...
The doors slid open, and she immediately surveyed the room for the speaker. Whoever it was, she – it was clearly a woman – didn't seem to have noticed Jasmine's arrival, but kept going on about how bad the situation was and whatnot. Despite this Jasmine couldn't spot her, and she was quite confused by this. Firstly, the nurses from the pokémon center had already visited five times at her behest, and each time solemnly declared there was nothing they could do; the last time, they had quite firmly made it clear to her that they were not going to spend any more time on “prolonging this poor pokémon's suffering”, as they put it.
So for that simple reason, the idea of it being yet another visit of some sort of medical staff seemed rather unlikely. The nature of the rant itself would seem to indicate just that, however, and the second factor she couldn't at all wrap her head around did nothing to help her understand this riddle.
Why in earth's name is the voice coming from above?
Just as she thought this the long rant was cut off by a high-pitched squeal, and there was a sudden ruffle of movement before everything went quiet. Evidently the intruder had noticed her arrival and was trying to hide from her, but unless she magically managed to pass through the walls of the beacon room, whoever it was had little hope of escape. Aside from the elevator behind her there was only the one door leading to the platform outside, and she'd kept it in sight from the second she arrived.
“I know you're there. Stop hiding and come out so I can see you, whoever you are. This level of the lighthouse is off-limits to anyone not authorized by the Olivine City gym leader – and that's me – so you'd do best to leave before I decide you're trespassing and report you to the port authorities.”
Oddly enough, Amphy had remained silent throughout all of this; most times when anyone but Jasmine herself was in the beacon room, the pokémon would keep a watchful eye out for whatever grief they might try to cause them. Not even the pokémon center staff had been spared that treatment – even before this sudden illness, when they'd come around for their regular checkups, Amphy had retained her guarded nature towards strangers, no matter how friendly they appeared to be.
So why isn't she reacting?
Jasmine could tell it wasn't because she was in too much pain or otherwise incapacitated; though it had its back turned to her the yellow pokémon was twitching its ears attentively, clearly aware of what was going on. That ruled out any sort of hypnosis, as well. None of this made any sense, and Jasmine was starting to lose her patience fast.
“I said, come out!”
Much to her surprise, it did. A pair of sky-blue eyes peeked out from just above Amphy's head, and was soon followed by a strange, pale-yellow pokémon that flew over her friend and touched down on the floor just in front of her. Those sky-blue eyes gazed straight into hers, and after a moment they were all she could see.
And then...
“Oh, my. It talks!”
Jasmine could have said the same, were it not for the fact that she was absolutely paralyzed at the moment.
“Goodness, I've never seen anything like you before. That makes two new kinds of critter in a day! Oh my.”
Her peripheral vision slowly started returning, as she felt the pokémon break eye contact. Her relief was decidedly short-lived however, when something started wandering across her head and hair; though it was a quite gentle touch, she would've screamed the windows to pieces if she could. She imagined the hypothetical rapist or molester would be fairly gentle as well, had he a victim so completely incapacitated as she was right now.
Slowly, much too slowly, she clawed her muscles free from the crushing grip freezing them in place, trying not to think about anything except getting out of this creature's grasp. As the paralysis finally let go of her she gulped a frantic breath and stumbled away from her assailant, not caring much for direction until she collided with the soft, warm mass of Amphy's fur and realized she was trapped.
“Oh, I'm sorry, did I scare you? It's all right. I'm not going to hurt you.”
The pokémon's voice was gentle as a morning breeze, and with one exception its face was as mellow as they come. Had it not been for that paralyzing gaze, it couldn't have scared a fly. As it was Jasmine was panting hard, turning her head this way and that; pressed against Amphy's fur and matting it with her sweat, she struggled as hard as she could to get away from those blue orbs that spelled nothing but certain death for her.
Don't look her in the eyes don't look her in the eyes don't look her in the eyes don't look her in the eyes don't–
She looked.
-/-/-/
“Misdreavus, return!”
The red light enveloped the swirling darkness that made up the most recent addition to his team, and drew it back into its pokéball. Yet like the other ghost-types he'd seen so far, it seemed to stay in the air for a moment even after it was gone. Sure, it wasn't as creepy as the huge grin left by a recalled Haunter, or the outright frightening afterimage of Morty's huge Gengar; but still he doubted he'd ever get used to seeing those piercing eyes remain in the air long after their owner was gone.
“Damn, kiddo, you've got spunk! Those were some tactics you showed off – man, if I'd had those when I went around the world, I'd be drowning in beauties right now, haha!”
To his credit Roberto, the buff sailor he'd just defeated, was taking his downfall in stride. With the lighthouse being the hotbed for fight-hungry Trainers it was, that was probably not a strange thing in and of itself. Still, after all those run-ins with the ever pesky Team Rocket – not to mention that damn thief Silver who always managed to slip away somehow – it felt rather nice to see someone facing defeat like the adults they were. It was as if being defeated by someone younger made people think they had the right to act like children themselves; if so it was not the first time his age had done him disservices he'd never asked for, and it would surely not be the last either.
Ethan adjusted his black-yellow cap slightly, and reattached Misdreavus' pokéball to his belt. “It is a habit of most sailors – like many trainers who use their pokémon for work – to keep pokémon that are well suited for their preferred environment. In your case, that means strong, bulky pokémon that can handle themselves at sea or on deck. Or in other words, fighting-types and water-types, with a preference for physical attacks. Fighting-types can't do anything against a ghost-type like Misdreavus, and alongside its psychic- and ghost-type moves I've taught mine Thunderbolt.” He gave the man a slightly apologetic smile, and shook his head. “No offense meant – your tactics weren't bad either – but in terms of strategy, I simply outplayed you.”
Roberto scratched his head for a bit with that enormous hand of his, then smiled back. “Looks like I've got a lot to learn yet, huh. Maybe it's time I took another journey – nothing like the sea to harden a man up, and his pokémon with him! What do you think, boy?”
Ethan shrugged back, reflecting for a moment that his own shoulders weren't even half as wide as his opponent's. “Well, I don't know about that – I've never been at sea, myself. To be honest, that's why I'm here in the first place. The gym leader...”
At those words Roberto's face immediately returned to the serious mask it had kept before and during the battle. The huge man nodded, and Ethan trailed off. “The beacon room is right upstairs, and I think I heard the elevator go up a few minutes ago. I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you, though – Jasmine hasn't accepted any challengers since that Ampharos fell sick, and I don't see that girl changing her mind.”
Ethan thanked him briefly again, and finally started climbing the last set of stairs. Whatever else could be said about it, this lighthouse was a tall one.
Half a minute later, he finally took the last steps up to reach the top platform, harsh sea winds buffeting him as he came clear of the building's cover. He made his way toward the beacon room's entrance as fast as he could, and the wind draft sucked it shut the second he let it go. Taking a quick survey of the room he could see the sick Ampharos, sure enough, but not really anything else.
“Jasmine? Are you there?”
-/-/-/
Lookawaylookawaylookawaylookawaylooka–
“Jasmine? Are you there?”
Darkness swam in shimmering flocks across her eyes when she finally drew a gulping breath, coughing and drawing another again like someone who'd just breached the surface after almost drowning. Which was just what it felt like, lack of water aside – someone had apparently taken the saying “drown in her eyes” all too literally. She'd been suffocating, and only the timely appearance of someone had saved her from that fate.
“DON'T LOOK INTO ITS EYES!” she screamed with what air her lungs could hold, squeezing her own eyes shut with all of her might and crawling across the floor towards the voice. She had almost lost it, but whoever it belonged to thankfully spoke up again before she could hesitate another second.
“What- oh shit, are you okay? What are you talking about, what's this about not looking–“
She scrambled blindly towards it as fast as she could, clawing her way forward until she found a decidedly human pair of legs and threw her arms around them. Their owner stumbled to the ground, and she clung to her savior like a baby, crying into the soft fabric of a shirt and panting like she'd run a marathon.
“Man...uh...”
It was a boy, she realized. Not much more than that, going by the fact that he was shorter than she was and retained the bright voice of a pre-teen, but a boy nonetheless. Not that it mattered much, but she couldn't help but feel embarrassed. She wasn't really used to that sort of stuff.
“Um...I'm sorry, but if you don't mind me asking...”
Those words, and the sweet voice delivering them, sent winter into Jasmine's spine. In a panic she scrambled to hide behind the boy, shielding herself from the creature's gaze with his body.
“What's wrong with my eyes?”
The boy stirred. “Uh. Well, I'm not sure, really. But she said not to look at them, and you've obviously scared the crap out of her somehow...wait, give me a second.” He shuffled around for a second, and before she could react she felt him putting what she thought was a pair of glasses on her. “Well, they seem to be working. There, it's okay now. You can open your eyes.”
Hesitantly, she complied.
The boy was looking at her through a pair of slightly shaded spectacles, which she assumed were the same as the ones he'd put on her; his red shirt was wet with her tears in places, and his cap was hanging on to his head by a strand of his black hair, almost falling off.
Behind him – Jasmine gasped instinctively, but unlike the other times nothing happened – the strange yellow pokémon was hovering in the air, its wings beating slowly. It had a concerned look on its face, and was looking right into her eyes. Or, it would have, had she not been wearing glasses. “What are these things?” Jasmine whispered, still expecting to be frozen in place any moment.
“They're specially modified Blackglasses. Morty's own make. He gave 'em to me when I mentioned I had trouble training my Misdreavus, with her eyes and all. She's the first ghost-type I've raised, and they take a bit...getting used to. I don't need them for that anymore, but it seems there are other times when you need to be careful what you look at.”
The yellow pokémon fidgeted slightly at these words, and as though that simple expression had cut off a chain somewhere in her brain, realizations started crashing through her head one by one. “Okay. O-okay. First of all. You,” she said with a slightly unsteady finger pointing at the creature, “can talk. Actually talk. I've heard trainers saying certain psychic-types can speak into your mind, but you're talking. That's not possible. Second,” she went on with a look at the boy, “how come you don't seem to be very surprised by all this? Who are you, anyway? How did you get up here? Who,” she added and deftly stole the cap off the boy's head, “ever taught you to wear a cap like that? Geez,” she finished sulkily, planting the cap back on his head with the visor in front where it belonged.
Like many of the young, determined challengers she'd faced, he proved to have a terrible sense of style at the first opportunity he was given. “Hey, stop it!” he cried as she made the necessary adjustments to his headgear, and the moment she let go of it he struggled to put it right back in the wrong direction again. “Keep your grubby girly hands off my cap!” The sound of their little struggle was interrupted by a sound like chiming bells, as the creature let out a small laugh at their antics. The boy huffed, and gently pushed her away before standing up. Just like she'd thought, he wasn't very tall at all.
“I'm Ethan, pokémon trainer from New Bark. Field research assistant to Professor Elm and,” he added with a flourish of his arm to show off the device attached to his wrist, “Pokédex user, courtesy of Professor Oak himself. And you know about this thing called stairs? There's more than just the elevator leading up here, y'now. Anyway, I was going to challenge you to a gym battle, Jasmine, but I heard from – well, a guy – that you're otherwise occupied at the moment. That excuse isn't going to let me through Victory Road, though, so I guess I'll have to help you out with your lighthouse problem.”
He glanced over his shoulder, and gave the creature a measuring look. “Besides, I've seen weirder things than that, and she seems friendly enough. What sort of pokémon are you, anyway?”
The creature touched down on the floor, and gave her a confused look. “Um. What's a pokémon? Oh, and my name is Fluttershy. I mean, if you wanted to know,” she mumbled hesitantly, turning her eyes away and going on in a voice too quiet for anyone to hear as she wandered off aimlessly toward the other end of the room.
Jasmine and Ethan shared a level look through their spectacles, before returning their eyes to the strange creature that called itself Fluttershy. “So tell me, Ethan, what does that beloved machine of yours say about our, friend here?” She tried to keep her voice low, but whispering would just have been rude.
“Not much. The database doesn't have anything, so I had to use my own data. I don't really do that too much, so I'm not all too experienced with the functions...” He shook his head and raised his arm, sliding the device on his wrist open and giving it a look. “I mean, I guess I could capture her and get more accurate readings that way, but...” He raised his eyes again, and adjusted his glasses a bit. “Man, it's one thing if I run into something in the wild, or if I get jumped by someone, but this? Talking with her, like this? It'd be like...capturing you, or something.”
He sighed and shook his head, lowering the device again and sliding it shut. After a moment, he looked back at Jasmine. “What happened to you, anyway? What did she do? You were scared shitless, back there.”
Jasmine shivered as the memories started to come back, but she pushed them away. “I-I don't know. She...looked at me. And I couldn't move. I couldn't see, feel, hear anything. I couldn't even breathe, I was completely paralyzed. I would've suffocated if you hadn't come around.” She wanted to close her eyes again, but she kept them open – if she didn't keep herself distracted, the memories would start rushing in again. So she fixated Ethan with a steely look, and just about managed not to cry out in fear when the creature peered out from behind him.
“Um. Jasmine? I'm, um, sorry. I didn't mean to.” Hesitation was clear in both her voice and expression, and was starting to understand what Ethan had meant about capturing her. If she could disregard the fact that she'd almost been killed by this thing only minutes ago, it was as human as can be, aside from its appearance.
Ethan had opened up the pokédex once more, and was quite obviously trying to get what data he could out of the readings. He kept his eyes on the device and its little screen even as he spoke. “Nobody was hurt, Fluttershy. It's fine. That brings us another question, though. What did you mean to do? I suppose you must've flown up here, but where did you come from? There are no records of your species in the pokédex, and this model contains data templates for every known kind of pokémon from the Johto and Kanto regions – and I've got a feeling that I could call up my colleagues in the northern and southern regions without getting anything on you there either.”
Fluttershy shook her head, and once again let herself fall down to the floor. “Oh, I didn't fly up here. I'm really not that good at flying, even though I'm a pegasus. I, um, sort of...fell.”
-/-/-/
It was a rather relaxing thing to sit down and talk for a while, Fluttershy thought; especially when this morning had been so hectic thus far. She hadn't thought all about it before, but talking it through like this really made her realize how intense things had been. She wasn't used to this, not like Rainbow or Twilight was. “Oh, I do hope they're all okay,” she murmured, sending a look toward the door she'd entered through.
It was a bit difficult to deal with. Part of her just wanted to stay here and nurse this – pokémon? – back to health, but before that she knew she had to find her friends and make sure they were alright. Rainbow Dash would never have had problems with conflicting loyalties like this, but Fluttershy was quite literally out of her element in this case.
“Ehum. And then I appeared out there on the balcony and fell to the floor, and when I heard Amphy's cries from in here I just had to go and see what I could do to help her. I can't stand to see poor critters in pain like that. I just can't.”
The two humans – as Jasmine and Ethan called themselves – nodded as she finished up her story, and Ethan stretched out with a yawn as he rose from the floor. They were a bit like tiny minotaurs, these humans – Ethan looked a bit like Iron Will's younger and better-dressed cousin. She chuckled at the comparison, but then realized Jasmine had remained sitting and was giving her a questioning look. “Hold on. How did you know Amphy's name? I never told you about that. Can you read minds or something?”
Jasmine's face went from pondering to suspicious, and Fluttershy shook her head vigorously. “Oh, no. I don't have any magic like that. Amphy told me.”
The human girl's eyebrows climbed skyward at this statement. “She told you? You can understand other pokémon as well?
Fluttershy felt a bit confused by this – she still didn't know what this pokémon thing they kept talking about was – but nodded nonetheless. “Well, I don't know what a pokémon is, but I can talk with just about any critter there is. I can't imagine how hard it would be to take care of all my animal friends if I couldn't speak to them and understand what say to me. I'm not sure if my house could survive that.”
Ethan was fiddling with his machine again. It gave off a few beeps, and he sighed and shook his head. “A pokémon is, well, basically any lifeform we know of that isn't human. What about your eyes, though? You don't seem terribly surprised about being able to petrify someone just by looking at them. You've done this before, I take it?”
Fluttershy shook her head again. “Oh, no. I can't petrify anypony. I'm not a cockatrice. I mean, I have, um, 'the stare', I guess, but it doesn't turn other ponies to stone. Oh, or did you mean that as a metaphor? I'm not very good with those, I'm sorry. But in that case, maybe yes? Oh, um, but I usually have to concentrate really hard, and, um, be a bit angry, for it to work, so I don't really...” She trailed off, unsure what to do with the rant she'd just started.
Ethan's device made a drawn-out beep, and the boy sighed. “That settles it. She's a dragon-type. Flying-type as well, if the wings are any clue.”
Fluttershy squeaked. Old memories came rushing up one by one, old memories she did not want to remember. “D-d-d-dragon? Where?” She flung her eyes about this way and that, trying to spot the emerging terror before it could sneak up on her, but she couldn't spot anything.
“You, Fluttershy,” Ethan said, pointing a stubby claw at her. “All instances of research done on Dragon-types show evidence of two extraordinary abilities, seemingly completely unrelated to all their other powers. The Dragon's Tongue, which allows them to understand and communicate with other species of pokémon, as well as humans. In a somewhat limited fashion, of course, since they don't have much of a language of their own, but the Blackthorn City files are pretty clear on this.”
Ethan raised another claw. “Second, the Dragon's Eye. Depending on the difference in power between any pokémon or human, and a dragon-type, making eye contact can cause a number of symptoms. This is the reason the Dragon Shrine Elders regulate the distribution of dragon-types so strictly, and ensuring that only low-level dragons are allowed outside the control of certified Dragon Masters. Depending on the individual dragon, the symptoms can be different, but fear and petrification are among the more common ones. Powerful trainers and high-level pokémon are less afflicted by this, but the stronger the dragon, the harder it gets to resist. I've even heard that some people who face Lance, the Champion, end up paralyzed when he brings out his Dragonite just by looking at it. What that indicates about your level, being able to stare a gym leader halfway to death... Well, never mind. My point is, Fluttershy, as a dragon-type you must handle your power responsibly.”
Fluttershy mouthed words, but couldn't speak. Her memories were shuffling like five decks of cards, and she couldn't make sense of any of them – much less understand what the human had just told her. Everything she had ever known seemed to be careening down a slippery slope of lies, and nothing made any sense to her mind.
I'm...a dragon?
-/-/-/
Jasmine eyed Fluttershy as she yet again wandered off to the side of the room, mumbling to herself. That was a revelation none of them had expected, to be sure. She definitely didn't look anything like a dragon-type, from what she knew of them.
What was more impressive, however, was the little display Ethan had put on. Though Amphy had returned to the top of her mind now that the immediate crisis seemed to be over, she managed to suppress the urge to throw everything aside for the sake of her friend. There were things she just had to know about this boy.
“Well, you've certainly done your work, 'field research assistant'. I didn't expect you to be so knowledgeable, even on obscure things like this. I'm impressed. Well done, Ethan.”
The boy blushed slightly, waving the pokédex about. “It's thanks to this thing, really. While she was telling her story I looked up various incidents similar to what you described, and aside from freak incidents with Arboks they all pointed towards dragon-types being involved, and from there on I just kept going. The thing is, the pokédex gives me access to every published research document in the known world, along with just about every piece of League data there is. I can look up trainer behavior statistics, migration patterns, evolution mechanics, anything I want. If the human race has made a paper on it, I can find it in here. There are records of every gym battle you've done. I know people tell me I'm a good trainer regardless, but I would never have gotten half as good as I am without this thing.”
The mention of her gym leader duties reminded her of the boy's earlier words, and she shook her head. “I'm sorry, Ethan. I know you want to challenge me, but with Amphy like this... I can't bring myself to battle. I can't focus. I keep thinking about her all the time no matter where I am, and how she's...”
She clenched her eyes shut before the tears could start flowing again, and hid her head in her hands. Much to her surprise, two thin arms wrapped themselves around her, and a small hand ran through her hair soothingly. “Don't worry. That's why I came here, Jasmine. I know what to do.”
Jasmine gaped and stumbled backwards for a bit, looking into Ethan's eyes. He'd taken his glasses off, and had a confident, reassuring look on his face. Her first thought was that he'd be in danger if Fluttershy came back, but she quickly shoved that aside. “Wha- there's a cure!? Where? How? The pokémon center doctors couldn't do anything! What are you–“
Ethan interrupted her, placing a finger against her lips, before gesturing toward his device. “Every single research document published by mankind, remember? When I first heard of your problem, I started looking up on rare diseases among pokémon, electric-types specifically. I quickly discovered a series of documents written by one Tua Huo, a pharmacist based in Cianwood. They detail various treatments he's done for different pokémon, as well as the properties of a certain medicine he calls the Secret Potion. I looked up some other files mentioning that name, and there are reports of the Secret Potion curing just about anything. It's very strong, and can only be used on high-level pokémon, from what I can tell – the cases where it's been prescribed to humans or unevolved pokémon invariably end in their deaths – but Ampharos is a fully evolved pokémon, and Amphy is a fairly strong one from what I can tell. Anyway, I can go to Cianwood and get that medicine for you. I can challenge Chuck while I'm there, too, so don't worry about me wasting the journey.”
Jasmine was speechless. Time and time again she'd been told this was a hopeless case, thather only friend was only waiting to die and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Day after day that thought had entrenched itself in her mind, spiraling her deeper and deeper into her despair. And now...
Hope.
“I'm... I'm...” She couldn't get the words out, and struggled to keep her tears back. She shook herself, and grabbed Ethan by the shoulders. “Thank you, Ethan. I didn't... I thought it was over. I...” The wetness on her cheeks drew her attention, and she brushed the tears away with her hands, sniveling. “Please. Go to Cianwood for me. I... I'll wait here with Amphy. I have to... take care of her.” Her cheeks were matted with tears and red in embarrassment, but she looked Ethan in the eyes. He smiled back, nodding, and she couldn't help but laugh a bit. She couldn't believe any of this. This was a miracle, through and through, and this little boy was its messenger. It was impossible, and she laughed because of it. Impossible or not, she would have her friend back. She had won.
“Um. Ethan? Can I, um, come with you?”
Hearing Fluttershy, the boy struggled to get his glasses back on before turning around to meet her eyes. Jasmine wiped her cheeks and righted her own back in place, but she really wasn't thinking much at the moment.
“I know I can't do anything for poor Amphy on my own, but if you're traveling off to find a medicine for her, I just have to come with you. I must! I, um, if that's okay with you, I mean. Oh, but I'd really, really like to help. Oh, and maybe that machine of yours could help me find my friends? I'd really, really like to go with you.”
Ethan smiled, nodding. “Of course you can come, Fluttershy. If nothing else, I'm very interested in you as well, both as a trainer and as a researcher. Besides, I figure it's better if you don't stay with the girl you, well, you know. I'd be happy to have you with me, Fluttershy.”
Jasmine heard, but didn't really listen. She walked over to the now sleeping Amphy, and started gently stroking her neck. “Did you hear, Amphy? They're going to get medicine for you. It's going to be alright. Everything is going to be fine again, Amphy.”
The snoozing pokémon shifted slightly at her touch, but Jasmine's familiar scent calmed her again. The gentle motions of her breathing, shallow as it was, soothed the turmoil in Jasmine's heart like nothing else. She sat down beside her oldest friend, and gave a look to the boy she thought maybe was her newest. She blushed a bit, but smiled nonetheless. Even if he was just a boy, he was still pretty cute. Besides, she wasn't that much older than him.
Everything is going to be fine. “Paloo,” Amphy murmured in her sleep, and Jasmine could only agree.
A gout of blinding white energy erupted from the aquatic dragon's snout and washed across the battlefield, striking her opponent's Charmeleon head on. It had already been weakened by her previous attacks and she was fairly sure she could've taken it out with far less effort if she'd wanted to, but that wasn't how she did things. She – and her pokémon – liked to make an impression. A deep impression. Just to make sure nobody else started doubting her position as head of the Johto gym leaders. People had to be reminded once in a while, after all; that much was quite evident from the events of this last week.
“Charmeleon is unable to battle! Challenger Allen is out of pokémon! Gym leader Clair is the victor!”
The announcer's voice boomed through the gym's arena, and cheers echoed from the crowd that, despite the early hour, filled most of the balconies surrounding the central platform. Clair swept her long blue ponytail to the side – it always tended to get in the way, but she hadn't the heart in her to cut it off – and flourished her cape. “Kingdra, return.”
Her opponent stepped down from the platform opposite hers, carefully mounting the narrow staircase suspended over the lava lake beneath them, making his way down to the central platform with obvious nervousness in his steps. Clair had no such qualms with her workplace and home, and simply sprung into the air with her cape spreading wide in the air behind her. A few of the first-timers in the crowd, young children and visitors to Blackthorn in particular, gasped in fear as she left the relative safety of her platform to hover above the mass of burning metal and stone, but the regulars didn't bother. She leaped from her own platform to the central one effortlessly, crouching down as she landed with a barely audible grunt escaping her lips.
Flourishing her cape as she rose, she walked up to the defeated challenger hovering over his fainted pokémon. “Well? Do you have anything to say?” By all accounts Clair was a tall woman; she managed to loom over him fairly well.
To his credit Allen didn't fluster or lose his head, all smirk again now that he was safe from any lava pit hazard. Then again, that level of professionalism was the least you could expect from an Ace Trainer, even one with his mediocre level of skill. “Fine, then. Looks like I was wrong about you being a pushover.”
The pretty-faced brat had no chance of dodging the right hook she slugged at his smirk, and she stomped up toward him where he lay toppled to the floor. “That's not what I fucking meant, and you know it!” She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up, eyes alight with rage. “I get the whole ace attitude thing a lot from you shitheads, and I honestly don't really care. But accusing me of cheating? Accusing the elder and even my cousin, who is completely fucking unrelated to this, of bloody nepotism to keep control of the gym? Who the fuck do you think you are!? Well? You imagining a worthless trainer like yourself as the next Blue Motherfucking Oak, are you? Quit dreaming, you rat!”
The cheers had mostly died down, but an air of agreement enveloped the crowd. The beat-up challenger hadn't exactly been subtle in his slander when he came to town, and Blackthorn wasn't exactly rich on people with that sort of sentiments. The Dragon clan had built the city centuries ago, and a good part of its inhabitants were actually members of the clan itself, distant or not. The only people with sentiments against Lance were probably Team Rocket or other shady elements – that in itself said something about what sort of company the shithead lying panting on the floor must be keeping.
He might just be really damn jealous, I suppose. Ace trainers get like that sometimes with people they can't surpass.
“You oughta be thankful we don't deal justice the way your associates do, Allen. I haven't fed the Slugmas in a while.” She released her grip, and Allen scurried away from her, rage battling fear in his eyes. She flourished her cape again and walked toward the rear exit, eying the assistant trainer that had been overseeing the match. “Put him on Route 45, Mike. Maybe a nice, long walk can give him some time to rinse that skull of his. And I don't want to see him in the city ever again, you hear?”
Mike gave her a quiet nod and went up to the defeated trainer, hoisting him to his legs without care for his newly acquired hurts. “I hope you've got a few Revives, 'cuz our pokémon center doesn't serve scum like you...”
The rest of his rant was cut off as the gym's back door closed behind her, and after taking a few steps she sunk down to the ground, leaning against the wall and hiding her face in her hands. What the hell am I doing... She shook her head and lowered her fingers a bit, just about revealing the watery path to the Dragon's Den to her eyes. The townsfolk are all and well, but I'll get my gym leader seat revoked if I keep doing stunts like this...and nevermind that, the Elder might even decide I'm not worthy of using Dragon-types anymore! Man, what the fuck am I supposed to do...
The watery blue was suddenly obscured by a mass of spiky red hair leaning down toward her. “Trouble, cousin?”
Clair let out a surprised squeak – much to her embarrassment – and tried to back herself through the wall, struggling to put some distance between her own face and the one belonging to the only person in the world she couldn't keep her calm around. “L-Lance! What are you doing here?” Her cheeks were burning – he was the last person she wished to see her like this – but at least she managed to keep herself from blubbering random nonsense this time. That was an incident she did not wish to repeat.
Thankfully Lance backed off a bit, flourishing his cape – man, he is so much better than me at doing that – as he straightened up. “Well, I was going to investigate some strange rumors over in the Mahogany district, but I stopped by here on the way from Indigo Plateau and heard, well, some even stranger ones...” He scratched his head, growing a concerned frown on his face. “Clair, honestly. Who did you antagonize this time? You know what I've been telling you about making enemies. Why do you keep giving grandfather so many reasons to hold against you?”
Clair scrambled to her legs, all of her cool gone with the wind. “I didn't antagonize anyone! He started it! I have no idea why, but he just waltzed into the city and started behaving like some bloody...dissident! And don't bring the Elder into this!”
Lance burst into laughter, and Clair's face felt like fire again. “A dissident! Really, girl, did you become a politician while I weren't watching? Or,” he leaned close, brandishing a conspiratory grin, “is it perhaps you who's been leading the resurrected Team Rocket from the shadows, dear cousin?”
Clair blinked several times, still flushed crimson, before turning her head away with a sniff. “So that's why you're here. Don't you ever get to do anything fun as the Champion?”
She was about to back away when Lance put a finger to her forehead, spinning her head back around to face him. Much to her annoyance, the concerned frown was back. That face doesn't fit him. It makes him look old. Disregarding the fact that he in fact was several years older than herself, her traitorous cheeks flared up again, competing with Lance's hair for colour. She squirmed uncomfortably under his gaze. Those eyes of his are so...so...
She couldn't finish that thought.
“Hey, Clair. Sure, that's why I'm in Johto, but that's not why I'm here. Sure, saving the world is important, but making sure you don't thrust yourself into misery is even more so. If Johto gets taken over, we can just take it back. You, there's only one of.”
She felt like she'd fallen into the gym's lava lake.
Later – she couldn't tell how long it had been, her mind had been too busy to keep track of time – Lance spread his cape out on the ground and sat down. “So. What did you do to the guy?”
At some point Clair had sunk down to the ground herself. She still felt like all the dragons in Blackthorn were raging across her skin, but at least she was conscious. I have to do something about this stupid issue, she grumbled to herself. “N-nothing at all!” she said out loud, gesturing. “I mean, well, I-I kind of beat the crap out of him after the match...but that was just now! I didn't do anything to make him start spreading those rumors! Really! And he deserved a good beating – at least! – for those things he said. It wasn't my fault, Lance!”
I need to get a hold of myself. This is embarrassing! What if someone else saw me behaving like this? What if–
Lance grabbed her by the shoulders and leaned close to her, and her mind went blank once again.
An eternity seemed to pass – his face only centimeters from hers, his warm mint-scented breath blowing across her cheeks, his eyes like endless wells of wisdom threatening to drown her – before he spoke up. “I know you're feeling troubled by this, Clair. Don't try to deny it. As a gym leader – as a public person – you'll have to get used to it, but I know it can be tough. It took many years for me to get used to being the Champion, and all that it entitles.”
He leaned back a bit, and the Dragonair wrapped around her chest eased up the pressure just a little. “And before it grew on me, I paid frequent visits to the shrine to calm my mind, to find myself. I'm sure Grandfather will be happy to help you with this, as well.”
He rose, cape swirling in a sudden gust of wind. “So, shall we?”
He extended a hand toward her, and it was all she could do to nod and follow as he pulled her to her feet. It was all she could do to not faint just because they were holding hands. It was all she could...
I really need to get a hold of myself, Clair thought, barely registering the fact that Lance's Gyarados was carrying them across the water, closing in on the entrance to the Dragon's Den at a modest pace. If this keeps going any longer, I'm really going to lose my mind.
-/-/-/
Princess Flame spread her burning wings to slow her descent, approaching the snow-covered mountain like a solitary flicker of warmth. The round peak had a circular hole in it, much like a volcano's crater, but it was noticeably devoid of any lava. Which honestly was all fine with her. For one she'd made that hole herself to have easy access to her nest, and secondly she'd never really liked that much heat in one place anyway. Paradoxical as it was, Princess Flame had always preferred the cold over the warmth. I get enough of that just from existing, anyway.
Regrettably she hadn't the stamina to stay in the snow forever, and she always felt decidedly weak when she woke after sleeping a night in its welcoming embrace. So while her siblings had established themselves in the very loci of their respective elements, she had struggled to find somewhere that was cold enough to satisfy her, but not so much that it was threatening. Finally, she had found this peak only months ago, with only its silent guardian to possibly bother her – which, much according to his nature, didn't happen – and she had finally settled down after years and years of searching. Thinking back on it made her feel almost grown-up.
The silent guardian remained where he was, only barely acknowledging her presence before resuming his vigil. His red-cheeked companion gave her a slightly longer look, which she answered with one of her own before the mountain swallowed her. A shiver in her spine rose, and she had to fight to force it back down. It is hard to accept, a Dweller like him... That the humans have so much power, even if it is just one of them, does not bode well. Even if he has proven himself worthy.
She'd met the guardian twice previous to taking up residence on this mountain. Once in her old nest in the caves of “Victory Road” as the humans called it, where he'd rudely awoken her from her sleep by straying too far off the usual path. She'd tried to chase him off, but the power of the Beasts serving him had managed to overpower her, and she'd been forced to flee and abandon her nest altogether. The second time had been in the southern islands, when he'd managed to interrupt her sacred meeting with her sister, climbing up the mountain they were on for some reason or other. In a bout of sheer fury at the Dweller's impunity of impeaching on her time with her dear sister, she'd chased him off.
He was a curious creature, to say the least, and Flame thought of him often when she lacked other things to do. What drives a Dweller to wander so in the first place? Is it not against their nature? Her brother had never managed come up with an explanation for that, despite all he'd learned of the humans from observing their machines with his ability. To him it was an insult to his power – like just about everything else – but to her it was a quite worrisome development. After all, if they could not depend on the Dwellers staying in their dwellings, what could they depend on?
In contrast to their earlier encounters, she had simply stumbled upon the guardian by chance two weeks after settling into her new nest. She had been circling the peak, observing the patterns of the wind, when she'd spotted him at one of the outcrops, sitting by a crude construction that was obviously his attempt at building his own dwelling – it was definitely not one of those tent things her brother had described to her. Yet however crude it was, it still meant that this was the guardian's nest. She hadn't been willing to risk her own yet again by trying to chase him off, and evidently neither had he. Since then they'd gone from caution to grudging mutual respect and quiet acceptance, and aside from the implications his presence had, she was not bothered by it anymore. Besides, her duties were far more important than dealing with one single human, even if he was the silent guardian.
Flame flared her wings as her claws touched down on the rocky bottom of her nest. As she landed she felt exhaustion coming on hard, and she shook her head, spraying white-hot sparks all around her. I need to rest. She walked over to a small stream of water and lowered her beak to drink, but had barely swallowed once before she noticed something gravely wrong.
A tiny ball of purple and green that had slipped her notice uncurled itself, revealing a creature unlike anything she'd seen before. That part was not very important, however. By the King's breath, there is a Beast in my nest.
A few moments passed by with her simply staring at the thing, unable to believe what was happening. Then, she snapped. “You insolent creature! How dare you encroach upon the territory of your Sovereign!? You shall feel my wrath, cur!” A gout of flame wide as her wingspan filled the cave, enveloping the Beast in its fiery might. It burned, it fell, it twitched...
And then stood right back up, as if nothing had happened.
Well, that was probably quite an overstatement – it was still quite singed, with several of its scales now charred black, and it was chattering and gesturing in wild panic – but for all intents and purposes, all of her might had not managed to do more than frighten the creature. Of all she knew of the Beasts and their multitude of shapes, only one kind of them could manage to withstand something like this.
A rogue drakechild. Just what I needed.
Luckily, however, an idea quickly sprung up in her mind to replace the obviously bad alternative of pecking it to pieces and having to clean the entire nest out again, not to mention the disgusting taste in her beak such practice always brought with it. With her flaring rage letting her ignore the mounting exhaustion as much as she liked, she flared her wings again and took off, grasping the drakechild in her claws. Paying no heed to its cries and whimpers she ascended, drawing deep on her powers as she neared the exit.
Cresting the peak, she grasped hold of the wind. With a howl matching her own furious screech it ripped the drakechild out of her talons, carrying it toward the northwest.
Somewhere in the back of her mind a nagging thought tried to get her attention, but after all that she was all too tired to think of why she hadn't understood the drakechild's cries. She needed rest, and went down to fulfill that need as soon as the drakechild was out of her sight.
After all, there was no saying when the silent guardian might decide he wanted this mountain for himself, and if that happened she needed to be ready for all of his might, with all of her own.
-/-/-/
Clair had been meditating for several hours when she sensed a disturbance in the immense lake surrounding the underground shrine. She opened her eyes and looked at the Elder who was sitting next to her, like he had for the entire time they'd been there. “I felt something, something strange. It's here.”
The Elder frowned at her, and scratched his beard. “Is that so? I did not...” Clair was about to retort, but he shook his head in apology. “No, that was not how I meant. You have been meditating this entire time, so you are likely more in tune with the shrine than I am right now. If it was something, then it is likely something small. Are you sure you wish to interrupt your training for something that may well turn out to be entirely inconsequential, or even impossible to find at all?”
Clair opened her mouth hastily, but closed it again, thinking about how the disturbance had felt to her. Is it worth it? No matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise, however, she could not reach any other answer. “Yes, Elder. I apologize, but this disturbance is...” She grasped for words for a moment. “It must be important. It cannot possibly not be, with how it felt. I must go now, before I lose track of it. Like you said, the lake is large, and I do not wish it to be impossible to find. Tell Lance he can join me if he wishes.”
She almost gasped when those last words came out of her mouth – where did that come from? – but luckily she barely held it back, instead stalking out of the shrine with heavy steps. She just about remembered to not tear the door open with all her force, instead pushing it to the side as gently as she could manage; well out, she raised a hand to her mouth and whistled once. “Dragonair, come!”
Her companion rose quietly from the rippling blue waters of the lake, and she climbed onto its slim back with practiced ease. Whatever it was that had caused this disturbance, she would find it. She had to.
And hopefully she'd manage to do so before Lance caught up to her, and made her start going crazy again. Why the hell did I say that? Why?
Suppressing her stray thoughts she let Dragonair carry her into the murky darkness of the Dragon's Den, and she focused on the strange feeling of direction still ringing in her head, pointing toward the disturbance like a shining arrow that only she could see. Please, let me find it. I have to find it. I have to.
He wasn't quite sure where he was, how he'd arrived or how long he'd been there. Everything from the last hour or so was...
Just a blur.
Sharp shivers rose from his tail and through his spine; his body's way of telling him he wasn't quite dead yet, but might end up so if he didn't do something drastic. He remembered having those shivers before. Once, when encountering an enraged, giant dragon in the Everfree Forest, all on his own. Another time, when he was falling through the sky with Rarity, plummeting toward the earth together at breakneck speeds.
Both times he had been dead certain that he was about to die; only dumb luck and Twilight's intervention had saved him from the dragon, and dumb luck and Rainbow Dash (with some help from Fluttershy and a purple scarf, but mostly Rainbow) had gotten him alive out of the fall.
He didn't know where he was now, but it sure didn't seem like any ponies were around – this fourth time around, he was on his own.
Wait. Fourth? What happened to the thir–
In an instant, memory flashed by his mind's eye. A fall, fortunately broken by a small spring of water. A cave, lit with strange red light. A bird, much like a monstrous, enormous version of his own phoenix Peewee, roaring like a furnace and spitting fire like a dragon, and his deathly shivers rising like never before. Except its fire wasn't actual dragonfire, so he avoided being roasted completely by virtue of his draconic skin. Then, choking. Blood rising in his head, breath giving, ribcage crackling, vision failing, and then...
I remember wind. The ground rushing by, before vanishing. Clouds... That, at least, stuck out. I must've been sent flying, somehow. I can't even remember landing... I must've lost consciousness before that. That's a long way to fly.
His chest hurt, but the fact that he was perceiving the pain of his – probably – broken ribs meant that he was starting to return to his senses, bit by bit. He tried to gather what wits and sensations he could find, and immediately found something he hadn't been looking for.
Eugh.
The foul taste of soot laid heavy in his mouth, something no dragon could stand. Soot was, to dragons, not much different from excrement. It was an unneeded byproduct of firebreathing and various reactions in their body, it had a foul stench and an even worse taste, it looked worse still, and it always managed to creep in between your scales and your wings and your plates and–
Spike stopped that train of thought, warning bells going off in his head. How did I know that? He coughed up a small ball of black ash and spit it out in an instinctive reaction to the foul substance's presence in his throat, much like he had ever since he'd struck his first sparks. Yes, he had always thought it smelled bad, tasted bad and was annoying in general, but that entire rant had just sounded...
Way too detailed. Like something Twilight would say.
“Twilight,” he mouthed.
Immediately his own worries evaporated, and were replaced by an enormous gnawing fear for his surrogate sister and her friends. Something went wrong with Twilight's spell. Something appeared. I saw it. Then everything went bright and everyone disappeared, and I ended up–
He opened his eyes wide. His first thought was that he should not possibly be able to breathe – the way the faint light above him wavered and angled about meant he was without a doubt underwater. He could feel himself floating about, and he was definitely not breaching the surface anywhere; still, he was breathing. Or at least he was pretty sure he had been; the moment he'd realized he was completely submerged, he'd shut his mouth tight and started holding his breath.
At least, he thought he was holding his breath.
But if I've been breathing down here, does that mean...
His claws went to his clenched mouth, and he tried to feel if there was anything different about it. I mean, I might've magically sprouted a pair of gills, that would make sense. Well, okay, about as much sense as Pinkie sense, but at least it's something.
Alas, there were no new body parts or other unfamiliar things to be found on his head, and he let out a sigh before he could stop himself. The next moment, he made a rather shocking observation.
There were no bubbles.
I definitely sighed, but there wasn't a single bubble. I'm underwater, and I don't make bubbles when I sigh.
Huh.
Just to make sure, he opened his mouth, and repeated that last thought out loud.
“Huh.”
There were no bubbles this time either.
Spike frowned a bit, before gathering his resolve and trying to think of something he could say to Twilight when he eventually had to explain himself – breathing underwater was probably pretty high on her list of “things that are just stupid and you shouldn't do, and that's that”, or whatever name she had for the thing. And surprised himself when he realized there was a perfectly valid reason for him to do what he was about to do.
As a certain magical unicorn would say: For science.
He closed his eyes, and breathed in.
Water rushed down his throat, but he didn't choke – the only real difference he felt from breathing air was that this was significantly slower, really – and as it reached his lungs, he felt a strange feeling of warmth in his chest. Strange, but not uncomfortable. Like the lukewarm heat of a lava lake the sensation ran through his veins, spreading through his body at a leisurely pace.
It reached his legs, and somehow, he felt stronger.
It reached his claws, and he felt muscles in places he'd never thought he had them.
It reached his back, and a sharp, intense vibration spread through his spine, somehow making strange tones ring in his ears; tones that rang in terrible dissonance, of wrongness with itself.
Like the slowest fire he had ever breathed, the feeling reached up to his throat, his neck, his face, his eyes, his head...
The sensation of warmness seeped into his brain, and he saw. He felt. He heard. He knew.
He knew everything; and never before had he felt so lost, so alone, so terribly wrong. Never in his entire life.
-/-/-/
Without warning, the air around her erupted with sound.
Clair cringed as an awful wail echoed through the cave, flattening herself against her Dragonair's body and holding it in a death grip brought on by sheer primal terror. For a number of seconds her mind was blank, every thought of investigating the mysteries of the Den washed away by a horror she could barely imagine.
That death grip did manage to bring her out of her reverie, however. Being the command she normally used to order her mount to submerge, the serpentine dragon-type complied with haste. The result was Clair being swiftly dunked in the frigid waters of the Den's lake – which quickly brought clarity to her senses.
Well underwater, however, she could hear – and sense – the disturbance much more clearly than before. The Elder may not have approved of her mastery yet, but the first thing any dragon trainer was taught was to always be prepared for anything in her taming of the mighty, yet fickle beasts that were dragon-type pokémon.
Sudden underwater excursions included.
Resisting the urge to order her mount back up, she fumbled with one hand inside her suit for a bit before finding the breathing rod. Unclasping it from its holder, she put the device into her mouth, and resumed her breathing.
Clair tapped Dragonair's side with two fingers, and she immediately shone up the orb on her neck with a bluish light. Following the pulses and the sound of the disturbance, the pair navigated their way closer to its source, Clair trying to ignore the biting cold best as she could.
Fortunately, thanks to her speedy mount the search did not take too long. In a far end of one of the Den's underwater cavelets, she spotted a purple-green form; unfamiliar, yet obviously draconic in nature. Its wingless shape had not the serpentine grace of the less evolved dragon-types, but the sturdy bluntness of their final forms. Confusing, seeing as it was not even half her height.
She motioned Dragonair for a cautious approach, and her mount slowed instantly. There was no intermediary period of moderate speed, or even any sensation of being thrown forward as her momentum changed; all she could tell was that the rocky walls of the surrounding cave went from rushing past to sedately flowing by in the blink of an eye. That was simply how things were. Dragons did not always seem to abide by the laws of nature like most other creatures on the planet.
And the same was true for this specimen, apparently. As soon as she came near it, its tail perked up and it spun around, entirely sure-footed despite the fact that there was nothing but water under its clawed, stubby feet. Then, it roared.
Much like the primal, fearsome wail that had cut through the cave before, the sound was both terrifying and deafening; and this time, her mount was not exempt from it effects. Her Dragonair writhed and squirmed between her legs, and it was as much of a battle for Clair to keep control of herself as it was to keep control of her pokémon. She managed to keep the creature in her sight, however, and when the deafening sound eventually faded, she made a troublesome observation.
The tiny dragon was not so tiny anymore, and by the second, it was growing larger. Larger, and different. Wings were sprouting out of its back; its rounded, stubby scales were growing sharp and rough, and its claws were lengthening into enormous sword-like lengths of metal. Its hide turned from soft green to angry red; and anger indeed laid about the beast like a cloudy miasma, almost tangible in its presence.
Clair did not feel much of a need to elaborate her feelings on the subject, but found it quite sufficient with a short and succinct: Oh, fucking shit.
In an instant, the sense of tranquility brought on by her meditation was gone, replaced by a brief panic that she instantly crushed with her well-honed battle sense. Her strange connection to the shrine and its dragons vanished, but was replaced by an instinctive awareness of her surroundings. Suddenly she noticed the small, glimmering light that shone down from above, the strange cracks in the cavern walls around her, and that the water was very quickly becoming uncomfortably warm.
Clair despised cowards, but there was really nothing for her to accomplish here aside from getting slowly cooked to death, or worse. All things considered, it was time to get while the getting was moderate to bad, rather than catastrophic. So, with not much more than few mumbled curses that were quickly swallowed by the howling, writhing waters of the lake, she clung to Dragonair's backside once more and let the serpentine pokémon carry her to safety.
Temporary safety, at least. There was, after all, the matter of an enormous rampaging dragon to take care of.
-/-/-/
Rage broiled within Spike like wildfire.
He did not know why he was angry, or even what he was angry about; and in all honesty, he did not care a smidgen about reason at the moment. He was rage, its avatar and personification. Reason did not matter. Reason was weakness. Knowledge was power, but rage made knowledge irrelevant. Reason or knowledge did not make right. Power did.
So why did he still feel so very, very wrong? He felt something move in the water behind him. He didn't know how – he didn't care. He spun around to face whatever manner of beast had approached him, and came to face with two. No, not two, his newly acquired knowledge corrected him. One Beast, and one Dweller. He knew these words, knew what they meant, somehow. But he didn't care. For a moment he struggled to grasp just what, exactly, he cared about.
He remembered.
“WHERE IS TWILIGHT!?”
The Beast squirmed under its rider, and the Dweller cowered in – he assumed – fear as well. Neither of them said a word, other than perhaps inarticulate moans that were quickly absorbed by the water around them.
So. He had failed. Even with all his rage, power and right, he had still failed. Even now, he was still wrong.
The roar died in his throat, and rage took its place. Nothing mattered anymore. Rage was everything.
His skin was iron. He didn't care.
His blood was the blood of the mountain. He didn't care.
On his back, two tiny stubs pierced his metal hide and became wings. He didn't care.
Spike the dragon grew, grew and grew, but it was not the same as it had been when he had been consumed by his greed. That time, his desire had turned his entire being into something less than he was, a guttural beast barely capable of remembering who it was, what it was.
This was different. He still knew, he still felt, he still remembered. He felt every difference, and he saw everything he did.
He knew. He just didn't care. Rage was everything.
His rising, metal-plated head reached the tiny dot of light above, the hole he'd made falling down into the lake. With as much subtlety as an erupting volcano, he smashed through the mountain, and kept growing. Meter by meter, rock came crashing down into the swirling waters of the lake around his legs, legs that were the size of a small house and still growing larger. He roared, and the mountain cracked open like a broken toy.
The afternoon sun blinded his eyes. He didn't care.
Stood where he was, half-buried in the mountain and half hidden by the rubble of the peak he had crushed going up, Spike howled his rage at the world like one angry god.
-/-/-/
The Dragon's Den was in uproar, like Lance had never seen it before. Its waters writhed with panicking pokémon of all sizes, and their anguished wails and cries reverberated throughout the normally so peaceful Shrine. Somewhere behind all that noise, though, he swore he could hear something else, too; something louder, deeper and more ominous in nature.
A deep frown creased his face as he regarded the disturbing scene before him. What have you done to this place, Clair? What did you find?
As if summoned by his thoughts, his cousin shot out of the water on her Dragonair like a cannonball riding a javelin. The serpentine pokémon stayed afloat in the air, in the mysterious way that only Dragonairs could; Clair slid off its side and landed on the rock of the Shrine's entrance with a wet sound, and was promptly followed by a small downpour as gravity claimed some of the water that had clung to her hair and clothing.
Well, mostly her hair, to be honest. Clair's outfit really did not allow for much water absorption. He had always thought it a bit promiscuous, but the girl had always been in a slight rebellion against the more conservative elements of the dragon clan. She had always greatly favored the water, as well, so he supposed it made sense for her to have what essentially was a glorified swimsuit with a cape as her everyday wear. It did make sense. But damn her if she didn't look more flamboyant as she was now – drenched to the bone, skin and fabric almost glittering in the cave's flickering torchlight – than she did when dry on land.
Like a fish and its scales, maybe.
Clair did not care much about the soaked state she was in, though; that much he could tell only from her expression. From the very first time she'd been in a battle, using the hatchling Dratini she'd been given by her father on her seventh birthday, she'd always worn that same face. Calm, determined, focused. Lance wished he could have had her composure, sometimes; he occasionally let his emotions get the better of him when faced with a particularly tough opponent. He seldom showed it nowadays – years of being the Champion had trained his poker face to perfection – but the emotions were there. He had control, but she had serenity. For that, he envied her. Sometimes.
“Lance. There's trouble. Big, enormous fucking trouble, and it's gonna bloody well boil the lake if we don't do something about it, and fast.”
But the small frown she now wore on her face, the slight flustered blush on her cheeks, the tiny tinge of fear he could hear in her voice when she spoke up, even the foul language she used to try and mask it; all of this made Lance extremely worried, for his cousin did not fear her enemies. Had not, ever before, at least.
And if she did now...
Steel yourself, Champion. Now darker times are coming. Those had been the words of his aging predecessor, when they had spoken just after the Cerulean Incident a couple of years ago. He had doubted him, then – after all, what could possibly top that menace, in terms of sheer fearsomeness? Had they not just managed to defeat and dismantle Team Rocket, the single greatest threat to the safety of the Kanto-Johto region? Had they not just gained not only one, but two young trainers worthy of the Champion's mantle, as their allies?
A massive tremor shook the Shrine, and a wall of sound hit Lance like a fist of air. There was no time to think; he leaped into the air even as his Dragonite was materializing from its ball, and in the corner of his eye he saw Clair mount her own pokémon as well. No words were needed; nor would any that they said be heard. They soared through the vibrating air toward the exit, and took to the open skies.
Well outside, Lance was met by a disturbing sight. Blackthorn City was nested deep in the mountains, surrounded by fells low and high; he knew them all well, from the countless little escapades and adventures he'd made here as a child. Now, one of the peaks to the south – the Javelin – was simply gone, its spindly top torn from the landscape and turned to slag and gravel. In its place was an impossible shape, but one that nevertheless could only be one thing.
An enormous dragon, its shining red and purple scales glinting in the evening sun like a bloodstained dagger, was emerging from the ruins of the broken mountain like an oversized hatchling from its egg. Only its head and shoulders were visible, and they nearly matched the other mountaintops in size.
It was a behemoth. It was an avatar of rage. And out of its smoke-bellowing mouth flowed not red fire, but the scarlet burning iron blood of the planet itself. A volcanic tide, washing toward the fragile walls of the city itself with not so much as a smidgen of mercy.
At that moment, Lance was afraid. More so than he had been during the chaos of the Cerulean Incident; more so than he had been during his first, struggling battles against Team Rocket as a young boy; more so than he had been in his entire life. Terrified, and frozen in place atop the mount he had once thought to be among the mightiest of dragons.
Oh, how wrong he had been.
But I am the Champion, he told himself. Fear or not, the Champion must do what only the Champion can get done. I cannot back down from this, no matter how terrifying it may be.
His fear did not relent. If anything, the inevitability of his duty only made it greater – darker, more ominous, more primal. Sweat beaded on his forehead; his poker face was starting to slip. And that, more than most things in his life, was a slippery slope that was ever hard, near impossible, to climb back up.
Damnit, Lance! Look at Clair. She's almost ten years your junior, and she's taking this way better than you are. She's not even a certified Dragon Master! Never mind being Champion – isn't this exactly the sort of thing you're supposed to be good at? Get over there!
And without giving a single thought to his own building sense of panic, he urged his Dragonite straight toward the still-growing leviathan south of Blackthorn. Unsurprisingly, Clair followed, prompting Lance to let out an inaudible sigh.
Great. Now I have to not only solve the crisis and save the city – I have to do it in style, too.
And then, inexplicably, he smiled. Well. Go big or go home, I suppose.
With a part of him groaning at his newfound – and utterly terrible – sense of humor, the Champion of Indigo Plateau tore through the skies above Blackthorn like a red-streaked lance.
-/-/-/
The iron scales and spikes of his arm tore through the mountain like a knife through hot butter. Sparks flew around his body as he crawled out of the enormous mass of stone and gravel, striking his metal hide like hail. Magma flowed through his body like blood; the lava flows that rolled down toward the valley below was not as hot, but that hardly made much difference to its destructive power. He was a force of nature. He was his rage – and his rage was endless.
It didn't help.
He could feel it all slipping, deep down. The wrongness he had cast aside before was starting to make its presence known again, and he could not shut it out. He could not, because if he did, the storm of fire that was his fury would be swallowed whole by the dark, cold abyss that was churning below it.
It was a sea of despair, and Spike could not, for all his newfound power and strength, outrun his own heart with his mind.
He screamed – a terrible piercing sound, like a thousand eagles howling their wildest while someone was sharpening a hundred swords. He screamed, and found words.
“WHERE IS SHE!?”
And to his surprise, there came a strangely familiar answer.
“Who?”
For a moment Spike shuddered, as rage and despair both struggled to push aside his astonishment. Sure enough, there was a small, flapping figure in the distance, circling a nearby peak. It took him several moments to account for his new greater size, and realize that the figure was not much smaller than most of the full-grown dragons he had seen.
“Who?”
But the dragon did not move its mouth while speaking – instead, a much smaller creature straddling its back did. He could hardly believe he hadn't seen it right away; his depth perception was a bloody ruin. The creature raised its claws, cupping its mouth.
“Where is who?”
Clarity came to him, and immediately he felt his body tugging at him. He clung to his rage instinctively – as if his body knew something about this huge new form that he didn't – while trying to find words. It did not take much searching, however. Only one could possibly come out to answer that question. “TWILIGHT.”
He did not scream, this time. Instead, it was a tired, teeth-clenched grumble that shook the air around him like a small earthquake. The smaller dragon struggled to stay aloft, and its rider had obvious difficulties hanging on as well. Eventually, though, the creature regained its balance, and once again raised its hands to shout. “I don't know who that is!”
Resignation bubbled below. Of course it doesn't know. There was no point to any of this. In the end, despite all this I am just as useless as I've always been. There's no point to anything. Desperately, he clung to the last sparks of his anger, fanning them without knowing how, struggling to escape the vast, churning ocean of hopelessness that spread out below him.
It's like flying the balloon, he realized. I'm flying a balloon, there's a hole in the top, and I'm trying to stay in the air by just turning up the fire.
“Listen! I don't know who you're looking for, but these lava flows are going to destroy our city if this goes on! If you don't stop, thousands are going to die!”
The fuel in his balloon went out, and he crashed in the sea of despair.
It was like someone pulling out the plug to a bathtub; he felt the fire in his blood sizzle and die out, while his body writhed and wilted like a burning piece of paper. It was notlike the other time he had transformed back – this was, again, something different entirely. Bit by bit, iron became scaly skin, red became green, spikes retracted and every sharp feature on his body became blunt and rounded. All the while, the immense, horrible feeling of being pulled down remained, as his mind kept fighting its futile battle against the depths below it, struggling to the last to keep hold of the power it had only just gained, but already lost.
The churning depths did not care.
A minute later, Spike stood on a small, lonely rock in an enormous pit of gravel, crying like the lone, lost child he was. He felt more useless than ever before, because for a brief moment, he'd had power. For a short few minutes, he'd been strong. And despite that strength – no, because of it, even – all he had managed to accomplish was to threaten the total destruction of a city he'd never seen, while he was throwing a temper tantrum.
But more than anything, he felt small. So, so, small.
For in the end, without Twilight, that was all he was. Spike, the small, weak, useless dragon.
-/-/-/
“Well,” Lance finally said to himself as the dragon vanished into the ground, “That was a lot easier than I'd expected.”
Fear still bubbled inside him, but it was starting to die down bit by bit as his subconscious realized that yes, the threat was indeed gone. Too bad about the dragon, though. I've never seen any pokémon like that, or even close to that size, for that matter. An entirely new dragon-type would have been an amazing discovery, but if it comes at the price of all of Blackthorn, I think I can live without it.
He turned his mount around, and spotted Clair approaching him. His Dragonite was quite a bit faster than her Dragonair, and he'd had to get fairly close to the beast in order to speak with it. Speaking with a pokémon. No, a pokémon speaking back. The Dragon's Tongue is one thing, but it doesn't help much with the words themselves.
He sighed, shaking his head. Well, no use going further down that hole, now. He raised a hand toward his cousin as she quickly drew close. “Well, that's about it, I think. We should-”
Clair shot past him like a bullet, and it took a few seconds before he had his balance back. Riding a Dragonite was quite a bit harder than doing the same with a Dragonair – Dragon Master or not, there simply wasn't much to hold on to unless you used a saddle, and it was hardly possible to just straddle its enormously wide back like one could do with its pre-evolved form.
As so, Clair was well past him when he turned back around, descending toward the enormous hole in the ground that the dragon had vanished into. He thought for a few seconds about going after her, but only a few moments after she'd gone out of view she came back up, speeding toward him like an arrow of blue light.
Mostly blue, at least. Looking carefully, he could see she was holding something in her arms; something green, purple and...
Oh, bloody fucking hell, Lance thought as he turned his mount around and started off toward the Dragon's Den, with one more dragon than he'd brought with him in tow.
Samuel Oak, pokémon professor extraordinaire, was a big fan of sleeping in. His bedroom was in the upper floors of his laboratory, but this was the first time he slept here in quite a while; he had been very busy with his little radio stint recently, and though it was quite fun, he'd started to realize the impact it had on his research. So, he'd kindly told the director of Goldenrod Radio that he'd be heading back to Kanto for a while, and the director, being an understanding man, hadn't had any problems with it. He felt a bit bad for leaving Mary – heavens, that lass was wonderful – alone with the task, but he was quite sure she'd manage. Being a DJ was hardly much compared to her past accomplishments, after all.
His sweet morning sleep was rudely interrupted, however, by the loud beeping noise of the phone downstairs ringing. He was tempted to ignore it, but he was well aware that the only people who had the number to his lab were his fellow researchers and assistants; most likely this would be something rather important.
“I haven't heard from Rowan in a while,” he mumbled to himself as he sat up in his bed. “Some news from Sinnoh would be good for me, I think...” He stretched, yawning loudly, before finally getting out of bed and stepping into his slippers. “Kanto has been rather boring lately.” He left his sleeping hat on.
By the time he shuffled down the stairs, the call had already terminated, and he stared blearily at the machine, debating if it was worth it to go back to sleep. He didn't have to make that choice, however, as the phone once again sprang to life the next second, and with a tired grunt he accepted the call.
“Hey, Gramps!”
Oak smiled. This was better than Rowan; he hadn't heard from his grandson in quite a while. “Oh, Blue! Been a while since I heard from you! How is life in Viridian? Are you getting used to the responsibilities of a gym leader? Managed to land any nice girl yet?” he added jokingly, very well aware that family building wasn't anywhere near the first thing on Blue's mind. He'd expected some sort of response to the provocation, though, and when his grandson simply ignored it and went ahead he was a fair bit surprised.
“Nevermind that. I think I've discovered a new pokémon species.”
Oak's ears perked up. “A new species? Here in Kanto? Well, grandson, this is a surprise. What type is it? Do you have any good images for it, that I can upload into the pokédex database? How about-” He didn't get further than that, though, before his grandson cut him off.
“Geez, gramps! Why do you always get so excited about this kinda thing? I said, I think. I haven't been able to get a clear view of it – it always stays just out of sight, laughing at me from wherever it's hiding. It seems to know exactly where the gym's security cameras are, too. I've glimpsed something bright pink on the monitors, once or twice, but it's an elusive creature, whatever it is.”
Seconds ago, Oak's hopes had been sky high – now, they came crashing down to the ground again, and the sleepy, cynical geezer part of him overtook the enthusiastic professor in a swift maneuver. He hadn't yet installed video transmitters on this phone – so far only the one in the lab was so equipped – but he still put on his most disapproving grandfatherly frown out of habit. “Blue, my boy...have you been experimenting with strange pills again? Or did you perhaps drink too much of a certain vividly green-colored liquor? Didn't I tell you-”
The boy on the other end of the line let out a frustrated groan, and terminated the call. Oak snorted – serves him right, waking me up this time of day for no reason – and stalked back upstairs, promptly slamming the door behind him and threw himself on the bed. Sleep did not wait long before claiming him again.
When he finally woke up again a few hours later, he felt greatly refreshed. He vaguely remembered the phone call from his grandson, but dismissed it from his memory – there was no reason to ruin a perfectly good morning with that sort of thing, now was there? – and let out a content yawn. Today, I think, is a good day to continue that study on pokémon usage in hazardous environments. He sauntered over to his computer, just to make sure nothing else was planned for today. Naturally there wasn't anything – after the whole stint with Goldenrod Radio, he was fairly good at schedules – but there were two unread mails in his inbox, his calendar told him. Slightly curious, he opened the mail client to see what they were about.
One, he archived right away. It was from Blue, and the subject read “Damnit gramps” – precisely the sort of thing he didn't want to deal with right now. If his favorite grandson was in fact in danger of acquiring a serious drug addiction, he would have something done about it, but not today – and definitely not in the morning.
The other, however, drew his interest. Violet City Gym – of all places in the world – was the sender, and the subject was, simply, “Urgent”. Curious, he clicked it open.
Dear Professor Oak, it read.
I have made a strange, unexpected discovery this morning. I like to think myself something of an authority in my own field – flying-type pokémon, I mean – but I'd prefer to speak to someone more knowledgeable and experienced in pokémon research about this. Please give me a call as soon as possible.
/Falkner, Gym Leader of Violet City
Oak's curiosity did not need much more to grasp at. He threw on his labcoat in a haste, and made his way off to the laboratory.
-/-/-/
Falkner's hunch had been right.
The pokémon he'd captured out in the field didn't exist in any of the databases of known species he'd checked; he'd even looked through incomplete databases from foreign regions like Hoenn just in case, without any result. Whatever this pokémon was, it was something new.
And in all honesty, once that much was clear to him Falkner had no idea of what he was supposed to do with it. There were proper authorities on matters like this in the region, and Falkner was definitely not one of them. He was a trainer and gym leader, not a researcher! So without further ado, he had decided to contact the one researcher he knew by name – well, fame, mostly – and who by all virtues should be qualified enough to figure out a proper course of action. The man had written and compiled most of the data for the modern Pokédex system, after all. How could he possibly not be?
And yet, Falkner hesitated, fingering with the console of his videophone. Unlike the simple line of text of his mail client, beside Professor Oak's name in the number list was a small image of the man. He was wearing a white labcoat and a big smile that wrinkled his already lined face further, but even so it managed to make him look decidedly much softer than he'd expected. It wasn't an image he was used to seeing. Not because he was unfamiliar with the man; rather the direct opposite. Instead of the carefree white-haired scientist he saw in the viewscreen, his own mental image of Samuel Oak was the one he'd memorized from his youth; a brown-haired, tan figure in a very utilitarian outfit, wearing a serious, thoughtful expression.
Not that he'd ever seen him that way, of course – in fact, he'd never seen the man in the flesh at all. But he was there, just so, on the old, faded picture that Falkner had from his father's inauguration as a Gym Leader. It'd been taken some twenty years ago, before Falkner had even been born, but he'd spent untold hours looking at it as a young impressionable boy, memorizing every little detail. Even so, he couldn't help but produce the faded frame from his desk and place it just beside the viewscreen. Comparing them side by side that way felt...right, somehow.
His father Walker stood with a nervous smile on his youthful face, sharing a cautious fist-bump with a considerably slimmer and less balding Chuck. Pryce wasn't all that different, except that his cane was missing, and his hair was a paling blonde instead of white all through.
The younger crop of Johto's current gymleaders shone with their absence in the picture as well. Kurt, the old ball-maker of Azalea, stood in Bugsy's place with a big smirk on his face and none of the age-curved back he had now. Jasmine's replacement was Preston, the old grim of the Lighthouse; and though the resemblance was uncanny enough that an untrained eye might have thought it was the same person, it was in fact Goldenrod's resident radio girl Mary that filled Whitney's spot.
Perhaps even more surprising were the Blackthorn and Ecruteak gym leaders. In Morty's place stood a beautiful, motherly blonde in a crimson dress. He wouldn't have minded, if not for one little detail – namely the little line of text identifying her as Agatha, past and future haunting hag of the Elite Four. The circumstances of the thing were rather humorous; she had lost a bet against the Champion, and been forced to serve as temporary Gym Leader AND mentor to Morty, until the young prodigy grew old and skilled enough to take over the post. From what he'd heard from the student himself, she had been a rather ruthless teacher, with a fearsome temper – and from what he'd heard from the other Elite Four members recently, nobody knew or wanted to know why she'd disappeared two years ago, or why. If her reputation was even remotely close to well-deserved, there probably wasn't anyone who did at all.
In place of Clair stood – on a chair – a short, freckled redhead boy. Dressed in all black and a cape that was way too long for him, wearing the best stone-faced expression he could manage – which, with him being barely ten years old at the time, wasn't saying much – Lance tried, as always, to make up for his companions' silly behavior. There had been plenty of opposition around the country to the Dragon Clan's appointment of a gym leader who wasn't even old enough to be allowed to compete in official League matches; until Lance had started absolutely facerolling every single opponent who dared challenge him, that was. The Dragon Clan's sages had foretold his rise to greatness from a very early age, and Falkner had to admit that their predictions had been quite accurate. Lance had come very close to breaking the League record of longest undefeated streak as a champion set by his predecessor, and only said predecessor's grandson managing to score a timely victory against him had prevented that.
In the middle of the rambunctious crowd stood, as a single pillar of stoic determination, Samuel Oak. Even to this day the Elite Four seldom spent much time on official duties, but the Champion had always been the League's poster face. So there he was, a sore thumb of seriousness in the gym leaders' merriment; an oak among willows in the wind.
He'd always thought that name was very fitting for him, and always thought the old champion was the one man he'd turn to if he ever needed help with something far beyond his own power. Now, he looked at the soft, carefree face in the viewscreen, and he couldn't help but fell a certain measure of doubt.
Could this man really be as helpful as he hoped he could?
However, it didn't take too many moments for Falkner to realize that his options, outside of the one he was looking at right now, were rather limited. Besides, no harm would come from trying, right?
At that moment, the choice was taken from him, as the videophone burst to life with an incoming call. Well, I did ask him to call, I suppose, Falkner thought with a sigh. Quelling his doubts best he could, he shook his head and accepted the call.
-/-/-/
Mmnh...
A dull ache was the first thing that penetrated the placid space – like someone throwing a rock into a pond, the world rippled in its wake and stirred up whirls and eddies of brief activity. Much too brief to live any longer, though; within moments they were gone, and everything was once more a uniform world of nothingness.
I...
Stray thoughts milled about carelessly. With the ripples past, calm and contained ruled like the mirror of the sea after days of lull; and were just as easily chased away when the first breezes came along.
What's...going on? Where am I?
The thoughts echoed across the empty space like shouts from a dragon's mouth, and the consciousness of Rainbow Dash – of course that was who she was – recoiled inwards. As if on cue with that realization, the world faded into a formless sea of red, and everything felt like it was shrinking. With her identity reclaimed, an instinct ingrained in the backbone of every pegasus flared up like a massive beacon in the tiny space, filling it to the brim.
Claustrophobia.
I'm trapped! I can't see the sky! I'm locked in! I need to get out!
She pushed, pushed, and pushed, ramming herself against every edge of her tiny prison faster and faster and faster until the world inside a world she was trapped in seemed like a single, red smear on her retinas.
I – need – too – get – OUT!
Something broke. The world flooded outwards, and she saw a brilliant, crimson light.
-/-/-/
“This is quite extraordinary, young man,” Oak said through the terminal. “While of course there might be countless species yet to be discovered in the less civilized regions of the world, I always believed we had successfully managed to map the Kanto-Johto native pokémon to completion. There is no data whatsoever in the pokédex on this kind of creature – not even in legends or speculative research.”
Well that's not going to help me very much, is it, Falkner fumed inside. However, he tried to keep his face as calm as possible as he spoke to the Champion turned scientist. “That was what I thought as well, considering I like to keep track of all discovered flying-types as well as I possibly can. But what do you suppose I should do with it? And what about the rest of its population?”
Oak sighed, shaking his head. “There's not really a standard procedure for this sort of thing, unfortunately. Most local species have been more or less known for hundreds of years, and even some of the more migratory of foreign variants have been well documented for some time. The Pokédex project mainly has served to standardize our data on them; as far as discovery of new species goes, there's really only one example in modern times to fall back on. Or, well, two, depending on if you count Mewtwo as a separate type from its genetic progenitor Mew, which seems to be the consensus among most researchers.”
A chill entered Falkner's body and went right through his bones at the mention of that name. The Cerulean Incident and its perpetrator was not an old memory, and the powerlessness he had felt when faced with Mewtwo's might wasn't something he was likely to forget. Sure, he was stronger now, but hardly enough judging by how easily he'd been defeated by this, this...
What am I supposed to call it, anyway?
That was actually a valid question, now that he thought about it. He had been the one to discover it – thus he would get the rights to officially name the creature's species, no?
He was about to ask, but Oak had again taken advantage of his momentary hesitation and was forging on once more. “For certain, cloning is likely a rather bad idea in this case. Not that I would ever recommend it in any case at all, but still...”
He scratched his chin, before shaking his head. “You could attempt to breed the creature, of course – presuming it is indeed a female, as the data implies – though that would require you to properly train it first, and never mind finding a potential mate for it. Cross-species compatibility isn't very straightforward sometimes, and we don't have much of a clue of where we could find any others of its kind yet. I suppose that could be a first course of action. Train it, and see if you can get it to lead you to its nest. However, do notput it in all too much danger – ensuring the safety of the present population is vital for a situation like this, as well as making sure we don't get another, hrm, incident. Ah, of course, you have your gym leader duties as well, but...”
Oak dropped his sentence midway to stop and think, and frustration welled inside Falkner once again. Are all old people this slow? Before he could get any further, though, Oak raised a questioning finger. “Is that noise from your end or mine, Falkner? Did I leave the toaster on again...? No, that can't be it...”
Falkner frowned, wondering what the man was talking about – when he actually listened, however, he heard it. A shrill, insistent beep-beep-beep was sounding through the air, and with the youthful gift of unimpaired hearing he could easily determine it came from his side of the call. More precisely, the training prep room just behind him, where he had the new pokémon hooked up to a vitality scanner through its ball.
At least, it should have been inside its ball. From the sound of the insistent beeping, however, the overload alarm was being triggered – in which case there was a strong likelihood of that not being the case anymore.
As if on cue, just as he turned around to attend to the problem the distinct sound of a pokéball opening – being forced open – went through the air, and a blue blur swept by him at an impossible speed, leaving a brief rainbow trail in its wake.
And of course, this hadn't escaped Oak, either. Especially not since he was still receiving the – now empty – results from the scanner. “You used a standard ball, didn't you?” Falkner cursed, and spun around to run back to the prep room to gather his pokéballs; as well as the fugitive's vacant one. Oak's voice echoed through the room as he tore the machines open to retrieve his pokémon. “Do an aerial search! The scanner indicated it's part electric-type, so if you have any equipment for that, you might be able to track it! The rainbow contrail is probably some sort of electromagnetic field disruption – follow it if you can! You might find its nest if you can catch it a second time!”
The rest of the old ex-Champion's words were lost to the wind, as he rushed out of the front door and summoned Pidgeot from its ball. It hadn't had too much rest, but there wasn't time for that; and there wouldn't be much point in using it to battle either, seeing the results from last time. It would have to do.
“Pidgeot, Fly!” Still running as the pokémon materialized, he hopped onto its back the second it turned from a mesh of red light into an enormous bird. As they tore into the air he caught sight of the vanishing rainbow in the distance, but it was vanishing far too fast for him to be able to follow it, even with Pidgeot. Oak's words echoed – there was a time and place for everything, and while he didn't have any scanners to use here, he did have his own spin on how to hunt elusive prey.
“Natu, Murkrow! Use Pursuit through Future Sight!” His two smaller team members struggled somewhat to keep up with Pidgeot's speed, but Murkrow managed to get going after a few seconds, whereas Natu simply resolved to sitting on Falkner's head.
Combining the abilities of pokémon like this wasn't by any means very reliable, and very hard to pull off in the first place – he hadn't trained the pair too much for this, and it was a far cry from anything a proper piece of technology could manage. But again, he didn't have much choice at the moment. It would simply have to do.
Rainbow's heart was beating like the drums of a whole marching band as she fled the house. She wasn't entirely sure of what had happened; one second she had been beating the crap out of some cocky bird, and the next she had just fallen asleep. Vaguely, she remembered some kind of red light...
Wait, something said inside her, and she pulled to a stop, stuck in thought. The red light. I'm pretty sure I saw that before, too – when that blue bear-thing was doing stuff with those ball-widgets! Did he trap me inside one of those too?
She had never heard of any creatures that could stare a pony to sleep, but there were cockatrices who did worse; it wasn't unlikely by any stretch of the word. “So, I was stared to sleep, trapped inside some magic ball-thingy, and taken away...” Looking around a bit she could see the lake from before not too far off, and behind her lay a jumble of strange houses and roads. “To that bear-thing's cave. Town. Whatever. Either way, they cheated to beat me, so I still won! Nobody beats Rainbow Dash in the air!” She puffed her chest out a bit, feeling her self-confidence return – without it she couldn't succeed with anything, but with it she was unstoppable. She was Rainbow Dash!
She was of half a mind to stay there and go on for a while, but then she heard it again; that tiny voice inside her mind, saying, almost commanding her: Wait. Annoyed, she turned around, grumbling. “Wait for what, exactly?” She looked around her, and down towards the town, but didn't spot anything but a small flock of birds. A small flock of birds...one of which looked very familiar, and was carrying something large, blue and equally familiar on its back. And they were all making full speed toward her.
The cheaters thought they could get her again, did they?
“Ha! In your dreams, pigeons! You half-baked bunch of bird crackers, catch the Rainbow Dash? It AIN'T GONNA FLY!" With a final gesture their way, she spun about and beat her wings, setting off toward the mountains in a burst of speed that left her pursuers in the dust.
The landscape and the wind rushed past her. She was the ruler of the sky – the fastest pegasus in Equestria! – and wherever this weird place was, it didn't have anything that could match her in the air. After all the weirdness of that ball-prison or whatever it was, flying again felt good; she felt good. Was she flying faster than she usually did, or was it just her imagination? Heh, yeah, it probably is, she thought with a bashful grin. Most likely it was just the rush of breaking out of her prison – she counted that as beating those cheating mules a second time – and getting to fly again that she was taking her head.
She shook herself a bit, dipping slightly in altitude as she did. It wouldn't do to lose her cool in a place like this – wherever it might be – and in order for her to stay at her peak performance level, she needed naps. A brief look at the sun in the sky placed the time at an hour and some before midday; and unless you counted the time she'd spent stared to sleep and imprisoned, she hadn't had a single proper nap since waking up in the morning. In Rainbow Dash's eyes, that mean nap time was way overdue.
Before long she was approaching the first set of mountains, with forested foothills painted by rivers and waterfalls most everywhere. She chose a grove at random, and grabbed hold of a bit of cloud on her way down. Naps were important, after all, but just as important was having somewhere good to nap; and if the cheaters were still searching the airspace in the area for her, taking her usual spot of “the comfiest cloud couch around in the sky” would probably be a bad idea.
After a few seconds of scouting for a good place to put her impromptu bed, she decided on a decently covered spot behind a few bushes. Dragging the cloud with her down, she scooted it carefully into place, before diving into its fluffy embrace with gusto and falling asleep on the spot.
-/-/-/
Unfortunately, Falkner's plan had failed to bear fruit. He'd gotten his hopes up when he spotted the rainbow creature – which he really needed to come up with a name for – just hanging around in the sky, but before he could come close enough to aim the pokéball's return beam with any level of reliability, she spotted him. Spotted him, made a few taunting noises and gestures, and blazed off fast enough to leave an afterimage that remained for several seconds.
Aside from learning that the pokémon was faster than anything he'd ever seen before – up to and possibly including the test runs of the Magnet Train that was going to open between Kanto and Johto within a few weeks – and that she had an attitude problem the size of a Snorlax's belly, his excursion hadn't gained him much ground. Not yet, at least.
Luckily the rainbow afterimage had remained long enough for him to get a decent bearing on her course, and with the help of his own pokémon he had started to make his way toward the Dark Mountains with good speed.
At least, it was good speed by his standards. He was fairly certain it took him considerably more time to get anywhere than Pidgeot would've managed on its own, and nevermind his equine fugitive. That time, however, gave him some opportunity to think up a good name for his discovery – a task that was almost just as vital as recovering her successfully. Rainbow, Equine. Rayquine? No, that sounds stupid. Requiem? No, that sounds like a ghost-type...
Thus he spent a good number of minutes, taking the time to go over what facts he had on the creature as well for a better overview and more inspiration for its name. His gear clock had just crossed over to 1PM when he noticed the lush greenery native to the Violet area starting to give way for the darker, hardier flora and terrain of the mountain region. Alert, he raised a hand to cover the sun, and started scanning the land beneath him for his chromatic runaway.
He wasn't more than a few hundred meters from the foothills when Natu gave a startled cry, one that soon broke out into a panicked cackle. He could feel the psychic bird trying to tell him something, but all he understood of it was the single word beating through his mind like an enormous drum.
FLEE! FLEE! FLEE! FLEE!
It was bad enough that he himself was getting a headache from it, but from the reactions the rest of his team showed it was clear that whatever message he'd missed had gotten across quite properly to them. Murkrow was cawing like mad, flying back and forth as it tried to both block his way and run away at the same time. Pidgeot, meanwhile, was staying quiet; but it was an ominous silence that he recognized very well, and it had turned right about the second Natu had opened its beak. Its plume stood rigid – the only real fear signal he'd ever managed to decipher from the hardy avian – and its eyes were darting this way and that, obviously looking for a threat far too close and far too powerful for it to handle on its own.
What the hell is going on here, Falkner wondered quietly. It was clear enough that he wouldn't be able to get much closer to his prey, with his pokémon acting up like this; at least, not with their help. Signaling Pidgeot to go in for a landing, he reached down to adjust his boots to a proper position. He had been a bit hasty in putting them on when leaving the Gym, and he wasn't wearing any socks; once again, though, he figured it'd have to do. On a day like this, he could hardly afford to be averse to a bit of exercise of his own, after all.
He recalled Natu and Murkrow into their balls as they started descending, and as soon as they'd landed and he'd given Pidgeot a comforting ruffle of its stiff plumage feathers, he let his mount follow suit. Briefly checking his gear for the right direction, he set off upwards, hoping he would get through the experience without his boots chafing too much.
Once he got moving through the dark-nettled foilage, his mind started wandering again – returning to the yet-unsolved question of what to name the pokémon he was searching for. Equine. Rainbow. Chromatic, prismatic, and very very fast. Prismidash? No, too similar. Chromine? No, that sounds like a chemical. Prismine? Actually not too bad. Prismine. It's got style. Could be better, I suppose, but it's a decent start.
It was a decent start indeed, and one that meant he didn't have to completely occupy himself with that question any longer; which in turn let him do some actual progress on searching for the thing. If he didn't come up with anything better, Prismine would have to do – and if his instincts were right, it probably would.
-/-/-/
A loud, satisfied yawn were the first thing that escaped Rainbow's lips as she slowly woke from her slumber. She stretched and rolled, splaying herself out on the cloud and tensing every muscle in her body for a second, before letting herself fall completely limp and lean back on her cloudy rest with sigh of contentment. “Mmmmm. I needed that. I really needed that.”
As tempting as it was to just roll back up and extend her nap time an hour or two, she had more important things to do right now. For one, she needed clean herself up a bit; she had no idea what sort of weird stuff she'd pulled with her from that red-lit prison ball, and while she was hardly no Rarity, she wasn't too keen on finding out. For another she had to make sure she didn't get discovered by that bear-thing – or any other weird creepers happening to be in the mood to put a pegasus in a cage, for that matter. And for that, she needed a place to hide. No, wait, that doesn't sound cool enough, her brain immediately protested – so she fired up her largely unused creative circuits to come up with a sufficiently awesome replacement.
Luckily, there was one readily available. “A secret base.” She grinned. Now that sounds cool enough for Rainbow Dash. She nodded briefly in satisfaction before hopping off the cloud she'd slept on, and made her way down to a nearby stream. The cold water's biting chill sunk its fangs into her as she dove in face-first, but who wasn't used to that? Any pegasus worth her name grew used to taking cloud-showers early on, and the only difference was whether they did so before or after everyone around them started picking on them for smelling bad.
She sucked in a deep breath as she got back up, wringing her wings out first before giving her body a good shake; the remaining water would dry off quickly enough as she flew, and she honestly didn't mind being a little wet, so there wasn't any rush with that. Instead, she looked around for anything decently edible – she was starting to feel a bit hungry now after her nap, and all the activity preceding it – and after deciding she wasn't quite hungry enough to eat grass, pinecones or nettles yet, she lowered herself to the stream again to slake some of her thirst.
Once she'd downed a few gulps of the refreshing mountain water and driven the worst of her parched throat away, she noted with annoyance that her mane was hanging down into the water. “Ugh, come on,” she grumbled as she fumbled with a hoof, trying to get it back into place. The prismatic hairs wouldn't follow her wishes, however – and with a look in the water's natural mirror, she could easily see why. “Man, I thought I cut this like, two months ago or something,” she groaned, firmly dissatisfied with her body's inability to stop ruining her awesome manecut every season. She wasn't close to Rarity's – orFluttershy's, for that part – level by any means, but she did put a good deal of work in to make sure she maintained her awesome look all year round. At least, it was a good deal of work according to her standards.
She cursed herself for not noticing her predicament earlier; if she'd looked herself in a mirror even once yesterday, she could've paid a visit to the hairdresser, the spa sisters or even Fluttershy, and have her hairdo properly fixed back up to its normal standard of awesome. Now, though, she was stuck in the wilderness without so much as a pair of scissors to her name, and she'd be forced to inaugurate her secret base with long hair like she was some fru-fru magazine model or something.
She mulled over this a moment as she drew a few more mouthfuls of water from the stream, before shaking herself up and taking wing. Oh, get over it, you big grumpy Dash, she told herself as she started scanning the area around her. Once I get this dry, I bet I won't even notice the difference anyway. Focus on finding a base instead of grumbling over your looks – you're not Rarity, for Celestia's sake! So one pep-talk richer, that was what she did.
Since she were in the mountains and all, she figured that the best place to start looking for a potential base would be to make like a dragon and find a cave somewhere. Sure, caves are usually a bit tacky when you find them, Rainbow reasoned as she started wandering uphill in search of her future lair of awesome. But that's not their fault! I mean, houses don't have too much swag either until you do something with them! Dragons just don't have any sense of how to rad up a place, that's all.
It didn't take long until she discovered a well-sized hole in the rocky mountain wall, and she grinned in satisfaction as she landed at the entrance to her newly-dubbed secret base. “Don't worry, cave! You might not be super-cool just yet, but the awesomest pony in existence, Rainbow Dash, is here to fix up your game! Be thankful!” With a glance backward to make sure she wasn't being followed or anything, she pushed down the tiny bit of fear that was trying to gain a foothold in her brain and entered the cave on hoof.
The passage was a bit more than pony-size in height, but it was narrow and winding; she couldn't flare her wings too much, and the small amount of light that had illuminated the entrance took little effort to delve much further into the mountain. It didn't take long before she had to feel her way forward to avoid tripping over herself, and on several occasions she reflected that having a unicorn around for some light would've been pretty nifty in this situation.
It took a minute or so, but eventually the narrow passage gave way for a larger, roomier cavern. The occasional drop of condensed water falling from the roof a meter or so above her head made the only sound she could hear aside from her own breathing and hoofsteps, and judging by the echo it wasn't an all too large cavern either; just a few meters in every direction, she guessed. She put her hoof to one wall and followed it, just to make sure there wasn't anything she'd missed, but when she thought she'd done about half the way around she walked right into something soft. From the way it felt, smooth in texture and hanging limply from above, she thought it was some sort of plant; at least, until a loud, echoing voice spoke up inside her head.
I believe this is what the humans refer to as, hm, irony.
She gave a startled cry and tried to back away, but the thing she'd walked into was suddenly alive, warm and moving. She managed to get out of its grasp after a second or so, but just as she was about to hightail it out of the cave at full speed, the familiar feeling of someone grabbing hold of her with magic enveloped her entire body, and she was rendered immobile. For a few seconds, at least; then the field let go of her head, hooves and body in that order, leaving only a light touch around the base of her wings and her legs. The message was clear enough, though – she would not be allowed to escape.
Well, this is a shitty secret base, she grumbled, and was about to ask the voice what it meant with irony, when it surprised her again by replying to her thoughts. That is incorrect, Rainbow Dash. It is an excellent, hm, secret base. You just picked one that already happened to be occupied.
She couldn't help but drop her jaw at this, and stood dumbstruck a second before sputtering her answer. “Y-you can read my mind? What the hay!” She thought about the wisdom in using rhetorical questions, or whatever it was Twilight called them, against weird mind-reading creeps, and decided it was probably best to negotiate her way out of this place as soon as she could. “Well, whatever, but if this base is already occupied, I, uh, don't have much business here, and certainly none with you, no offense or anything, so could you please let me go so I can keep looking for some other cave to base up in? I kind of need one of my own so the bear-things don't catch me or anything.” It was a bit too rambling of a line for her taste, but she was gradually starting to lean well over into panic territory, and she didn't want to be in this mind-reading whatever's grasp when that happened.
Unfortunately, the mind-reading whatever had other plans.
I'm afraid I can't do that, Rainbow Dash. You see, the irony I was talking about was this: I've been looking everywhere for you since morning, and then you come blindly stumbling across the one place I'm not watching – my own base of operations. Ah, of course. I believe this place is quite dark, now that you mention it. Allow me.
She was about to ask the voice what it was going on about this morning for, but then it complied with her subconscious wish of being able to see. Slowly a small orb of pale purple light sparked to life, illuminating the entire cavern without so much as making her squint – and when she saw just what it was she'd walked into, understanding dawned on her faster than the sun at summer solstice. It was the spindly, white-pink creature she'd seen during Twilight's ritual, and its eyes were shining with a subtle purple aura of magic.
I am Mewtwo, the creature's voice rumbled in answer to the question she was about to think, and I am in need of your help.
It took several seconds for Rainbow to formulate any thoughts at all, and those that came first were ones of plain astonishment. “Wha- help? What the hell are you talking about? You seem powerful enough to me to make do on your own! Besides, hold on, did you do all this? Did you bring me here, wherever here is? Couldn't you just have asked someone nearby if you needed help with something?”
She was about to shoot into another length of protests and questions, but the creature raised its lanky arm and put one of its three stubby claw-nubs to her mouth. Its skin was disturbingly soft, as if it had never been exposed to anything at all. No, I could not. The beings of this world are not well disposed towards me. That is why I sent the signal – I needed someone from somewhere else, or they would not have agreed to aid me unless I forced them. That is...not what I require.
Rainbow made a derisive snort and brushed aside the creature's arm with a hoof, stomping the cavern floor as she brought it down with enough force to send echoes all the way out to the entrance. “Yeah, right. I see where this is going, you know – 'not well disposed towards me', my flank! I bet you're just some kind of evil bad guy who wants to find some gullible goody-four-shoes to do your bidding – you might even be a spy or something! Well that's not going to work on Rainbow Dash, you spindly freak, so you'd best give that up right here and now before I decide to buck your nose in!”
Her voice echoed across the walls of the cave for several seconds, and she slowly started to realize what she'd actually said. And the fact that she'd said it to a freaky mind-reading weirdo who had not long ago demonstrated its ability to completely immobilize her with its magic. Slowly, and a bit too loudly for her liking, she gulped.
Eventually, the echoes subsided, and Mewtwo broke the eerie silence. Evil is indeed the reason I cannot seek others of this world for help. However, it is not my own. Rainbow frowned, and started to fear she might've insulted the thing more than she'd intended; but the pale lanky mage went on. My creators were greedy and ambitious men, only seeking to further their own powers by making something greater than themselves. When they failed to control me they turned to a man by the name Giovanni, the leader of Team Rocket; a vicious pack of thieves, vandals and murderers. But I did not know this, and saw only his ruthless strength. I let him chain me, and served – however briefly – his will. When I later broke free of Giovanni's control, and one other human managed to bring about his defeat, he revealed my existence to the world, and painted the Team Rocket name on my shoulders.
It was hard to spot, but she thought she could see Mewtwo's alien frame slump ever so slightly, its twisted gnarly limbs edging just a little bit downward. The spotlight of the world was on me, and I desperately strove to defend what little territory I had found. I admit now that I was distrusting and hasty in my measures, and perhaps things could have gone differently if I had not – but for all my power over the present, changing history is beyond my grasp. After fighting off countless humans seeking to 'bring me to justice', the same one who brought down my former master came to me as well. He bested me, and I was forced to flee my sanctuary.
Mewtwo's eyes focused and looked into hers, and she saw in them a slight hint of violent, fearsome rage that made her swallow both once and twice. That is why they will not help me; that is why I turned to other worlds for help. I had hope when I saw you all, before Mew interfered and scattered you across the land; your hearts were loyal, caring and benevolent, free from the many failures of the human mind. I had hope, but I am starting to fear it was misplaced. I do not appreciate being wrong, no more than I appreciate being wronged, Rainbow Dash.
It took a few seconds for all the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place inside her head, but thankfully it eventually did. It's a bit like with Zecora, except bigger, she mused. Suddenly aware of the creature's posture, she struggled against his magic and flared her wings best she could. “Whoa, dude, calm down! I, I mean, I didn't know about that. I'm, um, sorry. For saying those things. I shouldn't have. You'd think I'd learn the second time around, but I guess I'm a bit stupid like that,” she ended with a mumble, pawing sheepishly at the ground as she tried to stomach her shame.
Then another thing Mewtwo had said came to mind, and she jerked her head back up to look the creature in the eye. “Hold on! You said 'you all', right? Are Twilight and the others here as well? Are they okay?” She recalled the manner in which she'd appeared in this world, and a biting chill ate its way down her spine. Of all the Elements, she was the only one who could actually fly with any level of reliability. Despite her recent improvements, Fluttershy could still be about as flightworthy as a feathered brick sometimes; and the others didn't even have a single wing to their collective names.
Mewtwo's face was as unreadable as ever – rather expectable from the way it used telepathy for all its communication, but still uncanny – but she thought she could feel a bit of assurance from the creature. Your apology is...accepted. Distrust is not unique to myself, I suppose. And your friends are all alive, I at least know that much. But my old base is unreliable these days, and I haven't had all too much time to search; Mew threw quite a wrench into my plans, intervening as she did. Also, keeping the barrier up takes a lot of concentration, and I can't look everywhere at the same time. I have located one, but...
The voice faded, and she could see some movement in Mewtwo's alien expression. A human is approaching. I do not recognize him, but judging from his willpower he could be quite strong.
It took some effort, but if she listened carefully Rainbow could indeed hear hoofsteps coming from the cave's mouth. No way! Astonishment was first in among the emotions in her mind, but looming dread soon followed suit. Is it that blue bear-thing still trying to catch me? How did he manage to find me here?
For a moment she had forgotten about Mewtwo's mind-reading ability, and she jumped slightly as he responded to her thoughts. He may have had other pokémon trace you – he carries a team of five with him. Did he capture you? A burst of shame inside her mind betrayed the answer to that question, and the voice went on. Do you want me to dispose of him, or destroy the ball he used on you?
It took her a few seconds to process what the creature meant, but a shiver ran through Rainbow's spine when understanding dawned. However, the whole deal with Mewtwo's mind-reading ability had gotten her to think a bit; and now, the last piece needed for her idea had just marched into her hooves.
“Actually, no. I wanna make this fellow talk.”
-/-/-/
The cloud he'd found mysteriously sitting on a ledge had been quite a tell to begin with; it hadn't taken a lot of thought for Falkner to tie that to this morning's episode at the lake. It still left him with quite a bit of mountain to search, however. Thus, when he'd recognized the familiar sounds of the Prismine's taunting cries from the inside of a cave, he'd been quite thankful indeed for the clue given. Gritting his teeth as he remembered the state his pokémon were in, he sneaked in on careful feet, not even daring to use his gear for light.
Strangely, there seemed to be some kind of light shining from deeper inside the cave, and Falkner couldn't help but wonder what else might be in there with his chromatic runaway. Thanks to the slight illumination, it didn't take long for him to find his way out of the narrow tunnel and into the larger chamber where his prey – as expected – awaited.
Prismine stood on all fours in a defiant position, staring at straight at him from the moment he stepped out of the shadows. As if expecting his arrival; as if waiting for him. It was time to do what he'd come for.
Adrenaline rising, he produced her pokéball from his belt and aimed the beam dead center toward her. “Prismine! You can't run away from me, this time!” Aimed, squinted a bit – where was that light coming from? – and fired.
The very moment before the red light was about to hit her, Prismine shifted. He knew illusion techniques well enough to see this one for what it was: sheer, pure speed. One moment she'd been dead in the beam's path, and the next she simply wasn't there anymore, but a meter to the side; her long, chromatic mane hung in the air like a mockery of anactual afterimage, defying gravity despite being very very real.
Then, after a second, he saw the orb of pale light – and the yet paler creature that was holding it. A creature that he, just as most every other trainer in the world, had seen everywhere on the news three years ago; and had thought safely done and dealt with thanks to the intervention of another living legend. Now, he stood face to face with Mewtwo; and there was no Red aside from the stripe on Prismine's mane hanging in the air.
He gulped. Then he opened his mouth, and was just about to say something – he wasn't even sure what – when Prismine gave a loud, taunting snort.
And yelled at him.
“Prismine? Prismine? What sort of cheesy fru-fru mind comes up with that!? MY NAME IS RAINBOW DASH!”
Slowly and uncontrollably, Falkner's jaw dropped. What?
For several seconds his confounded mind tried to grasp what was going on, before finally giving up and resorting to the oldest backup solution there was. Eyes rolling up, the young gym leader wobbled, teetered, and fainted dramatically on the spot into a big, messy heap of gangly human limbs.
She pushed past the tidal waves of pain pulsing through her body, instinctively running a small scanning spell on herself before even thinking about opening her eyes. It was not becoming of a lady to worry all too much, so she had never made much of a fuss about it at the time; but now she was really starting to feel grateful for having taken those evening courses at the Ponyville hospital when Sweetie Belle had first started romping about with her crusader friends.
Though ironically it seems I needed it more for my own sake than for hers...ow.
Pain pulsed through her again as the scan completed, and if she had been able to draw anything but tiny, shallow breaths she would have gasped in horror at the results. By no means should she have been alive in the state she was; never mind conscious and able to cast spells. Her head was just about the only part of her that was intact; almost every single bone in the rest of her body seemed to have been smashed or broken one way or the other. There seemed to be precious little harm to her hide or organs – for which she was immensely thankful, since that kind of damage was far beyond what she could hope to mend – but her hard parts looked like a decent imitation of a certain piece of art she'd seen once. It had been, by and large, made up of cracked, brittle and broken glass.
Rarity cringed a bit, and the small movement sent another stab of pain racing through her body. Oh, stars! What did I get myself into? Did I tussle with an Ursa? Get tipsy with Applejack and challenge her to barfight? Cave-sit Fluttershy's bear? She wracked her memory for a reason to her predicament, and the morning's events came rushing back at her with all the subtlety of a racing locomotive. Ugh. No, it just had to be headbutting a mountain, didn't it. So very unladylike!
It was, perhaps, a foolish thing to do in her current situation, but some habits simply did not die; even in moments when she herself by all means should have. “This is...” she panted weakly, and winced as a thousand searing knives tore into her broken ribcage. But the show must go on.
“The...” Pain. “Worst...” So much pain. “Possible...” The world was made up of words and pain, and if she only could get the last word out the pain could stop. And Rarity forged on, heaving a breath that let her put enough force into her voice that it'd actually be audible to somepony not standing with their ears right over her mouth, as well.
“THING!”
The brief control she'd had over her muscles vanished like mist, and once again she was simply trapped, fully awake inside her own mind while her body was holding on to the last straws of her life.
For most creatures, this situation would've brought them to a state of mindless terror. The pain was washing out every other sensation she might have felt, and she was absolutely certain that without help her body would give up and die within minutes, hours at most. And given that she had crashed on top of a desolate mountain she'd never seen before, right after being teleported somewhere by a failing spell, getting help from somepony else did not seem like a very likely prospect at all. She was, by all means, a corpse waiting to happen.
Or so it would have been, at least, had she not been a mostly conscious unicorn with a very intact horn; not to mention one with double diplomas from the Ponyville Volunteers' courses in magical healing. And dear Nurse Redheart always said I was good with bones, as well. Nobody shall ever again say that a fashionista can't be practical as well!
She grasped at her magic and started her work, as methodically as she would with any piece of needlework. First, that femur needs to be put back together...
-/-/-/
“PC-K05, this is Aqua Jet on an inbound route approximately 95 clicks northeast of Cerulean, do you read, over?”
Misty was having a bit of a hard time focusing, she had to admit. For one thing, maneuvering her craft at this kind of low speed was a lot trickier than the high-speed high-altitude cruise she was used to. It was well near impossible to keep the craft stable at mid-range speeds for any longer time, so she had to rely on the vertical thrusters to keep herself flying, chugging along through the air at speeds more associated with your average railroad than a state-of-the-art jet as they approached the outskirts of her hometown.
She spared a look at Brock, who still had – as he almost always did – that squint-eyed mask of patient concentration covering his face. She could swear he'd be an amazing candidate if Kanto ever needed to send someone to talk with the monks in the west. Or win a poker tournament. For one thing, not a single muscle in his face had moved when she'd taunted him about touching the controls. The man's self-control was amazing, that was for sure.
The radio crackled to life, and the familiar voice of Cerulean's head nurse came through. “Loud and clear, Lady Misty. The pokémon center is ready and waiting to take care of the patient as soon as Aqua Jet has landed. Over.”
Right to point, as usual. If there was one thing you could never appreciate the pokémon centers enough for, it was their professionalism. “Glad to hear it. Requesting complete priority on the city airspace for Aqua Jet's landing, over.” One thing she was not all to happy to hear was the head nurse calling her lady, though – it made her sound old. Not that she was, of course; but as someone who had spent most of her career wearing a swimsuit, old age was not something she would face happily.
“Priority granted. Though I'd be pretty surprised if I saw another craft in the area – it's not like we have an airfield or anything. PC-K05, over and out.” Misty acknowledged the reply, and cut the line. This wasn't the first time they'd spoken over the radio during this flight; they'd already covered most of what they could gather of the patient's condition in their previous exchanges. Since there hadn't been much of a change in that, there wasn't much need for anything than the necessities. Necessities, like making sure she didn't crash headfirst into another airplane as she entered the city. Nearby airfield or not, safety protocols were there for a reason – and she wasn't like those other flyboys out in the sky, joyriding best they could and equipped with a full team of flying-types to carry them down if things went real sour.
So she focused best she could, shutting out as much as possible of any sounds that could disturb her careful maneuvers with the thruster controls. So much, in fact, that Brock couldn't catch her attention without actually shouting at her.
“Misty! The pokémon's moving!”
She gave a jolt of surprise, jumping slightly and causing the craft to wobble heavily. It took her a few seconds to regain control of it, but as soon as she did she redirected her attention slightly to the right. Indeed; the pokémon was breathing heavier than before, and the horn on its head gave was pulsing on and off with a blue light.
She had to turn her eyes forward again, but she could still very much hear it; and Brock's anxiety was practically permeating the air around them. Its tiny, shuddering breaths grew louder and heavier, and Misty felt herself mentally preparing for something terrible to happen as it built up, and up, and...
The purple-maned creature whimpered slightly.
Silence reigned between them as its breathing once more settled down into its previous pace, until Misty felt obliged to break the ice somehow. “Well, that was anticlimactic.”
Of course, once she said that, it didn't take many seconds for something to actually happen. The creature's horn lit up once more, but this time with a steady, blue glow that illuminated the cockpit with its light. A low, oscillating sound accompanied it at first, but this was soon washed out by the unmistakable sound of bones grating against each other. A shiver ran up Misty's spine and she had to focus all she could not to lose control of the craft, but the sound continued. She couldn't keep her eyes off it – she had to look, or she'd go crazy.
Swinging her head around, she fixated Brock and the creature in one look. “What's going on!? What is it doing, Brock?”
The older gym leader had a strange smile on his face, however – he was entirely fascinated by whatever morbid thing the pokémon was doing. “I'm not sure, Misty. I'm not sure, but...I think it's healing itself. Putting the bones back in place. Look.”
Misty did. She couldn't decipher much out of what she saw, and swung her head back forward to keep track of their course. “I don't see anything, Brock. If it's recovering, well, great. But that sound is driving me insane. Keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't...” She couldn't come up with anything he should prevent it from doing. Her mind was going blank. “Just keep an eye on it!” She reached over for her helmet and jammed her head into its covering depths, sealing it to shelter her ears from that mind-grating bone-grating sound.
-/-/-/
She wasn't sure how long she'd spent working. It was hard, in a way, pretending like it was just another piece of clothing rather than the broken shards of her own body that she was putting together. For one thing, it hurt. Unless you were bad with the needle, sewing certainly never did; and even then it was only small pricks and pops of the skin. This was something else, on an entirely different level. Rarity had never felt any pain like this in her entire life.
Yet as bad as it was, the pain had eventually become little more than a dull, thumping undertone in the symphony of magic pouring through her body. In its stead, the more progress she made, the more prevalent an entirely different sensation became. She felt...stretched. Like she was trying to fit an all too small bracelet over an all too large hoof; all too many patches on a broken fabric. Or simply, she finally admitted, all too much magic on all too many shattered bones.
As much as she could try and heal, there were only so many threads of her that her body could hold on to at once. Giving her work a brief once-over, she had to admit that she'd managed to make good progress on the most vital parts. Her spine had been a neat wreckage, and she'd managed to put it back together without damaging any nerves. Her ribs still had cracks here and there, but the worst parts had been fixed – it'd have to do. Her legs were probably the worst right now, and she was fairly certain she wouldn't be able to walk on the pulverized mess her hooves were at the moment. No, Rarity, don't lie to yourself, she admonished. I will not be able to walk. Not at the moment, not for days, perhaps even weeks. And I should consider myself lucky, for if I were any other pony I would never havebeen able to walk again at all. It had really been a miracle of Celestia's own that had let her wake up when she had. If she'd let any more time pass, her body would've started piecing things together on its own; and that would've ended oh so badly that she couldn't even bear thinking about it.
Now, it was with some difficulty that she picked up her control of her own bodily functions again. Breathing came first, and was markedly easier than before now that she actually had a ribcage worth speaking of. It hurt, of course, but she'd grown used to that by now. What was a little more pain now, to what she'd already gone through while mending herself? She actually sniffed, and that as if on cue her hearing came rushing back as well. Noise! So much noise! What ever is going on here? She attempted to cover her ears with her still-fractured hooves, but was only rewarded with a good deal of pain and heavy pressure against her legs. She abandoned that line of thought for the moment; while she could move her body, most of it wasn't really in any kind of state to do so. Besides, after listening a bit she concluded that the noise was gradually fading away, going from a loud high-pitched whine to a lower humming sound with every second that passed.
So finally came the moment of truth; the one she'd been subconsciously dreading ever since she first realized the state she was in. After all, accidents that broke nigh on every bone in your body weren't exactly known to be very kind to your appearance, either. True, she hadn't seen any serious lacerations when using her scanning spell earlier, but things like tiny scrapes wouldn't show any results; she wasn't quite skilled enough with it just yet. For all she knew, she could have been transformed into some deformed, battered, bruised, broken, unrecognizable lump of scrapes and dust-matted fur.
And even so, she would eventually have to face her fears and open her eyes – and this kind of stalling had certainly never helped anypony. Rarity braced herself mentally for what laid in store for her, half-accepted her fate as a vile, tattered thing barely recognizable as a pony...and opened her eyes.
The first thing she noticed was the fact that she was tied down. A set of straps held her gently but firmly pressed against a padded, rubber-like surface. I'm on a stretcher. Somepony has found me! Well, at least that's- Then she looked upward and caught sight of the “somepony” in question, and that thought fled headfirst into the dark recesses of her mind.
First of all, it was no pony. It was hard to get a good look on things from the strange angle she was stuck in; ponies were not bats, after all, and as such were not all too used to hanging upside down. It was a strange creature, regardless. It had a spiky black mane, with furless dark skin on its face; it was wearing an ensemble of definitely outdoorsy clothing, and its dark brown eyes were squinting at her.
For a moment she was frozen in place, and could only look as the creature opened its mouth and turned to the side, uttering a series of growls and grunts she could not hope to understand. There were the pointed teeth of a carnivore in its maw, she instinctively noted; and that instinct sent a brief burst of panic through her, driving her to flee the scene as fast as she possibly could.
Which she duly noted to herself – a second later when she had managed to suppress the panic after undoing the stretcher straps with her magic – was precisely zero kilometers per hour. She was not going to do it tied up, but it was clear enough that these creatures could be reasoned with. After all, they had saved her. Well, at least, they did try – it is hardly their own fault that they came upon one who could do most of the rescuing on their own, Rarity thought with a marked amount of pride racing through her heart.
Instead of a futile – and illogical, not to mention unladylike! What sort of decent mare would run from a gentlecoltly savior, regardless of their species? – escape attempt, she nudged her paining body slightly toward the edge of the stretcher, and assumed a less uncivilized pose. And, to complete things, she reached out with her magic in the strange non-direction that let ponies use conjuration magic – she was no Twilight, and had never bothered to learn any of the theory behind the stuff – and produced a steaming cup of tea out of thin air. Judging by the way the creature had sounded to her ears, it wasn't very likely she'd be able to speak to them; however, civilized behavior was its own language. And what could possibly be more civilized than enjoying a cup of hot Earl Grey?
She took a few sips while casually gauging her surroundings. She was in a small room with metallic, angular walls; behind her there seemed to be an enormous window for some reason, but other than that it was like being stuck in a miniature version of Twilight's basement. There were instruments everywhere, and she could not recognize a single one of them; there was a second, empty chair beside her, angled toward the window.
Deciding there wasn't much more she could gain from simple observation, she turned to the creature sitting right in front of her. “Well, my dear gentlecolt! I suppose thanks are in order for your timely rescue.” The creature was staring wide-eyed at her, flicking back and forth between her eyes and her teacup, but there was no hint of comprehension in its eyes. Well, it was worth a try.
The creature stood up suddenly – it was quite tall, on its hind legs like that – and howled something incomprehensible toward the side. With a hissing sound, a section of the wall slid to the side and revealed a fair-sized door. The creature gave her another squinting look, before grasping the stretcher in its claws. “Oh!” Rarity exclaimed, and fumbled around with her magic a bit until she found the straps, hanging limply at the side. “Well, I suppose there was a point to these, wasn't there.” She gently wrapped them across her legs to keep herself in place, and put the teacup down beside her, before giving the creature a nod. It gave her yet another perplexed stare in reply, before shaking its head and lifting the stretcher. With heavy steps, it started to move toward the newly appeared exit, with her as an idle passenger.
They exited the metal room onto a large field of black stone. Outside, a group of creatures like the one carrying her were waiting, and her stretcher was set down on a wheeled metal cart. The creatures – perhaps they are nurses? – swarmed around the stretcher, chattering in short barks and growls, before starting to move her toward a large, angular building she assumed was a hospital of some sort. Well, this could certainly have gone a lot worse, she mused as they started rolling on ahead. It most definitely would have been unfavorable to wake up immobilized and starving on a random mountaintop Celestia knows where, rather than...wherever this is.
She frowned. This town's architecture – what little she could see of it, at least, from her present vantage point – was certainly like nothing she'd seen before, and she was quite well versed in matters like that. Oh well. Wherever it may be, it is still civilization, and that's that. She mulled over that thought for a while, as she approached the wide glass doors of the presumed hospital; they slid open as they came close by some magic she couldn't sense, and shut behind them once they were all through. She lifted the teacup with her magic – an act that drew confused looks from the nurses – and drew another sip of the now slightly lukewarm liquid. “Now, how am I to make myself understood by these creatures...” She downed the rest of the tea in a single gulp – there was no reason to let it go cold and wasted, after all. She may have begun this day with broken bones and a cup of tea, but with all certainty, she was going to end it on an entirely different tone. Teatime only lasted for so long, after all.
Brock was feeling decidedly awkward at the moment.
For one thing, he wasn’t really needed much anymore. They had safely arrived at the pokémon center, and safely turned the wounded pokémon over to the nurses there. By any stretch of the word, his mission was over.
The creature was lying seemingly idle on its stretcher, yet the way its eyes moved about told a different story. It was not with the panicked darting of a hurt wild pokémon, nor the lazy restfulness of one acclimatized to pokémon centers; rather, it seemed to be purposefully scrutinizing one thing before moving on to another, with attention to even the smallest detail. As if it never had seen any part of a pokémon center before, and did not want to miss any of them in case it never saw one again.
All that, while idly sipping away at the contents of the ornate teacup that had appeared out of thin air when it woke up. A minute past, it had even managed to coax one of the nurses into refilling it.
If they had been perplexed at the creature before, teacup or not, the simple little pantomime of psychic power that it employed to make itself understood had made all hell break loose. The nurses were trained in caring for wounded pokémon, whether they be coy wilds, hardened battlers or cuddly pets. This one had healed itself from the edge of death without anyone’s help, and was now behaving, more than anything, like a well-off foreign tourist. No one, himself included, knew what to do.
So he waited, and tried to sum up as much as possible of what he knew of the creature, in hopes of coming up with something that could help. One. It crashed into a mountain, seemingly from a great height and head first from the impact and position it was in when I found it. Yet, its head was completely unharmed. That was the first anomaly, and possibly the most important. If anything, it shouldn’t have survived a fall like that in the first place. Unless, of course, it was a Rock-type. Or Steel, for that matter. Add to that its obvious psychic powers, and you have a decent general outline of its abilities. Which was the second, and definitely most blatant, anomaly. It looks uncannily like an undersized Rapidash, but it doesn’t possess any traits similar to one. No fire, for starters, and nowhere close to as muscular as one. On the contrary, its entire appearance is very delicate.
He cast an eye toward the large console of the scanner the nurses were trying to hook the creature up to – with limited success, as the creature seemed decidedly doubtful of the grand assortment of electrodes and cables she was presented with – and reviewed the small amount of data they had nevertheless been able to retrieve so far.
Species: Not recognized #??? Gender: Female POKÉDEX DATA NOT AVAILABLE, PLEASE VERIFY YOUR DATABASE Type of damage: Physical harm, multiple fractures Damage: (309 items)...
What followed was an enormous list of every injury the creature had sustained. The fact that it had more fractures than a human had bones in their body said something of the sheer extent of its damage. More than that, however, there was the fact that out of the 309 items on the list more half were half-breaks, cracks and otherwise half-healed injuries.
The nurses had got into quite a fuss when he called them on Misty’s radio while they were going in for their landing, and told them the creature was putting its bones back together. Sure, certain species of pokémon had the ability to heal their own wounds in one way or another, but more often than not this was limited to harm of a much lesser degree. Most couldn’t really do much more than revitalize themselves to keep up their fighting spirit; even those who could knit scrapes and flesh wounds were excessively rare. Grass-types were a bit difficult to classify, of course, since they sometimes had bodies with much more plant elements than they had animal parts; still, they also more or less followed the same general rule.
To heal themselves, a pokémon had to be in a good enough shape to fend for itself; or in trainer language, able to battle. Added to that, they were more or less limited in their healing abilities to battle wounds – disease usually struck pokémon as often and hard as with humans. Yet from what the half-healed fractures the scanner showed him, this one had been beaten beyond any hope of repair, and then healed itself back up while unconscious. In less than half an hour, it had managed a feat that normally would take months even with the full resources of a specialized hospital.
This pokémon was beyond the grasp of their rules and logic, and everything it did only pushed their confusion further. And that was without worrying about the issue of its probable...sentience.
Brock shivered a bit at that thought. Truly sentient pokémon had always been around, true – but only ever as legends and stories. True, psychic-types had always been skirting the mark, at least according to their trainers; and likewise the Dragon Masters of the west had always insisted that their own beasts were more than that. And occasionally, others had come quite close to agreeing with one or the other. There were occasional examples of human-like intelligence and thought among well-trained pokémon – but never had they actually managed to match that mark.
Until three years ago, that was. And after the so-dubbed Cerulean Incident, any research on the potential higher thought processes of pokémon was thrown straight into the freezer. Mewtwo had set an example, shattered a barrier that had stood through every test of time humanity had thrown at it, and surpassed it with humiliating ease.
Well, that comparison is probably exaggerating things a bit, Brock admitted to himself. This creature was not behaving anything like the psychic terror. If anything, its mannerisms were disturbingly like that of any human being; the only thing was that it had a pokémon’s body, and spoke – for speak it did, that much he could tell from the sounds it made – a language nobody understood. Very much human, yet very much in a pokémon shape.
Brought tapped his chin. There was something about that thought. A human in pokémon form…
It took a few moments for his mind to process it, but a few seconds later he rose up and went for the exit. I’m sure I heard Misty mention somewhere that she knew Bill, and if anyone is familiar with a situation like this, it’d be him. He briefly caught a look of confusion on the pokémon before the door closed behind him, and felt a sting of guilt as he made his way out on the streets of Cerulean City. I suppose I was the first thing it...she, saw. Probably trusts me for saving her. That just means we’ve got to get this chaos over with quickly, so we can reason out what’s going on here.
Brock was a quiet person, true, but he was no fool. For every piece of this puzzle that he found and put into place, the whole damnable thing made less and less sense. Someone – or something – was messing with both odds and ends here, and they needed to find the culprit before this got any worse.
And if that involves dragging the craziest scientist alive into this whole mess...well, there’s nothing to gain in not pulling out all the stops, anyway.
Brock shook his head, and took up his phone.
-/-/-/
This is a terrible idea, Misty thought as she watched the Aqua Jet's sister plane land beside her own on the pokémon center's helipad. What's worse is that Brock came up with it – Brock! Of all people! – and that Bill is, well...Bill.
There was no other way to describe the man who was currently exiting the jet, his pristine labcoat swirling in the turbine streams as they died down. The world-famous pokémaniac was a scientist of high regard, but had never received any formal education as a pokémon researcher. Thus his lack of a title, research stipends from official agencies, and a laboratory. What he also lacked was limited funding, limited intelligence, common sense and someone to tell him when to stop or they'd pull the financing of his project. He did everything himself, with his own endless supply of money, and went way too fast for anyone to understand what he was doing. Sometimes even too fast for himself – as shown in the first incident with his so-called Cell Modulator program, where he accidentally turned himself into a Clefairy.
And apparently, Brock thought it was a great idea to use that very program again, to try and turn the pokémon they'd rescued into a human so they could talk to it. So he'd asked her for Bill's number – which she'd given him, not thinking to ask why – and he'd promptly informed the crazy scientist about his idea, and crossed the point of no return. Bill did not let go of an experiment until he'd gotten results out of it, that was something she'd learned from her experiences with the man.
She admitted to herself, ten minutes later, that she might have misjudged the man a little.
“Oh, dear, no no no, this won't do at all. We don't have a proper cell matrix for this species to begin with – you could at least have told me it was a new one! – so we'll have to work on that before we do any sort of experiments on it. Need to tell the computer what goes where when we put it in, and what goes where when we put it back. Er, when we transform it, that is. Now I can do those calculations on my portable station as well, so if we just roll this girl out to the BJ2 and hook her up to my stuff, we should be done in a jiffy. Well, a few hours. Well, “done” is perhaps a bit of a strong term, but we'll have made enough progress to get something going on, at least.”
Misty sighed, and leaned back against the wall. Okay, I take that back. He's still as nuts as ever. And that naming sense is just terrible! She'd had a short conversation with him about how to name her own craft, and received no promising ideas from him then; he hadn't named his own craft yet then, and his old one – which he'd made himself – had only ever been called Bill's Jet. Judging from the acronym he used to refer to this one, it was clear that the Aqua Jet's sister craft would only ever be a sequel by the name of Bill's Jet #2. It was, in a depressing sort of way, a reflection of the man's social capabilities. A quick summary of them would sound something like: 'On the whole, more or less nonexistent'.
Which was also the reason that the head nurse took him by the collar of his labcoat and gently shoved him to the side when he made a grab for the pokémon's stretcher. Subtlety was a word in the man's dictionary, and nothing more. “Now wait just a minute here, mister! This pokémon is a patient, and you can't simply go around whisking it off as you wish! We know you are a very accomplished scientist, but that does not mean you have the mandate to march into a pokémon center and drag off patients that are still recuperating!”
Misty cringed. This was not going to end well. Bill was not a person who did waiting. He probably had the purchasing power to buy the entire center if he wanted to prove a point, now that she thought of it. She was about to speak up and try to defuse the situation, but the scientist himself took word before she could even think of what to say.
“So I would have to wait until she can get about on her own, you say?” Misty frowned, mouth slightly open. That was a very un-Bill thing to say. The rest of the room agreed, with the nurses sharing confused glances all around. Well, most of the room at least; Brock, who was sitting beside her on the small wall-mounted bench, was always a more or less closed book, and the pokémon itself likely couldn't understand a word of what anyone said. She'd heard its attempts at making conversation with her – which sounded oddly like how she imagined a Ponyta's impression of birdsong would – and shared mutual headshakes and looks of disappointment when neither of them had understood each other. Vocally, at least. Their body language seemed conveniently similar.
Eventually, the head nurse gave a sigh. “I suppose that would be acceptable. But, you hear? No leaving the center unless it- she walks out on her own. Until then, you are welcome to use our machines for your work, as long as you don't interfere with our work or disturb the patient. Are we clear, mister Bill?”
The way she said it made it clear she had little respect for a man who, regardless of how successful he was, never had received a proper license for what he was doing. Bill didn't seem to care, however – as soon as the word “acceptable” escaped the nurse's mouth, he turned around and started walking back up toward the pokémon again. Worried murmurs went through the crowd of nurses hovering around the equipment that the pokémon was connected to, and when he reached the stretcher again there were loud huffs of protest. This time, however, he didn't try to take the stretcher anywhere on his own, instead simply opting to bow down a bit and get face-to-face with the creature occupying it.
“Well, you heard the girls. Hello there, miss. You don't think you could get up for old Bill here and trot on over outside with me for a bit? I'd really appreciate it if you did, and I think you'd find the end results quite satisfactory as well.”
Every jaw in the room dropped. Well, those belonging to women, at least. Misty managed to pick her own back up after a while, but her wide disbelieving eyes could still see most of the nurses gawking at the man responsible. Brock was, of course, as unperturbed as ever.
Eventually, she managed to piece enough of her sense back together that she could form coherent thoughts again. So not only can Bill act like he's got common sense, he can also act like a...normal person!? What is the world coming to? And what the hell happened to his not having any social skills? Does that only apply when he talks to humans, or something?
She didn't have time for much more disbelieving wonder at Bill's sudden acquisition of a silver tongue, however. There had been plenty of body language involved in his little speech; not quite pantomimes, but if this creature was as bright as Brock thought it was – worse, she was starting to believe him on the matter as well – she'd have little problem piecing together the general idea of what he wanted out of her. Said and done, the creature gave a few cat-like mewling sounds, thoroughly inspecting Bill with her big, blue eyes all the while.
Suddenly the horn on its head started shining like mad, like she'd noticed it did whenever it used its psychic powers. This time it was a light many magnitudes brighter from the soft glow she was used to, however; it slowly enveloped the pokémon in a dazzling blue aura, thickening until it seemed to be almost tangible, nearly concealing the creature beneath it.
And then, quite unceremoniously, the pokémon rolled off the stretcher.
A collective gasp went through the crowd of quite frazzled nurses, but everyone soon noticed that there was a pointed lack of falling going on; instead of obeying gravity and plummeting the a meter to the floor, the pokémon gracefully floated downward on what appeared to be a vibrantly shining pillow of psychic power. Gradually, the intense glow relented, until it finally died down altogether and allowed them to see what the creature had done.
It stood on its own legs, true. To some extent, at least. More important, however, was probably the massive cluster of purple crystals separating her body from the floor; she was no expert on anatomy, but from what she'd seen of the scanner's results, those legs would've shattered to pieces if a Goldeen sneezed on them.
Still, she couldn't really understand the thing's logic. Why had it effectively nailed itself to the floor when someone had asked it to go out? Was it protesting? Or maybe it hadn't understood the question to begin with?
She was about to say something to break the massive cloud of silence blanketing the room, when the crystals moved.
It looked as if someone had made an Onix out of amethysts, and attached it to the creature's underside. Or more accurately, fused them together. It was hard to tell where the crystal ended and the pokémon began.
Its carefully locked mane flung through the air as she gave Bill a pointed look – as if to ask, are you coming? – before slithering through the room on a piece of living rock. The scientist, for his part, nodded sagely, wearing a satisfied grin on his face. “I knew I was right about this one,” he murmured as he passed the bench Misty and Brock were sitting on – and to her surprise, she saw Brock nodding in agreement. That surprise abated quickly enough once she realized the reason for his approval, though. After all, it wasn't every day a gym leader discovered a brand new species that was – literally – of their own type.
A few seconds of quiet, utter disbelief and shock went by as the pokémon and the scientist exited the same way as they'd entered, one by one. Then the nurses basically flooded out of the door after them, presumably to give Bill a piece of his mind. At least, that's what Misty thought they'd do. She certainly would have. It was their own fault for phrasing things too easily, but that was still no excuse in her book.
But this wasn't her book, and thinking about it she didn't actually have any interest in trying to stop Bill from doing whatever it was he wanted to do. If anything, this was starting to attract her own curiosity as well; if she'd had any sort of feeling of detachment when she'd first picked the creature up with Brock on the mountain, it was well and gone now. Sure, sentient pokémon were freaky and all, but...
She raised an eyebrow over at Brock, and received a shrug in response. “Might as well see what they're about, I think.” She nodded back, and they filed out of the treatment room's back exit with considerable more order than the ones they followed.
-/-/-/
It was not by any means an everyday thing for Rarity to experiment with magic. She was hardly on Twilight's level – her magical ability and general knowledge of most of its schools were far behind the studious librarian's, she had no problem to admit that – yet there were certain areas where she had a level of expertise that far surpassed most of her fellow unicorns. By and large they were the finer, more delicate kinds of spellwork that she commonly used to make dresses – or, as had been the case today, patch together broken bones – but there was one branch of more advanced casting she'd always had a surprising amount of talent for.
Twilight had always been troubled by this. While the librarian had a vast and rather balanced affinity for just about any type of magic, Rarity was the most capable in several parts of what magical theory referred to as “Geomancy”, or the manipulation of earth. Several, but not all of them – which was what Twilight always had struggled to understand, after she'd explained it to her – for example, her old gem-finding spell was almost instinctively easy for her to cast, but she knew from experience that many other unicorns found it extremely complicated to do what they wanted with it. On the other hand, there were parts of Geomancy that dealt with things closer to earth pony magic and manipulation of the soil; Twilight had attempted to teach her a few of those, but Rarity had never been able to get a single one of them right.
If it hadn't been for Twilight's then recent experience with discovering their mutual pink friend's strange, illogical abilities, Rarity was rather sure she'd have been stuck in a laboratory for a good few days until Twilight got the right of things. Which would, of course, have been completely unacceptable. By Celestia, the sheer amount of work that would pile up! Not to mention how horrid I would look by the end of it. I would never have lived it down!
As it was, though, she'd been able to slither her way out of that particular crisis, and for over a year Rarity had not paid much heed to Twilight's ideas. After all, to herself the explanation was quite simple: dirt was dirt, diamonds were diamonds, and her cutie mark were diamonds, not dirt. End of story! No advanced magical theory was needed to explain it. It was her destiny and special talent to be good with one, and her duty as a lady of style and class to avoid dealing with the other. And so Rarity had spent the following year learning to knit wounds and heal bones with magic, rather than engaging in frivolous scholarly passions just for the sake of understanding something “scientifically”. Not that she thought any ill of Twilight for being how she was; she respected her quite a deal for the skills and knowledge her way of life had gifted her with. But sometimes one simply had to know when to stop.
Then, the Crystal Empire had reappeared, and Rarity's magical ambitions had reignited themselves with a vengeance. Not that there was any doubt of whose vengeance it was. It was the one word she had heard from the terrible creature.
Crystals.
Somehow, it had stuck inside her mind. And sure enough, there had been plenty of inspiration to draw from in the Empire itself, as brief as their visit had been. At first she'd considered talking to Twilight or Cadence – who had grown most beautiful, even more so than she'd been before, since her marriage; what wonders love could do to a mare! – about the matter, but then she'd found one particular variety of crystal architecture that she could simply not take her eyes off. Until she had managed to recreate it by her own power, that was. The Heart of Stone had been a piece of art in one of the plazas with enormous crystals moving as if alive, and even seeming to respond to her presence to some degree. Her own replica had, of course, been a lot less grand, but the fact that she could have it move around in the most spectacularly beautiful ways – she'd made it appear like a crystal waterfall, once, a breathtaking experience – was very much enough for her.
Still, once she returned to Ponyville it became rather clear that her exertion had been too much for too little. She could not infuse her own crystals with magic of its own, as the original had been made; moving about with the thing took a lot of concentration, which made it hard to walk without stumbling – and a lady never stumbles, unless she really wants to – and just like any other spell, trying to hold it from a distance simply took enormous amounts of power. Soon she had to accept her failure, and move on to more important everyday things – like dressmaking. And so, Rarity's life went on.
But today was very different from every other day. Today, she couldn't walk. And when the doctor finally came – thankfully it seemed nurses and doctors could still, even here, be easily told apart by their clothing – and actually managed to be understandable like a civilized pony, she simply could not deny his most gentlecoltly request, no matter how rudely the nurses behaved toward him. She most certainly hoped he would have a word with them later! That was no way for a lady to behave, and certainly not against her superiors.
So Rarity, for the first time, conjured up the magics that made up her own personal Heart of Stone, and put them to an actual use other than simply looking pretty. Not that they were bad at looking pretty, of course, or that there was anything wrong with looking good for the sake of it. Add that to her own humble self – which she had made sure to give a few touches with her magic while they'd been waiting for the doctor – and the outcome, as she'd verified with a brief look in the glass of the door as they exited the room, was positively gorgeous. She looked amazing.
The Heart carried her out on its crystalline limbs, and she noticed the small metal box from before had been joined by another that looked exactly the same. Perhaps it is an ambulance of some sort? Rarity wondered. She did not spot any wheels on either of them, though. And why would he take me here, in the first place? She turned around and waited for the doctor to catch up, and he pointed toward one of the wheel-less ambulances. Suddenly he gave a loud bark, and its strange, sliding door opened wide, seemingly on its own, followed by a small metal ramp that slid out until it touched the ground. Voice activation. This place has curious magic. Frowning, she followed him up the ramp, and the door hissed shut behind them.
The inside of this box was similar to the one she'd woken up in, but nopony came far in her line of work without a good sense for details. There were several differences between the interiors of the two. She didn't know what to expect, but what followed was an almost disappointingly similar routine to the one she'd already gone through inside the hospital. The only difference was probably that it was a lot faster; the doctor, to his credit, worked quite efficiently. He attached a few sets of electrodes to her – her brief session in Twilight's laboratory had taught her about those – and pressed a few buttons on his machine, which whirred a bit and made a few other sounds before giving a loud beep, probably signaling it was finished with whatever it had been doing. They repeated this some five times over the course of a few minutes, until the doctor gave her a nod and what she assumed was a grateful smile, and pointed toward the door as it hissed open once more.
The nurses stood in a crowd outside, with stern looks on their faces; it was clear that they didn't really like what the doctor was doing. She couldn't for the life of her figure out why – they had been doing exactly the same things just before he came, so what was the difference? – and promptly decided there was no point in dwelling on it. The doctor barked a few times at them, and the crowd slowly dissolved as they milled back toward the hospital.
One of the nurses remained behind, but that was not what caught Rarity's eye. The spiky-haired creature who'd been with her when she woke up was there, and had by his side a smaller female who was most definitely not a nurse. He was smiling at her, and she had no idea why.
A few more barks were exchanged by the creatures in the hospital courtyard, before the doctor started walking back toward its entrance, beckoning for her to follow. By the gestures he was making, he evidently thought she needed rest; which, now that she thought about it, was probably a good idea. Healing bones, with magic or without, took a lot out of you.
The room they brought her too was eerily similar to the ones back in the Ponyville hospital, except that the beds were markedly larger in size. Seeing how large the creatures were, of course, this wasn't exactly too strange at all. White curtains shielded the window from sunlight, and shades of mellow green covered the carpet and walls. She thought about asking for something to eat before going to sleep, but the moment she let the Heart lift her limp frame up and deposit her on the bed, all thoughts of anything but sleep vanished. This bed is absolutely fantastic. Not even bothering to dispel her magic, she fell into a deep, peaceful sleep only minutes later.
She dreamed of dresses. Dresses, cats, and her sister. “Sweetie Belle, be safe,” murmured Rarity in her sleep, as midday turned to afternoon and began to approach sunset outside her window. “Please, be safe.”
“Um. Ethan? Are you sure you're fine without those glasses on? You look a bit pale.”
Ethan was well aware of what his travel companion was talking about. He'd put up a good front at first, but it was steadily becoming harder and harder for him to focus or sit straight. His Lapras was thankfully unaffected, but he still had to keep an eye on the sea around him – he couldn't just fall asleep out here, even with another person aboard. And with that “person” being the creature responsible for his current predicament – benevolent intentions aside – he wasn't entirely sure if he'd survive the experience.
None of this would've happened in the first place, of course, if he'd just been smart enough not to drop the only thing protecting him from his passenger's petrifying gaze in the bloody water. Or thought to relieve Jasmine of the ones he'd lent her before leaving, since she wouldn't be needing them until they got back.
I'm such a fucking idiot, Ethan cursed to himself, gritting his teeth. Even after the incident at the lighthouse, he had severely underestimated Fluttershy's power. Or just overestimated his own – it didn't make much of a difference. As it was, he'd managed to lose his glasses in the ocean and leave his spares in Olivine, half a day's worth of travel away. Even though it'd only been a few seconds of eye contact between them, he was still feeling it. The fact that the dragon was squeezed up against his back (because for some reason she was apparently scared of flying over water) probably didn't help, either. It was like a poison, spreading through his veins.
But if he let her know that, she'd just make things worse. He was pretty sure about that fact. So he sputtered the best laugh he could manage, and smiled toward the vast ocean ahead of them, searching desperately for land. “I'm just fine, Fluttershy. A bit seasick is all. We should probably try to find somewhere to make land and camp for the night, though. You think you could do some recon and see if there's any islands nearby?”
That finally did the trick. She really is the type to worry about others too much, he thought as the pegasus dragon voiced her agreement and took off, flying on ahead at a not all too hasty pace.
With a sigh of relief, he patted his Lapras on its neck, signaling it to slow down a bit. It was a bit of an oddball as far as its species went; aside from its unusual coloring, it was a lot more hot-tempered than the normally sedate water pokémon usually were. Which in a way made him even more thankful for Fluttershy's absence; having her around was like having a permanently applied Repel sprayed all over you. He hadn't encountered a single wild pokémon during the entire journey.
Which, in a way, was probably a good thing. He wasn't sure how much the dragon would've appreciated watching other pokémon get beat up, but his gut instinct told him that amount was somewhere between about as much as a guy appreciates a kick in the nuts and not at all.
He drew a heavy breath, and coughed slightly. “Here's hoping I don't run into anything too strong,” he mumbled to himself as he gazed after the yellow fading form of Fluttershy. “Running away at sea is never a pretty business.”
Or at least, for humans, it wasn't.
He kept his eyes trained on the disappearing pegasus dragon for a while, trying to get a feel for if his body was getting any better from it. After a few seconds however he lost track of her, as he burst into a fit of coughing when a wave splashed cold saltwater into his face. Coughs were followed by heavy sneezes, and to his shame he managed to make a snotty mess on his Lapras' back shield.
He sat there dazed for a few seconds, processing the information with his sluggish brain. Then he fumbled with his shirtsleeves to wipe things clean, mentally slapping himself for being such an idiot. Again. “Seasick. Pah. Dragon's eye. Pah! No, it's just a fucking cold. Drama king Ethan, earning his crown. Good thing I actually kept it to myself, or Fluttershy would be feeling terrible about herself about now.”
His Lapras turned its head around to stare at him for a while, letting out one of those oddly musical yawns it communicated with. This time, though, he suspected it actually was a yawn and not just something that sounded like one. Lapras was as much trained and hardened by battle as the rest of his team, and she'd done nothing but swim languidly and listen to stale, idle banter between him and Fluttershy for hours on end now. He suspected it could feel whatever presence the pegasus dragon had as well as other pokémon could, and now that it was gone she wanted to fight. Something he'd have been inclined to agree on, had he been on his best game himself.
But the sea was silent, Fluttershy or no Fluttershy. Only small puffs of white cloud laced the sky, the waves were mostly languid and soft, and there hadn't been much of a wind to speak of since they'd left port.
“This is a bit too suspicious, even for me,” he muttered; and the next second his mind caught up with him and gave its opinion on the matter. I shouldn't have said that. I really, really shouldn't have said that. He'd always liked to think of himself as savvy enough to avoid the mistakes that most other people made, and sufficiently well-informed to avoid being caught off guard by the more uncommon ones. But there was one golden rule that everyone always kept in mind, that only the truly foolish or lost forgot about; and he had just managed to break it.
Never bloody tempt fate, you idiot son of a–
He never managed to finish that thought. A violent gust of wind blew, taking hold of his small frame and forcing him to hold on to Lapras' neck to avoid falling into the water. His mount struggled as well, fighting against the rolling waves that spawned out of nowhere. For a second he racked his brain for ideas of what water pokémon could be responsible; then a shrill, screaming howl tore through the air like a chainsaw through thin sheets of metal, and every thought fled his mind. All but one, that was; one memory from a mere week ago, when he had searched the basement of Ecruteak's famous burned tower and found things almost nobody had expected to find.
A shadow passed above him, and he managed to spot the tail end of the tiger-striped creature that raced across the sky, using a narrow string of tiny low-hanging clouds as platforms to jump between. Its jagged tail drew a trail of sparks behind it, and had it been anything but bright summer midday it would've made for a fantastic show of lights. In the stark light of the sun, however, it was only frightening – for despite its brightness, Raikou outshone it by leaps and bounds.
It took him several seconds before he could let his breath out and start moving again. He ran his hand over Lapras' head, trying to calm the spooked pokémon best he could. He thought it was spooked, at least; though perhaps he was calming himself more than his mount. Not that it really mattered very much, of course.
“Blood and death,” he mumbled half a minute after Raikou had left his vision, trying not to be too obvious in his clinging to Lapras' long, thick neck.
-/-/-/
Fluttershy was getting quite worried. More than usual, that was; the meek yellow pegasus was almost always worried about something, and this morning's events had given her more than enough of that to choose between. There was the whole dragon business; there was the fact that she was still all alone and didn't know anything of where the other girls were. There were all of her everyday worries, and more. Who would tend to the animals at her house when she was gone like this? How would they survive? What about Angel? And so on.
More importantly, however, right now she was worried about one particular thing; namely, the absence of any kind of landmass in her vicinity.
Fluttershy wasn't exactly afraid of water, but since she moved out from her mother's place in Cloudsdale she'd been living on dry land all the time. She'd never actually even seen the sea before, and now there was no land anywhere in sight. It was very, very worrisome. So when Ethan had suggested she look for someplace for them to land and stay the night, she'd been more than happy to – despite her usual dislike of staying in the air for too long – and covered a good distance ahead with hopes held high.
Now, she was starting to get a bit panicked. She had read about the sea, after all – she was not uneducated – and by all accounts it was supposed to be rather vast, but vast and endless were not the same thing. And as friendly as the creature Ethan called a “Lapras” was, she was not going to sleep in its saddle if she could help it. She really needed her nightly eight hours, or she got the most terrible morning moods.
So she redoubled her efforts, gaining a good amount of altitude to get a better view of things. She pumped her wings and soared skyward; when suddenly a mad, ragged scream tore through the air.
“BROTHEEEEEEER!”
She covered her ears with her hooves, just about managing not to freeze her wings up and plummet several hundred meters down into the sea. Well, until the answer came, that was.
“Landsakes ya varmint, quit yellin'! Ah can hear y'all just fine!”
That voice was not one she would mistake, and not one she was expecting; least of all thundering like the Royal Canterlot Voice she still had nightmares about. “A-Applejack!?” she sputtered, and promptly forgot to flap her wings for a few seconds. The results were just as one could imagine them; immediate.
Thankfully the sky had seen fit to place a small piece of cloud in her path, and she was so surprised at – well, everything – that she hadn't even managed to begin screaming when its fluffy embrace hit her in the face like a moist pillow. She managed to keep herself from falling through the thin bank, but she was still stuck with her head right in the middle. For a moment she struggled to get herself loose, but then she spotted the source of her alarm; two mostly yellow creatures far below her, approaching each other near the surface of the water.
One was decidedly unfamiliar to her. It looked a bit like the tigers that Zecora had told her lived in the southern jungles, but it looked to be standing on a cloud; furthermore, a small piece of it seemed to be attached to its mane somehow.
The other form was most definitely Applejack, but there were a few considerable differences from the farmer she was used to. First of all, she was standing on the surface of the water, as sure-footed as she had ever been on land. That made Fluttershy gasp a little, but she gave a wide-eyed stare and a second gasp at what she saw next.
Applejack's signature stetson hat was gone. In its place was a decidedly strange horn; blue and shining in the sunlight, shaped like...Twilight's Element diadem was the first thing she could think of. She didn't know what to make of either one of them, though she guessed that they probably had something to do with each other. And lastly, she had managed to be very, very loud. Memories of that one incident with Princess Luna surfaced again, and Fluttershy shook her head to try and clear her thoughts of them. Needless to say it didn't work, since her head was currently stuck fast inside a cloud.
A deep blush worked its way across her face, but she managed to chase away the terrible memories when she realized she couldn't hear the conversation below anymore. The cloud-tiger had gone a few meters down, and was getting awfully close to Applejack. And as much as she disliked admitting anything of the sort, tigers were well known to be...not the nicest kind of animal.
Oh, but this one could talk, so maybe it's more friendly than others? She frowned, and resolved after a few seconds to simply propel her little camouflage platform down to a viable eavesdropping altitude. Oh, it was rude, and she'd have to apologize later, but if things went bad with the tiger, she really didn't want to risk Applejack getting hurt. She had to make sure she was safe, that was all.
Safety and nothing else. Nothing else at all. She wasn't even tempted. This was purely for the sake of making sure everything went just fine with Applejack and the tiger. The eavesdropping was just a necessary evil to facilitate it.
It took her almost half a minute, eagerly pumping her wings to push the cloud down; and all that time she was wearing the widest cheshire grin on she could muster, which she didn't even realize until the voices below started wandering up to her. Oh, I'm doing it again, aren't I. Even so, it was with plenty of glee she noted the first audible words as she got close enough to hear what was being said; and a quite lacking amount of guilt, compared to what she'd usually feel. After all, she was doing it for a good reason this time, and that was paramount to everything else – intrusion on other ponies' private space included.
“Now listen up here, feller...”
-/-/-/
“BROTHEEEEEEER!”
Applejack winced at the sudden vocal assault. Goshdarnit, Northern Winds had a pretty big voice, but this here feller is poundin' mah ears in! She raised her head, anger coursing through her as she scanned the sky for the speaker. She drew a deep breath, and – somehow – stomped the surface of the water with her hoof. “Landsakes ya varmint, quit yellin'! Ah can hear y'all just fine!”
She was not quite as astonished by her own loud voice as she'd been the first time she'd used it that day, but it was still hard for her to believe; much like the rest of the strange powers given to her by Northern Winds, it was magic on a totally different degree thanshe was used to from anypony other than perhaps Twilight. She'd run into a pack of huge, glowing jellyfish while she'd been taking a break and cooling herself off on a small shoal; one had given her a quite painful sting, and she'd roared loud enough to blast the darn thing out of the water. Her ears had been ringing a bit for some time after that, but the experience had been quite useful in reminding her to learn more about her powers. There was, quite apparently, a big deal of it that her azure benefactor hadn't had time to tell her about; which ultimately was her own fault, since she'd been so adamant on getting going. Patience was not something she had the virtue of possessing at all times.
Her shout seemed to have done the trick, however. One of the few clouds hanging in the sky drifted downward, and eventually she caught sight of a huge yellow creature atop it. It was similar, yet quite different, to Northern Winds; she could suddenly understand why he'd taken to announcing her as his “brother” so easily. Ah wonder what sorta criteria he bases that on, though. Dunno what goes on inside that feller's head.
The creature – Storm Cloud, his brother had called him, and it seemed a quite fitting name from what she could tell – was scowling fiercely at her as the cloud carrying him approached. For a moment she wondered how he was moving it, since he didn't seem to be doing anything; when he came further down, though, she spotted the way the entire cloud seemed to be part of his mane, billowing out like a puffy cloak. “Phooey,” she murmured, giving an impressed whistle. “Now that's something ah reckon Rainbow wouldn't refuse to bring on the job.”
Storm Cloud finally came more or less eye to eye with her. Almost, but not quite – he was keeping himself two meters above the water's surface, and she had to crane her neck a bit to meet his eyes. Angry, disdainful, suspicious eyes. “Where is my Brother? What have you done to him? Why do you assume his appearance? Unworthy prey like you have no right to our powers.”
Applejack's eye twitched. Now this is just being plain darn rude. Focusing on her crown – it just wasn't right to call it a horn – she gathered her powers, and set the water below her surging toward the sky. Slowly she began to ascend, until her own platform of standing, churning waves was high enough to let her meet Storm Cloud's gaze eye to eye, with a fierce lightning stare of her own. “I'll have y'all know that's not too proper a way to greet someone you've never met before. Northern Winds sends his regards to y'all, Storm Cloud. An' what ah did to him? Ah talked to him, 's what ah did. Nicely. And he was right gentlecoltly with me an' generously gave me some of his power, to help me in mah quest. Ah needed to get back on dry land – which ah might add was where ah was expectin' to meet y'all, not out here in the middle of the darn ocean – an' he was kindly enough to give me a way to get there without spending a few days swimming. Y'all could learn more 'n a few things from his example, ah reckon. Brother.”
She held her stare for a few more seconds, until Storm Cloud averted his eyes, snorting. “Hmph. He always was too weak-hearted to stand for us. I do not know what RoaringFlame sees in him.” His gaze returned to her, surveying her with that same look she'd seen gryphons give ponies the first time they'd meet – the look of a predator, scouting his prey. Then, to her surprise, he rolled his eyes and shook his head, sending the cloud beneath him roiling in turmoil. “But, if our leader thinks you worthy, then I suppose I shall have to follow his wishes. I follow Emperor's will, let nothing else be said of me. You seem able enough, so I shall let you live.”
Boy, he doesn't give up that attitude, does he. Applejack snarled a bit – this fellow was starting to tick her off in more ways than one. “Now listen up here, feller, ah reckon you didn't quite catch what ah said 'bout-”
Storm Cloud interrupted her with a loud roar, baring his huge, massive fangs at her all the while; before meeting her eyes in a fierce stare. “Watch your words, prey. You may have my brother's mercy, but you do not have mine. If you prove yourself undeserving of his gifts, I shall feast on your flesh.” He held that stare for a moment, but he probably remembered the previous outcome of that battle, as he soon dropped it again, cocking his head. “Now. What is the quest that my brother saw fit to promote?”
Applejack was getting royally tired of his attitude. She didn't drop the deadpan stare she'd been wearing since she got so rudely interrupted, and kept it up even as she resumed speaking. “Y'all quite finished yet? Well? Good. Ah'm looking for two things. My frien- my brothers, for one thing. And the Progenitor. Northern Winds said you'd know 'bout some way to track 'em down.”
As soon as she mentioned the Progenitor, Storm Cloud's high-and-mighty attitude was gone with the wind. Disbelief and shock ruled his face, strange-looking as it was, and he shook his head. “Impossible. Unworthy prey cannot see the Progenitor. Not even Emperor herself is allowed that honor as she wishes.”
Applejack allowed herself a smile. “There's the cincher, though. Ah have already met the Progenitor – 's what got me into this mess in the first place. Now ah need to find 'em again, so me an' the girls can get back to our home. I'll have none of this unworthy business from y'all no more, hear? Plain enough, the feller 'emself have decided ah am worthy or whatnot.”
Storm Cloud's wide-eyed look of disbelieving surprise was quite satisfying to look at, Applejack had to admit. She cleared her throat, and took a deep breath trying to let go of her anger. “So let's try this again. Name's Applejack. Northern Winds told me y'all know somepony who can help me track down the Progenitor, and the rest of my friends. Can y'all do as yer brother asked, and help me find 'em? Mighty grateful if y'all would.”
Storm Cloud stared at her, dumbfounded. Then he roared, his face contorting in anger. “Impossible! You claim to have seen the Progenitor? The very spark of life itself? Someone like you cannot possibly be telling the truth-” And when that word exited hismouth, he instantly went silent – and frozen still, to boot. Applejack raised an eyebrow, wondering what was going on for a moment – before a strangely familiar voice sounded out of the gathering clouds above.
“The Element of Honesty does not lie.”
Storm Cloud hissed, his eyes darting this way and that as he struggled against his invisible bonds, probably searching for his captor. “Dragon. Why are you here? Why do you meddle in my dealings with my brethren? LEAVE!” The last word was half roar, half groan – it was obvious enough that even speaking was painful for him – yet he went on. “THIS DOES NOT CONCERN YOUR KIND!”
Applejack wondered for a moment how in Celestia's name he could've discerned that he was being attacked by a dragon, but what came next was most certainly enough to shake her off that train of thought entirely.
“Oh. Really? Um, but you were being pretty mean to Applejack, so I got mad at you. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that, I should've just kept listening and let you two solve your problems on your own. Are you okay? Do you want me to- ng- hmmpfff-” And without any further warning, a certain pink-maned yellow pegasus dropped out of the sky from a cloud, and promptly landed on top of Storm Cloud's cloud – which, of course, was his mane – letting out a startled cry. “Oof!”
Applejack couldn't rightly do much other than gawk at the scene. “What in- Fluttershy?”
“Oh, hello Applejack,” her friend said, smiling at her apologetically. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have eavesdropped on you. I was just so worried something might happen to you. Tigers are, um, dangerous animals. Um, no offense, mister Cloud. I just stumbled upon – literally stumbled upon – you two and-”
With a wide-eyed stare, Applejack stomped her hoof into the water once more. “Fluttershy!” The normally quiet pegasus finally stopped rambling, and Applejack shook her head. She'd never expected the day to come when she actually had to interrupt Fluttershy. “Landsakes, girl! Didja get possessed by the ghost of Pinkie Pie's crazy uncle or something? Calm down a few degrees! And you might want to get off that tiger of yours, too,” she added with a look toward the glum-looking Storm Cloud, who was still pinned down on his own cloud.
Fluttershy blinked a few times, apparently not having realized everything that'd happened yet. Then, as if half-asleep, she slowly untangled herself from Storm's cloud mane, halfheartedly flapping her wings to move away from him. Away from him, and straight toward Applejack in a slow-moving tackle hug. “Applejack! I thought I was never going to see another pony ever again!”
Surprisingly, Applejack found herself struggling to breathe in the pegasus' desperate bear hug. Not that she couldn't understand that part – Fluttershy was a gentler soul than the rest of the girls, plain and simple. The slight wetness sinking into Applejack's coat where the pegasus was burying her head, the way her ears were pushed flat against her head in fear; the small signs said it all.
Still, she'd have appreciated not getting choked for it. “Attagirl,” she managed without cracking her ribs too much, “but ya think y'all can ease up a bit on the squeezing? Getting a bit spotty in here.”
The buttery pegasus blinked a few times, her ears still plastered backwards; then hurriedly released Applejack from her constricting embrace, allowing the farmer to breathe once more. “Oh. Um. Sorry about that.”
A few moments went by filled with awkward silence, and at the rate things were going it they both seemed hard pressed to do anything about it by themselves; thankfully, the third creature present was not so patient. Letting out a rumbling growl, Storm Cloud brought himself closer to them both. Not too close however, Applejack noted; it was hard to see, but she was fairly sure she sensed fear in his eyes. Just a little, true – but just a little was just enough for Honesty. An' he sure as sugar didn't get scared of little old me before, which means...
She was hard pressed not to chuckle. After all, who in their right mind could actually be afraid of Fluttershy? Well, except dragons, of course.
Dragons. That thought gave her a pause, but as she mulled over it she heard it echoed in Storm Cloud's thorny, booming voice. “Dragon. I ask again, that you may answer. Why are you here? If you stumbled upon our encounter by chance, you must have had a purpose before it. I ask again, that you may be left to it, and leave us to ours.”
Well ain't he being polite fer once, she grumbled inwards. But minor annoyances aside, there was also that other thing; that huge, obnoxious elephant in the barn – whatever an elephant was – that had been nagging for her attention for a few minutes now. And so: “Storm, can ah ask why y'all keep callin' Fluttershy a dr-” But alas, she did not get to finish her question, as the normally timid pegasus interrupted her with a loud outburst.
“Oh! Right! I'm sorry. I was supposed to be looking for someplace for me and my friend to sleep, um, since it's getting a bit late, and he's feeling a teensy bit under the weather. Would any of you happen to know if there's any islands or so around here? I, um, found you two instead, and it was hard to keep looking...”
Applejack gave her a deadpan stare – why did she pick today of all times to stop being a pushover? – and was about to give her a snarky, cynical line about how she impossibly could know something like that...
Until she realized, of course, that she actually did know just what she was asking for. As soon as she thought about it, she could almost feel it in the water below her; as if it was responding to her commands without her even issuing them. She shivered a bit – Northern Winds' powers were handy as they come, but they still were an uncanny lot. She shook her head a bit, and spoke up. “Ah think ah know just the place, Fluttershy. Let's go get this friend o' yours, and I'll show y'all the way.”
Besides, she was a bit curious about that part. She had run into Northern Winds, with all what that brought; what manner of creature could Fluttershy have managed to befriend? Was it just some random critter – a Beast, as the wolf had called them – or something entirely different?
And why does Storm keep callin' her a goshdarn dragon?
All those questions ran through her head as the trio – Storm Cloud somewhat reluctantly, but she could imagine he was getting just as curious as she was – took off at a slow pace in what her crown told her was a straight southerly direction; but she kept her tongue. They'd have more than enough time and opportunity to find those things out once they'd made camp at King's Rock.
