TEEN: guidance

[Persephone]

Chapter One: Iki Town
Part 2: Lanakila Dreams Set

Sometimes, in the midst of a wonderful sleep, something will call you out. Something moving in the environment, a sound on the horizon, unbearable heat: the kind of thing that scares your body into asking your mind for answers. But you’re not fully awake. Just alert enough to decide what the thing is.

You remember a night on the mountain when you were only a two-tails. There was a great stirring in the earth as the entire mountain vibrated. You were pulled out of sleep for the briefest of moments, head still on the ground even as your eyes flickered open. You decided that you were in the midst of an avalanche and, satisfied with the answer, your body allowed you to sleep once more.

After the fact, you’ve wondered why. How you came to that conclusion in the first place. Why your body didn’t think it was serious. But at the time it felt natural and commonplace, while urgency felt like the most alien of things.

There is something now that feels like that. A part of you knows what’s happening, but you don’t want to ask. Everything is overwhelmingly comfortable, like being covered in mother’s tails in the midst of a bitter, windy night. There’s a world out there, somewhere, but it’s impossible to care about such a miserable place.

You don’t feel time passing; you barely understand what time even is.

*​

The world becomes real again millennia and milliseconds later.

You shake your tails and puff your fur, as if rising from an unwanted swim. You aren’t wet, but you were drowning. Confined in eternity.

You catch Skysong’s scent and turn to glare at her. She’s placing your capsule into a band on her waist. A man hands her your leash shortly after. There are massive horned creatures behind her being led away by other humans.

Oh.

She had been riding one.

You hadn’t wanted to.

The ball was your request.

Not her fault.

You walk over to her paws as she bends down, doing your best to notify her that you’re there and you want to help, to the extent you can, in the application of your wonderful blue leash. The proximity gives you a chance to examine Skysong. She smells like those horrific monsters and she will need a thorough licking later to reassert your ownership. Her mane has been reshaped by the wind and her falsefur is covered in terrible bovine hair. They’re old falsefurs, the ones that already smell like her and bear the rips and stains of life upon them. And you don’t think there’s powder on her face, although her skin is in the uninteresting middle ground where you can’t really notice the subtle difference that ceremonial markings make.

Almost as soon as you have the leash on, a new human approaches. Female. Older than Skysong and younger than Corpsefur.

“Valentina?”

Skysong looks towards the voice, her jaw slightly open in confusion or shock.

“My name is Haley. I’m in charge of makeup and hair around here. Sorry we couldn’t meet yesterday; I was rather busy with another contestant.”

“It’s fine, really.”

“Good, good. Can I walk you to the base?”

You step forwards and whip your tails out.

“Oh, um, I guess your dog has it?”

Skysong laughs. “I think she does, yeah.”

You are not a mere dog. But you do “have it.”

*​

She takes Skysong to a stone cave on the other side of the settlement. Which is odd, because most of the caves here are carved from tree corpses. Once inside, your leash is dropped and powder human and Skysong do boring stuff. By the end, Skysong’s markings are applied, her mane is frozen into place and she’s wearing the green dress from yesterday, with a strange shiny rock suspended from a metal rope around her neck. Your trainer flinches a little at the touches, but she doesn’t smell as distressed as she did yesterday. Before you can ask why, you are ushered along to the next cave.

*​

There are three humans. One is Snowfire. The other two, one male and one female, are roughly Skysong’s age. The female is near adult-size and has rather well-developed leg muscles for a human of her age and gender. For a moment you second guess the scent cues and wonder if she really is an adult. But, no, her milk glands are still apparently undeveloped and her facial features are too soft and young-coded to be fully mature.

The other male has darker, rougher skin with small scars littering his legs. His mane is short, even for a male. The female’s mane is an emulation of a single, light brown tail.

Snowfire makes harsh throat air and speaks. “Good to meet all of you at once. I’m going to run through the rules of the first period, and then I’ll leave to let you talk things out, ok?”

As the other humans react, you catch a scent and immediately wonder how you’d missed it. There’s a stonepup in the room. You scoot forward a little on your belly to get a better vantage point under the table until you catch a glimpse of her. She’s curled up beside the male human’s legs. You recognize her, vaguely, from when she was a pup at the institute. You had never bothered nicknaming her. She sticks her tongue out and wags her tail when she sees you. For your part, you bare your teeth. There is room for exactly one very good girl in this group. And that is you. You are the very good girl.

The humans have kept talking, but you don’t pay them any mind until another scent appears. Your eyes widen and you rapidly scoot backwards to Skysong’s side at the edge of the table. Then you see that your nose wasn’t deceiving you. Curled up on the female human’s shoulder is a long, tender snake. It turns to you and shudders while you keep staring at it, just barely catching yourself before a drop of saliva could fall from your mouth. Reptiles are the easiest prey; they just shrivel up and stop moving when they’re cold. And they’re also some of the tastiest.

You’re only pulled out of your fantasies by a human walking very close to you and placing Skysong’s cane against the table. Which is weird. She definitely doesn’t need it, both because she’s sitting and down and because you are present. But its presence seems to please Snowfire, who makes another harsh air.

“Everyone ready to continue?” There is a pause. “Well, then. Let’s begin.”

He shifts again. The next time he talks, it’s with a warped voice.

“Good morning to all of you. It’s the start of Day 2 and things are finally going to get going today. I’ll leave you to get to know each other in a moment, but first I need to lay out the rules of Round One. This is Day 2. Round One will end at sundown on Day Eleven. For this round and this round only, you will not be allowed to go your separate ways. You will only be allowed to leave Iki Town with the unanimous consent of the group.

“At the end of Round One, as with every round in the future, one of you will win and one of you will lose. The winner of this round will be chosen by an online poll after episode one airs on Day Seven. The remaining two contestants will have a battle at dusk to avoid a loss. The winner will receive,” he reaches down beneath the table and pulls something from a box in his lap. It’s a strange crystal at the end of a thin loop of rope, “this Z-Bracelet. It should be an immense help on your quest.

“And the loser,” he pauses inexplicably. “The loser will receive no bonuses until they can redeem themselves. The money they get from island challenges and the prizes they get from successful obstacles will be held in trust indefinitely.

“Oh, and speaking of those prizes...” the door opens and three young adult female humans step through, each carrying a box. They place them on the table and leave. Snowfire laughs a little inexplicably. “Go ahead and open them. I think you’ll like what you see.”

There’s a rustling sound and you hear the male inhale sharply. But he doesn’t sound or smell afraid, and his muscles aren’t tensed. There does not appear to have been a threat in the box.

“Those are the pokégear you’ll be using for the rest of the quest. Each of your numbers, as well as mine, are already stored on it. It will also keep track of your money, so make sure not to lose it. For now, it’s loaded with four hundred dollars. We’ll give you three hundred more for every trial you win in Round One.”

Snowfire stands up.

“And with that, I’ll leave you to meet each other and figure out what comes next on your island adventure.”

Snowfire sits back down and spreads his legs out a little bit under the table.

“Ok. That’s the scripted start. Any questions before I leave for real?”

“Yeah. You said that there are going to be obstacles in this? Do they still loss block?” the young male asks.

“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself, Kekoa,” Snowfire responds. “All of that will be explained in a few days.”

The young female speaks up. “Can we start buying gear now?”

“That will also be explained in a few days. Valentina, you have any questions?”

“No, sir. Just… It was a lot of money, isn’t it?”

“I think you’ll be surprised how little it really is once you start having to buy equipment. Especially if you can’t win any more prizes from the game after this round.”

There are other questions and other answers. You’ve already decided that you don’t—and won’t—really understand what game the humans are talking about. You like games. But this sounds way too complicated. You go back to staring at the wonderfully uncomplicated snake until Snowfire leaves for real.

*​

“I’m Kekoa,” the boy says. The words kill a long silence that had settled in after Snowfire’s departure.

“Genesis.”

“I’m called Valentina.”

There’s another silence. These humans aren’t very good at talking.

“I think we should head up Route 3 as early as they’ll let us,” the boy says. “Head to Kala’e Bay, then keep rushing trials until Round One ends. Important to get as much money as we can before someone gets cut off.”

“That’s the wrong way to do it. People traditionally go into Hau’oli, and then Route Two and so on,” the girl replies.

“And by ‘people’ you mean Luna, right?”

You bristle. Why did they have to bring her into this discussion?

“It worked well then. I don’t see a reason to change it. And they’re literally named Route ‘One,’ ‘Two,’ and ‘Three.’ Do I have to spell it out?”

They bicker. It gets fast and irritated and you aren’t even really sure what it’s about. You curl up and nestle yourself against one of Skysong’s legs, keeping your head in a place where you can still watch the snake. For her part, the snake has coiled herself around her trainer so that she’s facing away from you. It doesn’t work; you’re still there, even if she can’t see you.

“Valentina, what do you think?”

Your trainer flinches at the boy’s hostile tone and you stretch out to glare at his stonepup.

“I just arrived here. I don’t know the land. When you two agree, I will follow.”

“Wait, how new are you?” the girl asks.

"‘I got here on… four days ago?”

“And I’m guessing from your accent that ‘here’ means Alola, right?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. Then we’re definitely getting you a malasada when we get to a real city. And, um, can we talk about this whole thing later? I kind of want to show her some stuff. Introduce the region. And it’s so beautiful outside,” the girl says, incorrectly. It is not beautiful outside. It is unbearably hot. The cave is far more comfortable.

“That sounds nice.”

You exhale a pulse of air directly into Skysong’s leg, letting a puff of it hit the stonepup while you’re at it.

Your trainer gets the hint and changes course.

“I mean, I would love to. But I promised Dr. Freeman I would talk to her when this ended. I don’t want to keep her waiting and I don’t have much to say.”

“You can go,” the boy says.

“Thank you.” She reaches down to pick up your leash. When it’s secure in her paw, you start leading her to the door. Skysong stops when she touches it and drops the leash. “Actually, Pixie, can you stay here? Dr. Freeman said she would walk me to her office and back and…”

And she doesn’t want you listening in. You whine and walk back to the chair she had been sitting in. If she wants to talk to someone without you than there is only one good explanation.

She is going to say some very mean things about you. Probably doesn’t like you at all.

Or Dr. Freeman is allergic to foxes.

But deep in your heart, you agonize over whether it is the first possibility, if you’ve been setting yourself up for your fifth abandonment.

Skysong opens and closes the door.

*​

Skysong comes back later on. When she approaches you dutifully walk closer and hand off the leash. She bends down to scratch and hug you before taking it, like you didn’t suspect what she had just been doing. Her ceremonial markings are distorted and she smells vaguely of salt. Skysong stands and you pull the leash taut. You don’t want to learn what happens when you pee on a demigoddess. Especially if she hasn’t committed to leaving you yet.

When the adult human walks away, the other two humans her age walk towards you and your trainer.

“So, offer to show you some stuff still stands. This isn’t a big place, but there are still probably trainers and some wild pokémon I can teach you about.”

“Once again, I would love to, but it’s very hot right now and,” the leash waves a little as she gestures towards you.

“Oh! Does she not like the heat?”

“It won’t kill her, I think, but I don’t want to keep her outside and moving in an afternoon if I don’t have to. And, um, I’m tired. Can I take a rest?”

“Of course,” the girl says, “I can take you to the room, if you want.”

“Has Pixie been there?”

“That’s a very cute name.” The girl bends down to stroke your fur, but she pushes a little bit too hard.

“She came with the name.”

“It’s still cute,” The girl stops petting you and holds her hand awkwardly in the air right above your back. “Oh. Wait. I’m not supposed to pet her, am I, while she’s on the job?”

“No,” Skysong says. “But it didn’t hurt anyone. If it’s fine, can I…”

“Go,” the boy tells her.

You take it as your cue to start walking across the field at the center of the town. If not for the too-hot sun, it would be a near perfect place. It smells of a dozen different types of trees and scent trails from multiple prey species crisscrossed the clearing. There is even a marvelous, gentle breeze.

Skysong doesn’t talk to you on the way.

You lead her right up to the cave’s door. She slows down on her own as she approaches, without you having to warn her. She runs her hand through the air in front of the door, keeping one finger tracing the wood. She finds the knob and wraps her hand around it. Then she abruptly loosens her grip.

“Are there cameras around?”

You glance over your shoulder. There were some following at first, but it seems like the lightbox carriers lost interest. You tell her there aren’t.

“Then… I...”

She sighs. For a moment she hangs her head and holds her mouth partially open. But no words come for seconds on end. When they do, it’s a single half-formed mutter as the doorknob turns.

“Never mind.”

There are things you want to ask her: What did she talk to Dr. Freeman about? Why couldn’t you come? What did you do wrong? Is she going to leave you?

Before you can ask anything she orders you to show her which bed is hers. You do and she collapses down on it before rolling on to her side, facing away from the aisle. You aren’t sure what to do, so you jump up and sit by her hindpaws. When she feels you jump, she reaches out with a backpaw and you brace for her to kick you off the bed. But she doesn’t. She just hooks it around you and pushes you closer to her midsection, where she wraps you in her arms.

It feels good. And close. But Hummy gave you a wonderful hug the night before she brought you back. And the girl before that took you on a long walk outside the trailer before she left forever.

You can’t bring yourself to ask any of your questions. You don’t want to know the answers. If the snuggling only lasts for a few minutes and then you lose Skysong forever, you don’t want to waste the minutes fighting with her.

*​

To be continued on May 15, 2017.

 

[Ambyssin]

I always like seeing the perspective of a Pokémon placed inside of its ball. I think this one's interesting because it gives such a strong impression of just typical dreaming while asleep that I was actually pretty surprised when it turned out Pixie had been put in her ball. I also enjoyed her reactions to the other two kids, especially the Salandit. I was expecting her to be annoyed because, y'know, fire-type, but she actually seems to think she's got the upper hand between the two of them. Which, I guess, is right in line with her character.

I was actually surprised at how brief things are with the other contestants. I suppose they'll get more of a focus later. Because the brunt of the chapter surrounds a serious fear of abandonment that Pixie's got going. She had been carrying herself pretty confidently the last couple of updates, so I was surprised to see her worried like this. It even made the ending scene somber rather than heartwarming, due to her insecurities. Which is totally understandable. Poor girl needs a hu– oh, wait, that's what she got. Never mind!

A few silly odds and ends:

You are not a mere dog. But you do “have it.”

This gave me a mental image of Pixie poofing out her hair and tails and going, "Bitch, I'm fabulous!" XD

There is room for exactly one very good girl in this group. And that is you. You are the very good girl.

best pokemon rivalry set up right here, 10/10, pack it in Gary Oak, you're old news

“It worked well then. I don’t see a reason to change it. And they’re literally named Route ‘One,’ ‘Two,’ and ‘Three.’ Do I have to spell it out?”

I mean, it's a pretty good point, when you think about it. :V

Then we’re definitely getting you a malasada when we get to a real city.

We've reached full Hau status already.

To be continued on May 15, 2017.

wait, this story has time travel in it? awesome!I, uh, spotted a typo here.

 

[Gama]

I am only about halfway through (just read the interlude with the producers talking) but so far a really interesting story and concept. I think you do a great job of writing things from the perspective of an animal character (and the use of the second person narrative makes it particularly uncomfortable somehow). I think there are a couple of times where Pixie's thoughts and speech stray a bit too far towards human-thought/speech, such as during her first conversation with Valentina.

I did find the producer interlude a bit confusing at first and certainly there were far too many characters talking and being talked about for me to keep track of them or remember them for future chapters, but it did serve to communicate the context of what is happening in this story a lot better than what had gone before it. I'll read on soon but thought I'd leave this reply in the mean-time.

Great to read, thank you for publishing it

 

[Persephone]

@Gama

I've found myself thinking a lot about the first scene between Valentina and Pixie and how little it sounds like Pixie's narration. Too many fully formed and well articulated thoughts. I'm going to do some edits during the month of July, and some of those will probably involve some minor fixes to the chapter.

I'm not sure that the interlude was meant to be understood on a literal level. Just the tone and they're attitude towards actual, real human beings who are in their custody for the time being. It helps solidify some of the themes that are going to run throughout this.

I'm glad you like it overall! Next chapter should come tomorrow or Wednesday, since I just scrapped 5k words and am starting from scratch.

 

[Persephone]

Chapter One: Iki Town
Part 3: Genesis

You wake up and it takes you a moment to place exactly where you are as a bright green dreamscape fades away to a pale grey room.

The room itself isn’t pale grey. It’s actually several rich shades of brown that only look subtly black and white because of rods and… coves? You think it’s coves. Should have paid more attention in biology class.

Speaking of biology, you have to pee. You descend the ladder to do so. A quick glance confirms that Valentina somehow didn’t wake up; her vulpix is staring at you, though, his pale blue eyes almost glowing in the night. He's very, very cute. Reminds you of the old story of the Gardevoir and the Gengar (even if that was a different type of vulpix (the infernal kind instead of the holy kind (but the holy kind could do that too)). He makes no moves to awaken his trainer or pursue you, so you go into the bathroom undisturbed.

And use it undisturbed, with the added mental bonus of being free from cameras for a few minutes.

When you reenter the room, someone’s waiting. Valentina’s asleep, even if her fox is still wide awake, but Kekoa is dangling his legs over the side of his bunk and looking at you. Unwilling to say anything and wake up your traveling companion, you do your best to stealthily and slowly ascend to the bed above hers.

As soon as you swing your legs up on to the mattress, Kekoa begins to speak. Er, whisper. You’re only, like, six feet apart from each other.

“We should talk.”

“She’s asleep,” you hiss back.

“I’ll keep an eye on her.”

You don’t like how conspiratorial the whole thing is coming off as and you just want to sleep. But there’s a small part of you that does like how gossipy the whole thing is, like something out of a television sleepover party. You settle in and pull a blanket over yourself like a cape.

“Ok.”

“We can’t leave until we all agree on where we’re going.”

You frown. Does he think you’re stupid? You’re not stupid.

“I know that.”

“Yes. But, consider some things. It’s the end of Day 3. Episode 1 airs on Day 7, meaning it’ll probably be stuff that occurs in the next three days. That episode has a poll that determines prizes. If all that happens in the first six days is you blocking things from happening, audience won’t like you much.”

“You’ll also be responsible.”

“But I’m basing things on practical reasons. I don’t even get your logic. And when the producers have to pick a good guy and a bad guy, easier to make the practical one the good.”

“Have they told you that?”

Kekoa shakes his head.

“No, but I’ve watched a lot of this show.” His eyes narrow and he tilts his head a tiny bit. “Have you?”

No, you really haven’t. You tried to watch it but you kept getting bored and falling asleep. Television is too passive to really keep you engaged. Even if you want to be.

“A little,” you technically-not-lie.

“Good. I won’t back down from my idea, since I won’t lose the challenge. I’m confident I could take you on in battle, and Diana certainly isn’t losing to an ice-type.”

There’s a low growl beneath your bunk. You see Kekoa’s rockruff stir across from you and your breath catches in your throat. There’s movement beneath you, but it’s brief. You wait in silence for another minute but you don’t hear Valentina move again.

Not that you’re even sure why she isn’t allowed to listen, but you think that was implied in the... situation.. was it? Kekoa didn’t wake her up and made it sound like he was going to make sure you cut off the conversation if she was awake, but nothing has been said that she couldn’t hear.

It hits you that if you and Kekoa both knew sign language you could talk without her possibly eavesdropping. You only really know how to sign “bathroom” from a lesson way back in first grade.

Funny the kind of things you hold on to.

“Then why do you care if we leave?” you ask.

“Because the prizes are really high this round and I want another 400 if I can get it. Before the values change and probably go down. They do that to get people to speed up a bit.”

“…I think I see your point.”

There’s something off about his offer that you can feel in your mind’s orbit, casting a shadow on your brain without a real collision. But it’s two in the morning and you aren’t quite alert enough to reach out and grasp it.

“It shouldn’t really matter to you, I guess.”

You reopen your eyes (which you barely noticed closing in the first place) and look… not at him, but at his dog two or three feet to the left.

“Beg pardon?”

“What? You’re rich. You can just get gift from the parents whenever the funds run low. Valentina and I can’t. This penalty right out the gate was tailor-made for you. If you lose, it doesn’t matter. But if one of your opponents loses they could literally starve.”

“They couldn’t allow that.”

“Dying? No. But suffering, heh, you don’t get how little people care if you fuck over a poor orphan kid. Even a poor kid on television. Especially if they can spin it as their fault.”

That’s not fair. At all. And he seems serious about it. Or not dishonest enough you’d catch it. Truth be told you only really got a handle on sarcasm last year so he could lie to your face and get away with it. You know that, but you can’t know when it’s happening. That’s the infuriating part.

The orphan thing is interesting, too. It's not something you're unused to dealing with (there are a lot of wormhole orphans in Alola), but it's a social trap you can now avoid.

“I can promise not to get outside help,” you whisper. “It’s not right to cheat. Even if it’s legal cheating.”

You think Kekoa smiles across the bunk, but he shifted into shadow right beforehand.

“Well. Then you’ll need money, and soon. Night.”

He collapses into bed with more force than was strictly necessary. You hear Valentina mutter something in Spanish a moment later.

*​

As soon as you step outside the building you ate breakfast in, Valentina’s vulpix starts pawing at her leg.

“Hmm?”

The vulpix steps forwards, pulling the leash taut.

“Oh. I think she wants a walk. Kekoa, do you want to come?”

He shrugs. “Nah. Diana and I took one this morning.”

For her part, Diana is sitting on her back legs with her tail wagging furiously and her tongue hanging out at a 45 degree angle to her jaw.

“I think she wants a walk,” you say.

Diana thumps her tail on the ground and starts panting faster.

“Later,” Kekoa says.

“Ok, then. Good bye.”

A camera man follows her off.

“Why didn’t you go with her?”

“Can’t encourage Diana to beg like that. If she’d stayed calm, she would have gotten to go.”

“Valentina’s fox was begging.”

“No. She was getting her trainer’s attention to ask for something. There’s a difference.”

You don’t see one.

“Look, I’m going to—”

“Why couldn’t Valentina listen to us last night?”

Kekoa turns to you and glares. Viciously.

“There were cameras there. No point in hiding it.”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head.

“Ok. Fine. Whatever. She just doesn’t matter, ok?”

It’s your turn to glare, with a quick glance at the camera.

“No, not like that. Just… you’ve seen her when we talked about this stuff before. She doesn’t care. She’s new, she’s quiet and her English weren’t going to be so good, y’know? We’re the only serious contenders and I think it’s better for us in the long term if we just get her to accept that she’ll be told what we’re going to do and she can go along or not.”

“So… you’re training her, too?”

He nods.

“Rude.”

“Yup.”

*​

At noon you’re directed to an old garage at the edge of town. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but inside… well, inside it’s well-lit, wood-lined, warm and surprisingly dry-feeling. Shelves line the side of the barn holding bags or tarps or boxes. The labels and packaging suggests it’s mostly camping supplies, with some pokémon training essentials thrown into the mix.

There’s a table in the center of the room, with some metal/plastic chairs around it. Mr. Evans is in one. You can guess who the other three are for.

When everyone’s seated, Mr. Evans takes three notecards and pens out from under the table.

“Valentina, can you write?”

“Yes.”

“In English?”

“They have the same alphabet.”

"Uh, good. Now. We’re going to buy your gear for the first round. How much you can get depends on how much you’re willing to put into the communal pool. I want you each to write down a number between zero and four hundred. That number will be the amount of your starting money that you put into the pool. When you’re done, flip the card over and hand it to me.”

“How do we split it up if we break apart?” Valentina asks.

“There will be a challenge tomorrow. Winner of that gets to keep everything.

You turn to your card and your face scrunches up. If there’s a one-in-three chance you win, then it makes sense to give one-third of your money. You write 133 down, because you don’t think you can put in decimals.

You turn your card in. Kekoa’s already done and Valentina finishes about thirty seconds later.

“Alright. And the contributions are…” he pauses for far too long, keeping his face in the exact same position. Then he starts to laugh, until eventually he’s cracking himself up and pounding his fist on the table for apparently no reason at all. “S—sorry, just. Oh boy. They wanted me to emphasize that and, ah, never mind. Uh, everyone ready to start again?”

He doesn’t get a reaction, and puts on a sheepish smile to cover up the silence.

“Alright. 1, 2, 3. And the contributions are… Genesis: One hundred and thirty-three dollars. Kekoa: Zero dollars. Valentina: Three hundred dollars.”

He pauses again for a few seconds.

“Just making sure they caught that. That’s, uh, a lot of confidence there, Val. Bet 75% of your money on things you might not keep, with the looming threat of not keeping anything?”

“One hundred dollars is a lot of money. And if there’s nothing… I can live on that.”

“Things go a lot less far than you’d think on an island, kid.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s also a lot of gear. You can get a near-full set for that.”

“I could guess that. I’ve bought things before. In pesos, but I know the conversation rate.”

“It’s ‘conversion,’” you say.

You glance towards Kekoa. He meets your eyes and smiles. You turn away quickly.

Mr. Evans reaches under the table and pulls out two pieces of laminated paper which he hands to you and Kekoa. It’s a menu of sorts, but for gear, with descriptions and prices listed.

“Do you read Braille?” he asks.

“What language is it?”

“…there’s a difference?”

“The alphabet is mostly the same. I just thought if you wrote it in Braille it might also be…”

“No. I just gave the institute something to transcribe and they did it.”

“Do you know if it’s Grade I or II?”

“Uh…”

“I can read it. Thank you.”

Mr. Evans hands her a sheet on a clipboard and she starts running her fingertips along it. You glance at her when you finish reading and see that her fingers are only 2/3 down the page.

“How fast can you read?”

Wait. No. That was rude.

“Not as fast as a sighted person with Grade I. As fast or faster with II.”

“What’s the difference?” you ask

She doesn’t answer and things get awkward. Did you offend her? Or—

“I’m sorry, you said something? I was busy reading and didn’t understand.”

“Just forget I said anything.”

She looks in your direction.

“I don’t know how to… I say that I heard you, but shorter and no meaning.”

“Ok, fine, whatever, yeah, sure,” Kekoa says.

“That’s not fewer words.”

“I meant you should just pick one.”

Valentina finishes running her fingers along the board and sets it down.

“Ok.”

Mr. Evans takes that as his cue to reinsert himself into the conversation.

“Four hundred and thirty-three dollars to spend. How would you like to go about it?”

“Three personal hammocks with rain and bug proofing,” Valentina says.

Weird. You really hadn’t expected her to take charge like that.

“And I guess we need a tent,” you say.

“Maybe for gear. But tents are stuffy. Hammocks are better,” she responds.

“That could work,” Mr. Evans says. “You wouldn’t need a big tent, then. Just enough for your packs and the gear that didn’t have to be hoisted.”

“Packs?” you ask.

“Yeah. Backpacks. You’ll usually have to carry your stuff around with you, unless you can get a pokémon willing and able to do it. We’ll have a mudsdale carry some of it on the first leg so you can finish breaking your boots in and getting used to the feel of the pack. You’ll know who’s keeping it by then, so they’ll be the one getting used to it.”

“We have the budget for three cheap packs,” Valentina… says? Asks?

“I suppose. Your supply budget would be dipping a little low for pokéballs, potions and food. But your teams are still young so you’ll at least save some money there. Now, feeding a tyrantrum or dragonite,” he glances at you, “well, they’d better be getting you their money’s worth from prize battles.”

“I think it is good to have three of the one-person things. That way everyone will keep one, no matter who wins.”

Kekoa leans back in his chair. “I have no stake in this. But that does sound like a way to keep each other on speaking terms.”

Or keep each other on speaking terms with him if he won while risking nothing. You suppose Valentina might feel the exact same way about you, though.

“Then, three basics packs will run you…”

That’s about when you zone out. Valentina clearly has a plan for this, and you’ve barely ever even been camping. Plus, she has a controlling share in the decision.

You think they get a stove, some rope, food, and some pokémon supplies.

*​

The next afternoon, around the same time that the gear-picking had ended, the three of you are brought together again. The rest of the day had just been spent on solo activities, like practicing your ball-throwing with Mr. Evan’s electrode. You could barely track the thing with your eyes, let alone hit it, but it made for a good puzzle. And you will figure out how to solve it.

You’re gathered in a small clearing on Route 1. There’s a circle of stones in the center, with a pipe sticking out of the ground at the corner. Just at the edge of your vision is a shack that smelled absolutely awful when you passed by it.

Mr. Evans clears his throat. “A trailer’s going to bring in your gear in a second. I’m going to give you a chance to set up everything to make sure you’re comfortable. And you’ll be sleeping here tonight to make sure you’re comfortable with your decisions. Pyjamas and toothbrushes will be brought with the gear…”

You think there was another sentence after that but you saw a red pickup coming on a road on the opposite side of a thin tree grove and your attention pivoted to that.

He told you to set up the hammocks first and they’re… surprisingly small. Just three pouches a little bigger than your fist linked together with a bundle of rope beside them.

“I’ve picked out some spots for you…”

He leads you each to a set of trees on the edge of the clearing. Then he takes out a pole and some rope and demonstrates the knot. Which you think you kinda sorta get. No one has any questions, anyway.

“Valentina, I can start by showing you—”

“I understand how to put up a hammock. Thank you.”

“Ok. Do you know the order to put things up in?”

“…base, then insect, then rain?”

“Correct. Now, can you tell which hammock is which?”

“They should feel different.”

“Well, then. I’ll leave you to it. Kekoa…”

Mr. Evans steps off to help him and you turn your attention to the rope and the trunk he’d pointed out to you during the knot demo. Ok. Now. You were supposed to wrap it twice around the tree and then… tie it around itself? Was that once or twice? And in which direction…

You take the rope in your hand and just start trying to tie knots until something looks sturdy or Mr. Evans comes and corrects you.

He doesn’t. Instead Valentina comes over.

“Do you need help?”

That startles you. Why would she— Oh. You glance over and see that she already has hers up, with a bug net wrapped around it and a rain tarp suspended overhead.

How did the blind girl with no instructions beat you? And beat you that badly, too? It looks a little bit sloppy but… no. You have to give her credit.

“I… yes, I think I do.

“What do you have done?”

“…nothing.”

She relaxes a little. “Then can I start from the beginning?”

You nod, and then catch yourself. “Yes.”

“Ok. Can you hand me the hammock?”

You do so and she runs her hand along it until she reaches the rope at the end. Then she does something with a loop and… what. She repeats it on the other side and you still have no idea what just happened.

“What was that?”

“A… I don’t know the English name. It is… it works well. Mr. Evans can explain it better than I can. I have never taught anyone else before and I do not know how to tie it by sight.”

“That’s fine. Do you need help finding the trees?”

“Yes. And… you are taller than me?”

By a lot. You’re both at the awkward age where you’re taller than most women and some men, but she still has the approximate size and build of an elementary schooler. Her face, some blend of cute and pretty that has no right to work but absolutely does, is really the only sign she’s started puberty at all. And you guess that she has some growth on her chest, um, maybe proportionally more than yours… huh. Maybe she’s just naturally short?

“I’m about a foot taller.”

She looks in your direction.

“That’s about thirty centimeters, right?”

“I think so.”

Valentina adjusts her gaze upwards, actually slightly overshooting your head; it’s adorable.

“You’re very tall.”

“I know.”

“Can you reach up with the rope and then…” she explains the knot. It still takes you about three tries, but you get it in the end. Puzzle solved. When you walk over to the other end, you see that Kekoa is working on the rain tarp, with Mr. Evans mostly sitting back and watching him do it. They finish around the time you finish securing the hammock proper (it only takes you two tries this time).

Mr. Evans walks over and inspects the knots. He’s bigger than you, a little bit in height and a lot bit and width (a lot of muscle, but not the bulging build of a weightlifter).

“Not the knot I would’ve used,” he says.

“I’m sorry—”

“—but it absolutely works. You can keep doing this if it’s what you’re used to.”

Valentina visibly relaxes beside you and grips one of her wrists with the other hand, pushing both down as far as they can go. When her muscles are tensed you can see they’re more toned than you would have expected. Probably not an athlete, but she’s fit.

Mr. Evans walks over to Valentina’s hammock and checks everything over. He messes with one of the trunk knots and pushes it further up the tree, and then he unstakes part of the rain tarp and pulls it further out.

“How did you put up the tarp?”

“I had Pixie pull one end as far as she could while I pulled mine. I put in the stake, then I put in one near her.”

“Tell her to pull a little tighter, then.”

There’s a bark from inside of the hammock.

“She could rip that up, y’know?”

Valentina keeps her hands pushed down but tilts her head and kicks one of her legs back a little. You figure it’s the blind equivalent of puppy dog eyes. And it’s scarily effective.

“I told her not to.”

You can’t argue with cuteness like that. It’s flat out impossible. Mr. Evans struggles against it for a second before walking back over to your hammock.

“Val, you can take a break for a second…”

“Thank you.”

“Now, Genesis…”

*​

You learn a lot of things about camping that night. To list a few: how to pitch a tent, fires are comforting even when Alola should be way too hot for that, bug spray isn’t actually effective, rehydrated meals are awful, you have to eat as many awful meals as possible on the trail because you have to carry the rest out, Mr. Evans is a softy and will give out pity granola instead, hammocks are nice but hard to sleep in, and folding a tent up in the morning is actually kinda hard (not the folding, per se, but fitting it all back in to the bag it came from).

*​

That morning, you find yourself standing in a big square the central field of Iki Town with Kekoa, Valentina, Mr. Weiss. Some camera people circle around the field like scavengers at a kill. The sun is annoyingly bright and you’re nursing a headache from lack of sleep and hunger, and you know that your legs are covered in little pink bumps. The makeup people at least tried to smooth out the bits on your face, but now they just kinda look like skin-colored lumps.

Mr. Wiess clears his throat and looks at a camera.

“Now, to determine who keeps ownership of the gear you selected and tested yesterday, we’re going to have our first and only obstacle of the round. Win, and you’ll retain ownership of the gear. But, if you win this game and still lose the round, instead of losing your ability to earn prizes you will simply forfeit the gear to the round winner. That clear? Good.

“To start with, I thought we’d turn to a classic Alolan tradition: the battle royale. Each of you will use your starter to—”

“Ok, what the **** is going on here.”

A young woman walks in, flanked by two Team Skull thugs doing the weird hand-dance-thing they do. The woman has degenerate hair dyed pink and black. Not like Valentina’s hair which, ok, you guess that’s degenerate but hers is shiny and pretty. Like stained glass. No, it’s not translucent. Colored obsidian, maybe.

Mr. Weiss turns around to face her, so you can’t see his facial expression. But he sounds oddly… happy?

“We were about to have ourselves a battle royale. Care to join us?”

“**** no. Look, after the Aether and Wormhole business we just wanted to get back on with our lives but then people like you come the **** out of nowhere bringing even more rich mainlanders to buy up all the…”

She keeps going on, angry and profane but oddly nuanced.

Mr. Weiss glances back at you and interrupts her solid minute of impassioned cursing without a pause for breath.

“You want to stop her?”

“Go to ****, *******. The kids did nothing wrong. It’s you I’m pissed at.”

Mr. Weiss starts to walk off to the side and removes a pokéball from his belt.

“Well, I guess we can settle this ourselves, the old fashioned way. That’s the point of your organization, right?”

The woman just glares and unleashes a salazzle about as tall as you are. Mr. Weiss responds with a greninja and the battle starts without anyone calling for it. The rest of you watch the flames and water shurikens collide with each other for a while until the remaining Skull flunkies speak up and get your attention.

“Uh, I think that means that you’re about to get boned by Team Skull, homies!”

His partner whispers something to him and the grunt who spoke appears to go pale in the face.

“Yo, I meant the righteous fury kind of boning. Why would— Forget it. Mareanie, crush them."

Dratini slithers down from your arm to your chest to your leg and then coils up in front of you. As he descends you can feel his muscles moving right over your skin and the thin layer of slime he keeps on his body leaving a residue on yours. The other two are lucky; they just have their dogs step forward.

“Sand Attack!” Kekoa starts off the match, and his rockruff begins to paw into the dirt. You think that means you should do something to give him cover.

“Thunder Wave.”

Joshua begins to tense up before unclenching all at once, flopping a little on the ground as an arc of static forms between him and his opponent. Mareanie’s tentacles all clench in around it for a second. She rallies and pops her head out to spit a purple barb into the air, only for it to get crushed under a barrage of dirt and sand. But by the time the earth wave hits mareanie, it’s once more tucked inside of its tentacles. A wad of slush harmlessly splatters against it a moment later.

Vulpix won’t be useful in this fight. Rockruff is at a type disadvantage. That means you’re going to have to take the initiative. Please, God, let this work.

“Let’s wrap this up!” You’re surprised by how confident you sound, and Joshua definitely believes in you as he slowly slithers through the grass, leaving flattened trails behind him.

“Poison sting everywhere, yo!”

The mareanie sticks out one of its feet and prepares to spin around like a ballerina or something before it abruptly spasms to the side and falls over to the ground. You giggle; even if this is a serious battle, that was funny.

“Get in there,” Kekoa says.

His rockruff begins to run towards the mareanie as an arc of ice and water shoots overhead, dropping down some of it on to him. It’s a powder snow from a weak vulpix under Alolan sunshine; it might as well be a water gun.

The tackle strikes right when mareanie is steadied on its two feet and one of its tentacles. The hit knocks it right back onto its face. As the rockruff takes a step back to avoid a retaliatory peck, Joshua finally reaches his target and begins to form a lazy ring around it. The water-type pushes itself up with two tentacles and lashes out with a point-blank poison sting, but that only lets Joshua get under it and start tightening his embrace. You can see the stinger lodged in his hide, but he just flexes his serpentine muscles and pushes it out.

You watch as the two begin continue their dance, with mareanie slowly gaining balance and trying to hit something, anything with its beak and poisons while Joshua does his best to stay on. You get so caught up in watching that you don’t hear the attack order that leads to a bombardment of mud and pebbles hitting your snake in the face.

“Hey! Watch what you’re hitting,” you say.

“I was! But you’re blocking all of my shots right now.”

“What’s happening?” Valentina asks.

“Mareanie’s paralyzed. My dratini’s constricting it, Kekoa’s having his rockruff attack them both.”

“That was hardly an attack,” Kekoa says.

You hear the Skull guy ordering a peck. Mareanie tries to shake Joshua free to land it, but doesn’t have much luck. Instead it defies orders and hobbles around a bit before spitting a poison sting at vulpix. It hits while she (and everyone else) is distracted, and the stinger gets lost in the fox’s fur.

The ice-type’s pale blue eyes swell up to almost cartoonish size and she fluffs her coat all the way out.

“And your vulpix just got poisoned,” you tell Valentina.

She huffs.

“Tail whip, then.”

“Hold,” Kekoa says.

Rockruff retreats as the vulpix advances, while Joshua and mareanie continue to try and subdue the other.

When Pixie gets close, she jumps over the two interlocked pokémon and wags her tails over them in midair. You have absolutely no idea what purpose it had, but when she lands on the other side, Joshua’s coils have loosened and mareanie has clamped its tentacles against its body.

“Collar slam.”

Before you can even ask what that means, the rockruff hits vulpix from the side with a tackle, doing his best to dig in the stones on his collar as he does so. Vulpix appears too stunned to react until the rockruff knocks into her again, this time sending her crashing into mareanie (and Joshua) and sending them all to the ground.

The slamming continues while the vulpix’s tails flail wildly and out of sync, but they just seems to bounce off the rock-type’s skin and leave the fox worse off than the dog. After two more absolutely brutal tackles that dug pointed rocks into the fox’s skin, you can see the ice-type’s coat stained brown and red while she has difficulties even standing up.

You walk over to touch Valentina’s shoulder.

“You should withdraw your vulpix now.”

She does so, and… what you wouldn’t give to understand her face. There’s emotion there, and a lot of it, but what that emotion is eludes you.

When you look back at the field, Kekoa’s had his rockruff move on to slamming into Joshua while also trying to keep the mareanie flat on the ground and staying that way. You think about ordering a thunder wave, but there isn’t a point. That would just let the bad guy win, and good guys aren’t supposed to do that. Which leaves you with the option of withdrawing Joshua and letting Kekoa finish things on his own, or trying to deal a little more damage before Joshua faints.

The snake unravels and falls limp to the ground before you make a decision.

You don’t bother to watch the rest. Or much of anything. Your eyes are open and recording, but your mind won’t listen. Eventually it registers that both salazzle and mareanie are unconscious on the ground.

*​

The rest of the day is lonely and bitter; Valentina stays curled up in her bunk and won’t talk to anyone and you have no desire whatsoever to talk to Kekoa after that stunt. The people at the center tell you to pick up Joshua around sundown and you manage to kill the time in between with a nap, some reading and some pokéball practice. Mr. Evans tries to talk to you during it, but you never respond and he eventually lets you carry on with only a few words of instruction here or there.

When sundown comes, you pick up Joshua and vulpix. The nurse tells you to give them a full day before battling again. You were supposed to head back to your room to hand over the fox but… she won’t die without her pet. The weather’s cooling off into something wonderful and you find yourself stepping forward with progressively more speed until your steps are more like leaps and you break into a full run across the carpet of grass. The wind on your face feels like autumn in the middle of spring and you can’t help but smile.

Your parents and siblings and friends don’t get it, but you never found running to be work. It sometimes hurts in the moment, but it’s also wonderfully freeing. You don’t think or worry; you just are. And Alola is mostly a safe region. You don’t run alone in bewear territory or bother anything, especially baby pokémon, but other than that the tapus and the police keep everything calm.

Someone flags you down when you start to loop back into town after spending… well, you don’t know how long but it’s really dark now… on Route 1. You ordinarily wouldn’t stop, but he’s wearing a uniform and knows your name so you dig your feet in to the ground and start putting your steps closer and closer together until you’re not flying anymore.

“Yes?”

“Good to meet you, Genesis. My name is Robert and I’m with Alolan Security, Incorporated. We’re here to keep you safe after today’s incident.”

He’s looking right into your eyes and you know you should meet it, but you avert your gaze.

“Is that all?”

“Not quite. What were you doing there?”

Exactly what it looked like—oh no, You said that out loud.

“Well, I wouldn’t advise any solo jogging in the dark so long as Skull’s around. Especially not without a pokémon out.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Can I go back to my room now?”

Crap, that was rude. Especially after your last statement. You weren’t trying to be, necessarily—

“That’s fine. Mind if I walk you there?”

You send out Joshua instead and lift him up into your arms. He starts slithering on to your shoulder as soon as he gets his bearings. You think that’s good; he certainly doesn’t seem to be too hurt to move.

“I can guide myself. Thank you.”

So you do.

*​

End of Chapter 1
Next time: Route 3

 

[Ambyssin]

I like the perspective shift, here. It came at a good time in the story. I realize that Valentia and Pixie are supposed to be the focus here, but given that we've moved into the start of the reality show, I was curious about the other two kids. Genesis provides a very stark contrast to Pixie. That's obvious, I suppose, but it's easy to only give their voices very superficial differences... or to make Genesis seem like an adult. But you don't do that. Genesis seems fairly uptight with a pretty stiff moral compass. The fact that her "voice" censors all the Skull grunts' swearing in combination with her apparent rich girl upbringings suggest she's got some hardcore goody two-shoes vibes.

At the same time, her skewed perspective of Kekoa makes the guy seem like a complete dick. Which I'm assuming is your point. His attempts to be genre savvy and then take out his own "companions" during the skirmish with the Skull grunts shows that he's willing to do whatever he thinks is necessary to win. Which, honestly, is very pragmatic, but may end him up with the bad guy role here. Though you tease a bit of a sympathetic line for him with his lower socioeconomic standing. And wow he is completely dismissive of Valentina. But we have a good idea of where she stands. Pixie too, to some degree. I mean, Genesis straight up got her sex wrong for starters. And then Kekoa's Rockruff just bodies the poor girl. I think I see why Pixie doesn't care for Rockruffs, like, at all. The poor girl needs hugs. Hugs and Rare Candies so she can actually hold her own out there. ;~;

Also, I see an appearance of one Alola Security group, here. I'm sure they're perfectly reasonable individuals with no ulterior motives whatsoever. :V

Great work! ^^

 

[Ghostsoul]

Why don’t humans have a verbal question signifier? You can’t even imagine conversing with another vulpix without ever using the inquiry growl.

An interesting trivia fact about the Vulpix language - good worldbuilding from the outset.

Why will there be lightboxes? You love lightboxes because you look beautiful, but you weren’t under the impression most traveling humans had lightboxes following them.

Adorable! It also creates a division between the 'human' and 'Pokemon' world which will be further drawn upon later in the story.

“And we don’t go out of the way to embarrass our contestants. Once again, there are rules and laws on us. We’ll do our best to cast you in the best light we can, and almost all of the footage we get will never see a television screen.”

As if their gonna follow these 'rules' in a moral way - ha!

“My. I mainly worship Chalchuihtlicue. She’s a water goddess but her color is jade so. It was a, um, what’s the word? Gift is wrong, I think.”

Some quite interesting worldbuilding to drop in here specifically. However, the integration of the two topics will likely enforce the good worldbuilding even more.

“That’s definitely something I can work with. Green as shorthand.” He starts moving his paws through the racks of falsefur to find something. He winds up pulling out a dress of a slightly paler green than Skysong’s hair. It’s not repulsive, which leads you to wonder why he dresses like an unhygienic monstrosity when he knows how to identify decent falsefur.

The perspective of the Vulpix also helps break the simplicity of some scenes which describe basic actions - since they describe them in a very unique way. If this was described by a normal human perspective, it would be a lot quicker and shorter - but far less interesting to read.

“Um. So. There used to be the Anahuac gods. They’re a little bit violent. And they ask for things from people to keep providing harvests and sunlight. I think it’s fair; other people don’t think so. Some of those people came over with guns and unknown types of pokémon. They tried to poison the water. Unite the other, smaller tribes around the Anahuac. The tribes that the Anahuac had fought for—for blood to offer the gods so that there kept being food and sunlight.

Again, quite an odd shift but I'm interested in what you'll come up with for this.

A more scene-setting kind of chapter but the use of voice kept the entire thing gripping and fresh. The worldbuilding and use of tropes so far seems very unique and the fic itself feels as if it has many intense chapters ahead of it. I'm looking forward to see how the tropes and plot threads will come together, being like one another, across the story.

 

[Persephone]

Chapter Two: Route 3
Part 1: Iolana Rookery

The sky opened up around Moonset and, even though it is nearly the height of the sun’s arc now, the day has brought only clouds and misting and the soil iss still somewhere between dirt and mud.

Skysong rolls her shoulders to set her pack down and the old dirt stains on it blend with the new. The other humans are doing likewise, and even the mudbeasts are slowly lowering themselves down to rest. The only exception are the humans with lightboxes; they continue to stand vigilant.

The-big-human-who-needs-a-name opens his pack and draws out clear baggies of food.

“Come over and get lunch.”

Earthseer and Snaketree get there before Skysong has picked back up your leash. When Skysong finally gets her bag of food, she asks you to find her a tree to stand under. You do so, making sure it is away from the other two humans. They watched something on a screen last night and there was a good deal of voice-raising (the human equivalent of a roar), the scent of anger and, ultimately, Skysong storming out to cry by a bridge for a while. You hated that bridge, too; your fur started standing on end and it took you most of the night to get everything properly tucked away.

You aren’t entirely sure what was on the screen; you had been napping at the start and it’s so hard to keep track of those moving images in bright electric colors.

The adult human takes out two hardpuddles and pours food into them. You feel four of your tails independently tense and see Dirtface perk up as well. As soon as you hear the invitation, you rush over and begin chowing down on the hardpuddle closest to Dirtface, just so she has to take a few steps around you to get her food. You make sure to accidentally smack one of your tails into her in the process.

When your snout is starting to brush against the bottom of the hardpuddle with every bite, you see Earthseer stand up in your peripheral vision and begin to walk towards Skysong. He crouches down beside her, sitting as low as possible to the dirt without anything but his overhoofs actually touching it. (It’s a sensible strategy. You’ve written your paws off as a loss today but are trying your best to keep your tails hoisted in the air so you have less to clean off tonight.)

“I have some leftover almonds if you want them.”

“I don’t.”

“I won’t eat them.”

“Same for I.”

You pick up your hardpuddle by the rim and walk it over to Skysong’s paws. She’s tensed and you can smell the fight scent starting to drift outside of her skin. Earthseer doesn’t seem to notice, but he does bring his words down to breathspeech.

“I didn’t mean those things. It was just part of some dumb strategy.”

Skysong picks a metal can out of her bag and starts to run her digits along it.

“I can help with that if you—”

She pops the can open and picks up her plastic longpaw.

“It’s done."

“What I meant was that in a way, you’re—”

You bark and start pressing your cheek in to Skysong’s legs, letting your tails whip in to her. She flinches and almost drops the can, but adjusts her paw and saves it at the last second. You see her smile, and aren’t sure whether you helped or hurt.

“Would you like some, Pixie?”

You bark again and she bends down to fish some meat out of the disk and in to her paw. She holds it out to you and you start licking it a little more aggressively than is strictly necessary until everything’s gone.

Snaketree has walked over to the other two by that point. You didn’t even notice her coming with the scent of food in front of your snout.

“Kekoa, can I talk to Valentina alone?”

He stiffens and slowly turns away.

“Yeah, sure. She’s all yours.”

*​

Skysong takes the shiny page and runs her paw over it, letting only the tips of her claws touch it. She’s sitting in her leafswing, her hindpaws dangling over the edge.

“First trial you’ve picked is bug-themed. Kekoa, you’ve got a rock-type so you have a bit of an advantage. You don’t have a good answer to ‘em, Valentina, and you don’t have much experience under your belt. Route 3’s home to the Iolana Rookery, so you’ll have a chance to pick up a bird to help you on the trial. And unless you plan on evolving your dratini twice in three days, Genesis, I’d suggest you join her."

That snake also becomes a bird? That’s maybe the best discovery you’ve ever made in your short life. And… another pokémon? Skysong’s already getting another pokémon? You were dimly aware that trainers sometimes got up to five more on a team, but you’d sort of figured that you were more than enough for her. Or, at least, that she would wait until you were irreplaceable. And why does she even want help here? You’re more than strong enough to crush a puny bug.

You swat a mosquito dead with a flick of a tail to prove the point.

*​

When you finally emerge from the forest and on to mercifully clean rock, you are expecting to be greeted by a bright Alolan sun. For better or worse, you are not. The skies are a dull, lumpy grey and the distant ocean is about the same. You think you can hear it roaring against the land far below you, but it’s mostly drowned out by the sound of an untold number of birds. You recognize some of them (beachbegger, colorbeaks, even an giftmessenger or two). But an equally large (larger?) portion you don’t. It’s not easy to sort the sounds out either as hundreds of members of a dozen species yell over each other and the waves to be heard. Your ears are built for the sparse, quiet sounds of a mountaintop. This sends a pulsing between them, back and forth, rising and falling, until it feels like your head is just a massive seed being pecked at from all directions by a flock of heartless birds.

Somehow, Skysong hears your whimpering and reaches down to pick you up.

“Want your ball?” she asks.

You do. You say no. You are her guide fox and there’s no way she can possibly navigate by sound here. And if she walks off of the cliffs she definitely will not keep you because dead humans don’t train pokémon.

Two more humans walk up to the group, although you almost miss them in the cacophony. Snowfire and… and Matriarch. She looks at you, curled up in Skysong’s limbs like a pup pressed into her mother’s tails during a blizzard. You press your paws down through the cracks until Skysong gets the hint and puts you back on to the ground. The sounds are getting easier to manage the longer you stay here. Besides, they’re birds. Hearing them should just make you hungry.

Focusing on the lies keeps a part of your mind off the noise.

Snowfire and the large human, er, Foresthuman. Wait that’s, ah, too late. You’re going with it.

Snowfire and Foresthuman (such a terrible name…) talk to each other and everyone. And eventually the humans split up into adult-child pairs, each trailed by a lightbox wielder. Snowfire and Earthseer and Dirtface go somewhere down the trail. Foresthuman and Snaketree start trying to descend the rocks. And then Matriarch breaks off to take Skysong’s hand and lead her back in to the forest.

You have mixed feelings on that. You don’t want to be around Matriarch, especially not at one of your rare moments of imperfection. But the trees absorb or reflect or block the sound, and just a three-or-four nines of humanlengths into the forest things are already tolerable again.

“You aren’t interested in birdcatching?” Matriarch says.

“Not now. I, just. After the battle I decided that I can’t battle like—”

“—that’s absolutely untrue—”

“—battle like a normal trainer. I need to prepare differently. Train Pixie differently. I can’t follow things as they happen, but she’s smart, so I can teach her how to battle mostly on her own.”

Matriarch looks at her blankly for several seconds before finally cracking a smile.

“It takes most people a lot longer to figure that out.”

“I’m sorry?”

“No two trainers are alike, so there isn’t a ‘normal’ training method. But most people just try and stick to what they think is normal until everything’s crashing down around them. Glad you caught yourself very early.”

“It’s already…”

Matriarch steps forward and puts a paw on Skysong’s shoulder.

“Kid. You had one big loss. One loss in less-than-fair circumstances. You haven’t even fought a totem yet, and you’re already learning from your mistakes. That’s important. Because the losses? They happen. It matters what you do after them.”

Skysong stands unmoving afterwards.

“I don’t know you, but…”

“Hmm?”

“This is. Can I have a hug?”

“Sure.”

Skysong steps forward and the humans wrap their paws around each other. It looks warm and fun but you’re also pretty sure you aren’t allowed to join.

Eventually your trainer steps back. She looks calm, but her voice cracks a little bit when she speaks.

“Training?”

Matriarch smiles.

“Training. Let’s just start by running through some situations. You’re facing an opponent who is best hitting up close. It’s slower than Pixie. What do you have her do?”

“Powder snow from a distance, run away when they get close. Tail whip and run if they get too close?”

“Good. Weaker, ranged opponent?”

“…just keep using powder snow?”

“Faster melee opponent?”

“Can you rephrase?”

“Faster opponent. Hits up close.”

Skysong doesn’t readily produce an answer.

“Mind if we try it, then?”

“Pixie?”

You bark. You’re ready.

Matriarch drops her ball and a ironhair emerges in the earth. You have them on the mountain and while they look really weak and edible, the fur on top of their head is really sharp and the wounds keep stinging for days. You made a mistake as a pup, all pups make the mistake, and you’ll never, ever try to eat one again.

“Ready to start?”

“Yes. Powder snow!”

“Scratch.”

You’d already started forming the snowball and as soon as the order is given it sails out of your mouth. The rockface moves faster than your eye can even track it and it sails far to the side. Suddenly its hair is tearing into your side, opening up several long, thin cuts. Before you can even whip your tails around to repel it, the creature’s retreated a safe distance away. You start forming another pulse of cold and—

“—wait, is that a zorua?”

You falter and the cold seeps out into a small wave you immediately absorb into your tails. A what?

Matriarch smiles.

“Well, no need for trickery any more. Zorua, come out.”

There’s a blur of light around the rockface and then there’s not even a rockface anymore. There’s a fox that looks a lot like you, but black and red instead of white and blue, standing there instead. And his coat is pretty wonderful. As are his claws. So, no, you aren’t allowed to like him.

“How’d you tell?”

“They’re native to my hometown. The only big thing about it. They were friendly to locals and the zoroark sometimes took care of me when I got lost.”

“Interesting. Different subspecies. This one’s an Olympic zorua. Live in cooler climates. Mainland institute gave me a litter to try and train up. Would’ve loved a desert zorua, but they’re endangered and,” she shrugs, “nothing I can do about that.”

“…they sound the same?”

“Maybe.”

You continue to size up the zorua while he sizes up you. He’s definitely fast, and his cut hurts a lot more than you want to show in front of Matriarch and Skysong. And then he has a trick that you think is weak and cowardly but can’t stop yourself from thinking of all the ways you’d use it. The zorua, for his part, seems entirely unreadable. Not necessarily unimpressed, just unreadable.

“Tell you what: you’re clearly used to tame zorua. Enough to know that they’re mischievous little foxes. And you’ve already got one of those to like you. I’d be happy to give you this one if you can give me advice on how to train them. Perhaps Pixie could teach her public access and guide work? She is very good at those things, when she tries.”

One of your tails puffs up involuntarily and you promptly blow air through it to calm it down. Matriarch compliments are rare and wonderful and something you absolutely don’t care about one way or the other.

You notice that the zorua’s moved from looking at you to looking at Skysong, expectantly. And then it hits you just what was proposed before the sneaky old woman threw in a compliment to distract you. She’s trying to get this dumb, ugly, unremarkable fox to replace you. And since Skysong has a history with them and this one just beat you in a short… no. Hasn’t beat you.

You puff out a powder snow into the zorua’s face, watching as it strikes dead on and drips down while the fox tries to blink and shake it out, and you hiss. He wants your trainer, he’s going through you.

You barely even see the ripple of light around the zorua. But one moment you’re hissing and preparing for your glorious last stand and the next your entire snout hurts and you’re in midair looking at the ground. And then a lot more than just your snout hurts. And then you hear laughter. It’s not even a particularly vulpine sound, but it’s clearly not aimed at you.

It’s aimed at her.

“I think that’s another lesson, there. On what you do against an opponent with more powerful ranged attacks.”

As you flip yourself off of your back and on to your paws, you catch a glimpse of your trainer. Standing transfixed in the exact same position, with the exact same tilt of her head, as she had been in before your stunt.

“…is the zorua still fire-type?”

Matriarch shakes her head.

“No. Officially pure dark. Some dispute among breeders over whether or not they should have a secondary-typing.”

“Not very useful against bug- or fighting-types, then?”

“He wouldn’t be useful immediately, but I think he’d start pulling his weight very shortly after that.”

Skysong continues to be still. You’d suspect she’d been flash-frozen, all the water in her body locked into crystalline form, but she’s far too warm for that.

“I don’t think Pixie would like to have a partner yet.”

“Eventually you’ll have to ignore that if you want to keep winning.”

“…I want to try the first trial. And if it is another loss, then we can talk again about this.”

*​

The next day’s hike sticks close to the coastline. You imagine that without a breeze and perfect cloud cover it would be unmanageable. But the birds start to thin out and the heat isn’t as bad as it could be, even if the stone hurts your paws a little bit.

As the roar of the birds subsides, another sound slowly builds: a dull roar in front of you, like the sound of water filling a… a bath, except far in the distance. Which means it has to be very loud. Is it a bath for a dragon? You hope so. There might be large prey species not expecting a sudden fierce attack from a snow fox. They thought they would be safe just because they moved islands and hid in your least favorite spot, but no. The snakes are never safe from ice foxes. Ever.

Despite a morning’s worth of fantasizing, you’re utterly unprepared for the sound’s source when you see it.

There’s a massive chasm in the stone and you can hear water running through the bottom. At the start of the chasm is a cliff face, and in the cliff face is the dark hole of a cave entrance. That would be impressive enough, but there’s a stream of water akin to eighty-one hydro pumps being fired off at once flowing from it and then cascading down in a vertical river.

It is pretty much like the water flow into a bath, but so much larger than you would have ever imagined. A god could bathe under it and nothing in the world could bother them.

…and then you notice the bridge leading over the chasm. It's maybe two human lengths across, at most, and the edges are maybe human height and they’re just metal cords so something your size could easily fall off if there was a strong gust of wind or a push from a predator. There are two humans coming across it now—are they going to make you go across it? You want to ask for your ball if so, but Skysong’s mad and you need to be on your best behavior so—

—the approaching humans shout.

“Yo, homies, I thought Big Sis told you to cut it out?”

There are murmurings among the humans on your side of the bridge as the newcomers approach. It takes you a moment to place them but oh—oh no. It’s the skull people. You shiver and it feels like the movement rips your side open again and leaves bruises halfway down your body. Your ears fold back and every individual hair on your back begins to stick up like needles. Predators. The predators are back.

“Now, who’s getting crushed under the bone hard boots of—”

“Cinccino, come.”

One of the men who always hangs out around the lightboxes steps forwards and opens up a pokéball. It materializes on the ground into—gods of the peak it’s gorgeous. Ok, the base color isn’t actually that great, just a dark stone grey, which, you guess you can appreciate the minimalism, but then—the fur. Gods, the fur. It has what looks like a long, thick tail of white fur wrapped around it that’s thicker than a ninetales’ tail and looks finer and somehow purer and none of that should even be possible, especially not for a biped that definitely isn’t a ninetales but—

“Bullet seed.”

The humans sent out their own pokémon, a common rat and an awful biped with a weird nose, but the wonderful pokémon on your side just puffs up their cheeks and then—boom, boom, boom—there’s this barrage of little hail going really fast and you can hear the hits and even see them ripple across the other opponents skin and then they’re collapsed and the really, really pretty fur mon has won and—

“Pixie!”

You turn around to face your trainer. At some point you had apparently wound up cowering behind your wonderful savior, your side pressed into her fur.

“Where did Pixie go?”

Her voice is higher than usual and, when you focus, you can hear her heart thrashing madly against her ribcage. You walk back over to her, tails tucked between your legs, and nuzzle her.

“Pix, you, you can’t just do that when people like that are around. You could get hurt… I could get hurt, you—”

“They’re Team Skull. Think you might be worrying a little too much,” Earthseer says in a voice that sounds low and droll even for a human.

“Fuck you! You’re the one that decided to dick around in front of a fucking gang, not caring if anyone got killed when—”

“Woah. We’re Team Skull. We don’t go that hard…”

Skysong’s heart quiets and her breathing picks up. More than it had been. When she speaks again it isn’t in the harsh, breathy screech she’d broken into but a quiet, stammering babble of words nearly drowned out by a sudden barking fit from Dirtface.

“They’re still here? You—they. They’re… they’re still…”

You watch from up close as the leg muscles beneath her skin buckle up and then abruptly relax as her body begins to sway.

 

[Ambyssin]

Looks like there was a formatting issue, probably from cross-posting. The text for this chapter is all black for me (I have a dark theme enabled). I think if you use the BBCode editors to cross-post b/w here and Serebii, you'll avoid formatting snafus.

One paragraph in and we have Pixie's worst nightmare: wet, muddy terrain. And there's already some entertaining little bits getting formed up here. It looks like Pixie has designated the Rockruff as Dirtface and Kekoa as Earthseer? Which is pretty funny and almost reminds me of the memetic awful nicknames everyone claims to have given to Blue and Silver. The fact that she's so spiteful toward that Rockruff continues to make me smirk. As is her belief she can hold up in a trial and her demonstration of "strength." I guess this confirms we've got animals and pokémon in this story... at least for me, someone who never read Iterations.

I did laugh a bit at the "sparse, quiet mountantop" bit. Because I expect roaring winds atop a mountain that can be just as loud as a bunch of birds. Maybe not as annoying. I'm just handwaving it as Pixie being Pixie. There's a lot of lemony narration when Snowfire and Matriarch appear, actually. The whole bit with Foresthuman was funny. At the same time, I'm surprised by how supportive Matriarch is being to Valentina. Though, I guess that speaks to a good job writing Pixie's voice if you're able to get me to be a bit distrusting of the lady. On the flip side... I cannot envision which 'mon "rockface" is based on the description you give, which is a moot point, I guess, since it's a zorua. And instant jealousy fox rivalry ensues! Valentina picks up rather quickly on Pixie's attachment concerns, but what Matriarch says definitely rings true.

Last scene has quite a lot of mood whiplash, but in a good way. I think you bounce it back and forth well, going from Pixie fangirling over the cinccino to Valentina freaking out and Pixie realizing she did a bad to the argument with Kekoa that has Team Skull gasping at the language. And it looks like we end on a bit of a freak out. I wonder if Team Skull will actually continue to be real trouble for Valentina?

 

[Beth Pavell]

This has been on my list for too long. I'm going to dispense with the category style, because it's often a bit awkward for prologues anyway.

So first things first, the second-person style. The whole chapter comes across as deeply impersonal, which I think is the point. The vulpix doesn't understand the humans, and most of the humans don't really seem to understand the vulpix. Open mind about whether this will continue to work in future chapters, since I don't know where you intend to go with this. But it has to be said, the prose isn't quite so emotionally distant as some of your previous works have been.

I liked some of the defiance of cliché running through here. It would have been easy to cast the vulpix as another tragic victim of the cruel human trainer, ripped from her suspiciously human-like nuclear family, etc etc ... instead we get a recognition that most vulpix are booted out of the den anyway. It's a much more interesting idea to read about.

The human speech could stand to stay, in my opinion. It is possible to get so carried away with a non-human perspective that you just end up writing gibberish, and honestly, I don't see that anything is lost this way.

 

[Persephone]

Chapter Two: Route 3
Part 2: Kala'e Bay

The door opens again and a new human enters the cave. She’s an adolescent with pale skin and near-white hair. Your attention immediately pivots to the door Skysong’s behind.

“So, I heard you’re here for… the… did I miss something?”

One of the (many) humans staring at her makes harsh throat air and starts to explain the situation. Earthseer and Snaketree are fine, Skysong collapsed. Yes, she’s awake now and doing better. It’s probably fine. We don’t know if she’ll be up for it tomorrow, no. The other two will be.

“Ordinarily I’d ask to battle, to see if you’re up to it, but given, y’know, it just feels a little wrong. Can you just tell me what you have?”

Snowfire answers.

“Kekoa has a rockruff, Genesis has a dratini, Valentina has a vulpix, if she’s up to it.”

He glances at you during the last part. You barely notice and don’t react. Can they stop talking? The door is very thick and it’s hard to hear things on the other side of it.

“Is that all? Is this their first challenge?”

“It is.”

“Did they just get their starters and make a bee-line here? Because, y’know, the bug girl is a fucking push over? Christ, the routes are even numbered. You’d think people would stop and wonder if they’re supposed to go to route three first or—or. I’m sorry. Just, I get this a lot.”

She sighs, forcefully, apparently drawing air from her backpaws all the way up to her mouth.

“Ordinarily I’d kick your asses and send you back around the island before you so much as stepped foot in the meadow, but given the circumstances… I’ll let anyone who’s up to do it tomorrow morning do it together. All pokémon out at once.”

“I appreciate it, Miss Boyega…”

*​

The door opens and the healer steps out. The room quickly quiets.

“I have concerns about how long she was under. I’m going to allow her to go on her way tomorrow morning, but she will need a more thorough examination before I’m willing to ok her leaving Melemele. And I am going to keep her in the medical wing under observation for the rest of the night.”

“Thank you—”

“I have other concerns.”

She glares to Snowfire in a way you frankly didn’t know a human being could glare.

“I have serious concerns about her mental fitness and some of the things she told me are deeply unsettling. She said she had a counselor she was meeting with. I would like to speak with her.”

“I think that can be arranged. Let me just…”

Human stuff. Doesn’t matter. The door is ajar and you jump down from your perch at the edge of a chair and rush towards the opening. But the healer catches you midway and sticks her leg in your path. As you slow down to try and reroute, her death glare turns to you.

“She would like to be alone right now. That includes pokémon.”

You stop abruptly. Maybe too abruptly. You crash into the wall in shock. That draws a more analytical glance from her before she shrugs and turns back to the humans. She shoots them a final glare, opens the door and steps back in to Skysong’s quarters. Without you.

*​

At some point around moonrise, when all the humans go elsewhere to sleep, you move from the chair to the pawrest beside it. It offers less height than the chair’s ridge and isn’t as protected as the chair’s interior, but you have a clear view of Skysong’s door and can stretch out a little bit. You sit there, wide awake, until a little after moonpeak. Then you glance out the window and have to use the tray provided for relieving yourself (the healer tried to put you in your ball, you tried to bite her, a compromise was worked out). And then you go back to your station, limbs sprawled and tails spread out and pressed down.

Eventually, something happens. Not from Skysong’s door, though. Instead there’s a whimpering from across the room. You turn to look and… and there’s a vulpix. You. Same eye color and mane pattern. Except you’re an absolute mess with your mane hanging limp, your side fur roughed up and tangled with dirt mixed in and two of your tails in a knot. The other tails look incredibly greasy, like they hadn’t been maintained in multiple moon cycles. You flinch and turn to look at your real body, which is perfectly clean, and then there’s giggling. Your giggling. You turn back to other-you and they jump off of their pawrest to walk over. You turn back to the door and try to ignore them until they jump up and sprawl out less than half a body length from you. Your tails are touching.

You give the inquiry growl. They’re very lucky you didn’t give a threat or curse growl instead, but at this point you can’t follow what’s happening. Other-you shakes and rematerializes into a black and red fox. You reflexively extend your claws and listen as they rip into the furniture’s skin. The fox giggles, once again in your voice.

“What are you doing?” you hiss.

“Waiting for our human.”

It takes you several breaths worth of time to process exactly what he had said and run through every possible meaning of the growls.

“My human. Not yours.”

The Other Fox whips his tail around, running it over several of yours.

“My human soon.”

Could you attack him? Yes. But then he’d turn invisible and quiet and hide and you’d get in trouble, again. And the humans are already going to be angry about the puncture wounds in the pawrest. You resort to simply shooting out waves of progressively colder air until the pawrest starts to frost over. This eventually causes the fox to ripple the air around him and take up your form before jumping into the chair proper and curling up.

You keep pumping out cold, but eventually it makes you tired and you must stay awake. You stop, even if surrender hurts deep down in your stomach. Other Fox eventually falls asleep on his own. Because he doesn’t deserve Skysong.

*​

Just before moonset, you hear noise from the other side of the door. Your tails perk up and you glance to Other Fox. He’s still asleep, so you make sure to rise to your paws slowly, deliberately and quietly. And then you wait to see if Skysong will come out or not.

She does, eventually, with her cane in hand. She walks across the room, clicking the cane on the floor occasionally, and puts her hand on the opposite wall. You hear Other Fox stir beside you, so you take the opportunity to jump down regardless of noise and rush over to your human. You brush your tails against her ankle and purr.

She flinches and then keeps walking, her paw against the wall, like you aren’t even there. You don’t need to turn around to imagine Other Fox smirking at you, with an added taunt thrown in about your shared human. Eventually Skysong touches the door and, after a moment spent locating the handle, she opens it and steps outside. You follow.

Once the door is shut, Skysong leans back against the building. You notice that her overeyes are off and, in her real eyes, you can see little lines and streaks of red that you don’t think are supposed to be there in humans. And her skin is very cool to the touch and she looks paler than usual. And then she smells… off. It’s hard to place, but given the rest of your observations you suspect she’s sick.

She doesn’t say anything. You don’t either. But you do curl up beside her, making sure that one of your tails touches her leg right above the paw.

“It’s close to sunrise?”

You tense when you hear her voice and accidentally run your tail quickly against her leg before carefully putting it back.

“Yes.”

She doesn’t speak for a long enough time that you re-relax.

“You know I’m never going to leave you.”

You don’t know that. And her saying it doesn’t quite assuage you. Oaths are a very human thing. Vulpix rely on threats and self-interest. A ninetales will take what territory she can with the power she has. You know that about her and every other fox on the planet, and will keep that in mind when picking your territory. You will hunt what you can when you are hungry and you, your family and your prey understand this. There is no reason to pretend you will do something outside of your own interest because you obviously won’t.

Yet humans make and break oaths and other humans keep accepting them.

You bark agreement. It’s still a nice gesture, even if it isn’t in her interest and might not be in her power to keep it.

“I won’t leave you, but I think I need more security if there’s a cartel opposed to the show.”

You aren’t quite sure what the c-word means but you also aren’t sure if you want to ask her at this very moment. You understand her sentiment, though. Just when you think she has nothing more to say, she pushes off of the building and opens up the door again.

“There’s a trial in a few hours. Be ready.”

*​

The trial is equal parts boring and irritating. The humans just get some tiny lightboxes and start using them to capture the pictures of various bugs throughout the meadow. That’s the boring and inexplicable part (bugs aren’t photogenic so why do they get the pictures). Sometimes the ungrateful bugs even attack you for taking their picture, because they know they aren’t beautiful, but you take them all down easily. Dirtface and the snake occasionally help a little bit.

No, the irritating part is the meadow itself. All of the plants tower above you and some nearly reach over Skysong. And they’re all filled with bright yellow and very sticky fluff. The worst part is that however much gets stuck in your fur, there’s absolutely no point in taking the time to get it out. More would almost instantly take its place. So here you are, prancing around in the coat of an electric-type, trying to sniff out insects for no good reason.

The best thing about the trial is that it ends. They go back to the bug-loving human and show her the lightbox. She flicks her finger over it and eventually seems to be satisfied by the results. She pockets the brick and speaks:

“Come with me.”

You really, really like the place she takes the humans to. It’s a cave, which you never really liked exploring before because they’re dark, but this one is really, really cold (nearly Mountain cold) and it’s even wet-cold, which you think is better than dry-cold, and you can hear the bats moving in the side tunnels. You love bats. As a very young vulpix who could barely form a powder snow, you hung out by cave exits with your siblings and when the bats came out around moonrise you’d just fire cold pulses into the swarm until something got their wings locked up and froze and you could pounce them.

There is no time for pouncing bats today. Even if you think that would have made for a much better trial with actual skill involved.

Skysong doesn’t seem to like the wet-cold. She’s doing the thing that mammals do when you freeze and pounce them, where they start shivering and their body slows down (prey’s breath and heart rate typically shoot up when you pounce, but then they go down until they stop altogether and you can eat). You aren’t sure how to help her with that because you are a cold fox. Well, ok, you could reverse the chilling process and warm things. But it would be a very small warm in this cold and it would be very exhausting and you would need to eat at least a whole bat to recover.

If you walk back up through the cave, you might do it. Just for her. She might not abandon her portable warming fox.

Eventually the wet-cold gets less cold and more wet and salty, to the point where you can feel salt crystals mixing in with the pollen in your coat and… and you’re going to do your best not to think about that until you’ve earned a proper bath.

Gods of the peak, “a proper bath” is the good outcome here.

The bug-human stops and holds her arm out. You bark quietly and tell Skysong to stop, which she does. In front of you is a hole in the wall with horribly bright and warm sunshine radiating in. The smell and sound and feel of seawater also drifts in.

“The Kala’e Bay trial site is beyond this exit. Once outside, the use of pokéballs for capture is strictly forbidden. I can’t guarantee you’ll get any breaks to patch your pokémon up. Step outside when you’re ready, and be prepared to battle the meanest motherfucker you’ve fought so far.”

Earthseer steps forward and looks back at the other humans.

“You ready?”

“I guess so, yeah…” Snaketree says.

“Yes.”

Earthseer shrugs. “Well, let’s go meet a mean motherfucker.”

*​

You step outside and there are no incestuous opponents to be seen. Not that you understand the expression. If a cub procreated with his mother, the offspring would probably be sickly and deformed. A species with a tradition of mother-child pairings would likely be very easy to defeat.

There’s only a small strip of land jutting out into the ocean and a small stone column right at the edge of the sea. You step forward and you feel something radiating from the column. It’s… it feels like the Shrine of the Peak. The gathering place of the ninetales where territory is decided and new alphas are created. Your tails droop and you bow your head; you think this is sacred ground and you are not worthy to be here with your coat in disarray. If you would ever be worthy to stand here at all.

Dirtface makes no effort to humble or sanctify himself. Instead he just walks over and places a paw on the pillar, only to immediately withdraw it like it had stung him.

“The hell?”

You hear a buzzing noise far above you. At first it just sounds like a swarm of bees or flies, but then it gets louder than any swarm you’ve ever heard before. You look up and see a shadow descending from the heavens to protect the holy turf Dirtface disgraced. As it settles into view, you finally get a look at its form.

The creature is larger than Skysong and nearly as large as Snaketree. It’s shaped like a bee, sort of, but with smoother and more enlongated features and two proportionally tiny wings behind it that shouldn’t keep it aloft, but somehow manage. The buzzing becomes unbearable as it reaches the top of the pillar, the bottom of its paws resting upon it. You can feel the rippling of its wings move the air and see it beat new ripples into the water behind it. The agent of the gods gives one final shriek before leaping off of the pedestal and beginning the fight.

"Totem ribombee," Snaketree loud-whispers to Valentina.

…no. Not beginning the fight. Instead it simply zooms back upwards to a crack in the stone. You’re supposed to fight this thing? Really? You think Mother would struggle against it, and she’s an empowered messenger of the Night Queen. Before you can decide whether to fight or play dead, the bee zips back down with a red orb in its hand. Snake, somehow, is the fastest to react and spits out a thin bolt of thunder that causes your fur to stand on end due to proximity alone. That’s what finally gets you to snap out of it, drills into your head that this fight is real and your coat and pride are on the line.

The bee just adjusts its course a fraction of a degree and the bolt sails wide. Before you or any of the other pokémon can react and compensate, the bee is right above Dirtface and drops the orb down upon her. You thought it would be a blunt force attack, a way to deal lots of physical damage for a creature that couldn’t physically throw a punch or land a meaningful bite. No. Instead the orb instantly shatters upon impact like the thinnest of ice spheres upon contact and flames pour out, engulfing Dirtface in a burst of light brighter than the reflection of mid-day sunlight off of pure white snow. The light fades shortly after, but it leaves black marks running across the dog’s skin. You see her try to move and instantly cry out in pain.

"And Diana's burned. Flame orb trickery," Earthseer says for Skysong's benefit.

Maybe she can still fight, but she’s not going to be able to subject herself to the full-body tackles she used to take you out of the fight. And if Snaketree can’t fly up to constrict the bee and Dirtface is useless… that leaves you.

Before Skysong can get her bearings well-enough established to give a command, you draw upon the frost and moisture you’d absorbed into your pelt in the cave and spit it out through your mouth. The slushball flies through the air and, through some lucky stroke, hits the bee right in the face.

And it plummets. For a second. Then it shakes the slush off and turns to face you. Insect emotions are hard to read, but you’re pretty sure it’s furious. Just before you can face its wrath, another bolt arcs out and strikes the stationary bee dead on. It freezes, seizes up and falls into the strongest tackle Dirtface can give in her condition. You’re pretty sure it hurts the dog more than the bug, though.

You launch another slushball, not particularly caring that some of it hits your “ally” along with your enemy. Who knows, the cold water might help with her burn.

That seems to stir the bee from shock to anger. The buzzing picks up in intensity as the creature rises up out of tackle-reach again. Then the winds follow in a burst of air and music that flips Dirtface over and stings you far more than normal air should.

You recognize the aura behind the sting. Lunar energy. The blessing of the Night Queen. Are you supposed to fight her? If she’s been blessed… you find yourself staring off at the water, in part because of a wandering mind and in part because the wind stings and you don’t want your eyes facing it directly.

Water. You’re fighting this creature because Skysong, the daughter of a water goddess who had spoken to you personally (let’s ignore the content of that message), is asking you to slay this monster. And it is your duty as her guide fox and the daughter of a messenger of the gods to comply.

You spit another snowball into the wind and most of it blows back on to you and Skysong.

The wind stops. You turn your eyes to the bee and see that it’s struggling in midair as little sparks dance across its body. As another slush ball forms in your mouth, the bee gives off a cry so high-pitched that you immediately drop the attempt and lay flat on the ground, ears pressed against your head and tails covering yourself as much as possible. You see Dirtface do much the same in your peripheral vision, but her trainer seems entirely unbothered. Is he deaf? Because—

A pulse of seawater hits right above your muzzle and flattens your headfur.

You hear Dirtface and the snake re-engage while you shake yourself off and try to get the water off of your face before you open your eyes again. And then you shake yourself off again to verify what you’re seeing. There’s another pokémon on the bee’s side, this one being some sort of sea mammal with ridiculous fangs. It’s shooting out rings of water at Dirtface while she tries to avoid them, clearly hurting herself with the movements, while the snake has somehow gotten onto the bee and is doing his best to constrict it.

You consider which battle to engage in. Snowballs might knock out the snake, and right now that snake is in the best place it can be for doing damage. And the marine mammal’s blubber looks rather thick so there’s not much you can do there. Maybe join Dirtface and try to tail whip your opponent into humiliation?

You wind up sitting down on your haunches and doing nothing out of indecision. It’s definitely not going to endear you to Skysong but now you’re here and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to protect her or vanquish her enemies and, and maybe she’s right. Maybe the fox—

An impact rattles throughout the battlefield and you turn to look. The bee is dancing through the air quickly and erratically and then—

—and then she hits the cliff walls again in a full on tackle. This time the snake falls off.

Well. There’s your answer. You spit out another powder snow and nail it right in the thorax, but then the buzzing intensifies and the wind follows a second later. You bunker down and brace yourself, shifting your tails in front of your head so that the fur blocks some of the stinging solid moonlight from hitting your face, where it would hurt the most.

Well, second most, but that area’s protected by the base of your tails and the rest of your body.

All the stance really serves to do is get pollen and sea salt lodged inside your nose, forcing you to cough and stir up more pollen and eventually you have to whip your tails away just so you can breathe. You can’t attack through it. You have no idea how the marine mammal skirmish is going, but you know you can’t hurt the seal and you can’t imagine a rock-type is doing well against constant water pulses. There’s nothing you can do to hurt the bee and this wind and. You hear a giggle. Right beside you.

“You do our human proud…”

Something deep inside your stomach twists and breaks. You scream. And then you hear the cliffs and the ocean repeat your scream back and you scream louder, the high-pitch shriek filling your ears to the exclusion of all else. Time barely seems to matter and the pain goes away until the only thing you’re aware of is the vibration of your own voice.

You aren’t sure when you stop, just that one moment you’re screaming and the next you’re panting and shaking out your tails.

“What just happened?” Skysong asks.

“Your vulpix learned roar,” Snaketree answers.

“…did we win?”

You look up. Neither the water-type nor the bug are anywhere to be seen. Did you do it? Did you—no. You can hear buzzing in the distance as the bee rushes through the air over the water… only to spark up and fall in. It doesn’t sink, but its wings get stuck in the sea, beating furiously and helplessly as the insect’s body spreads out on the water’s surface and twitches. Then it starts moving, horizontally, as if the currents had just shifted in its favor. You spit out a powder snow but it goes wide. Before you or Dirtface can prepare another attack, the bee is pushed up on to land and the seal follows a moment later, spitting out a burst of white light in your direction. You roll to the side and the ball keeps moving until it hits the cliff, sputtering apart in a burst of sparks that cause your entire mane to puff up.

Forget the bug, you hate the seal. But there’s nothing you can do to hurt it and, you realize as the bee starts getting airborne again, there’s nothing Dirtface can do about the insect. That fight is hers, and this is yours. You spit out a pulse of snow and the bug just tanks it, unflinching. Its wings beat and you brace yourself for a wind that doesn’t come. Instead a shower of pollen shoots out and, despite your noblest attempts to run away, some of it gets stuck on your fur. And some of the spores get into your mouth. You tense up and trip as your muscles stop working.

With a great deal of effort, you reach your feet and your muscles lock up again. But this time it’s in a way that leaves you standing, but unable to do anything but stand. When you finally fight through it and move your head, the situation looks bleak. The seal is nowhere to be seen, hopefully unconscious or licking its wounds on the ocean floor, but Dirtface is coated in the same awful spores. You see the bug beat its wings again as the breeze start picking up.

Only one option. Whether it's bad or not.

You reach deep inside of you, feel your organs, and twist. The scream comes out again as you collapse to the ground from muscle spasms, but thankfully your voice is unaffected. As are your eyes. This time as the scream reaches its crescendo, you watch as the bee gets spooked and, in a moment of fear, bolts in the opposite direction. Into a cavewall. Just as you have to close your eyes to let the noise consume you, you see the bee tumble from the air.

When the world quiets, Dirtface is lying underneath the insect, both unmoving.

*​

Next time... Bittern Peak

 

[Ambyssin]

Lot of stuff going on here. Starts out with an intro to our trial captain, I think? It was certainly unexpected, if not a jab at the folks who rush toward the first challenge blindly without any sort of grinding. But it's very short and ultimately trivial compared to Pixie's attachment issues rearing up both with the healer and zorua. Like, as far as a rival could go for a little fox, this zorua seems pretty good. Playing up the stereotypes of his species as being a mean-spirited trickster and maybe bad touching with those tails? Hey, I can ship it. I also appreciate the clarification that Valentina is terrified of Team Skull because they bring to mind the cartels from where she grew up. That didn't click for me originally (I mean, I am an idiot), so it's nice to see that all line up and gives an added element to Valentina's need for another 'mon.

In the trial, you really continue to make Pixie's voice shine through here. From her annoyance and insulting of the bugs to her disgust at the yellow fuzz. However, her POV once again throws me off in terms of taking a very long time to come to the conclusion that the Toem is actually a Ribombee. I first thought Vikavolt, but then it's described as a bee, which makes me jump to Beedrill and Vespiquen, but then it drops some sort of flaming orb which makes me think of Volcarona instead. Maybe that was a pollen puff of some sort? I know I'm not a smart reader, but event just causally mentioning Ribombee's ugly scarf thingy (I'm sure Pixie would find it ugly) would've told me exactly what I needed. And that goes double for what I think is a Spheal? Maybe? Or I'm just an idiot.

Hooray for Pixie learning Roar in a pinch! I feel like I've seen that somewhere before. *cough* I like your furious description of it. And I also like the description of how the Stun Spores hit (and effect) Pixie. And actually using Roar to end the battle and (presumably) take out Dirftace in a somewhat humiliating fashion? 10/10, best ending to a battle ever. ^^

 

[Beth Pavell]

Coming back for Chapter One, and I think this demands more of a structured review.

Style
I'm never really sure exactly where I stand with narrative from a pokémon's perspective. When the narrative is sparse and/or terse, having "pokémon" terms for commonplace ideas quickly becomes confusing and doesn't always add much. I had to double-take in order to make sense of "Matriarch" as a human, for example. There are other times when I really wonder whether it's worth making up names - could you not simply say things like "lap" or "milk" the first time?

The flip side of this comment is that I think Pixie's view of the world is well-established enough that you don't really need a lot of it. We can tell from her inner monologue that she's not human, as much as from her actions.

Story
The whole thing reads like a deconstruction. None of this "Would like you be my friend! Yay! Now do you like the first name I give you? Yay!" business in this story. The supernatural human angle is something very Persephone, and one I'm not at all surprised to see, but I bet you could get the plot to work without it, if you wanted to. The story itself flows very well, given the length of the chapter (Though some kind of table of contents is really needed with reviews in between).

I've sometimes accused your stories of being cold before now, and this is another unsentimental plot - however, it must be owned that it is leavened somewhat by a sense of humour and (So far) a protagonist without a spiky shell.

Characters
I really like Pixie as a deconstruction. Well, not even that - you've taken canon information about vulpix and taken it seriously. Pixie is a selfish, prissy little bitch, and I kind of like how you haven't romanticised her just because she's a cute little fox. There was one moment that gave me pause:

You bolt to the door and start scratching it, barking loudly at whatever attacked Skysong and ensuring it that you will bring down the divine cold of the vulpix upon them—

which made me wonder whether a creature that self-centred would get that riled up, particularly given that she doesn't seem to have much of a sense of duty.

 

[Persephone]

@Beth Pavell

guidance began as a spinoff of iterations, and the magic angle originated there. If I was restarting now I'd probably ditch it, but it's just important enough to the plot without overshadowing it entirely that it's both possible to get rid of and very much inadvisable. So it's staying for now, just because reboots tend to kill stories in my experience.

I've started toning down Pixie-isms in recent chapters. I might go back and edit the early chapters to remove some of them. It's another thing that's on my to-do-list but towards the bottom.

Pixie has the benefit of her POV. From her perspective all of her actions and thoughts are perfectly justified. Readers can interpret her however they want. But, yes, I consider "prissy little bitch" as good a descriptor for her as any. She's very much a dog that isn't a "good dog," but is still good because she's a dog and cute. Well, not a dog. She's not domesticated. She would object to being called tame. It's part of why her behavior isn't always great.

Glad you're reading it! Thank you for the review.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Context: I didn't read any of your responses to ... well, I'm going to call it an interlude. It could stand to be better labelled. It's not clear whether it's part of the story or not, without a proper title.

Admittedly the dialogue is all that really matters in this scene, but with five participants I had to keep checking back to see who was who and what role they played. The character's dialogue could stand to signal who they are more strongly, in general, since their voices are very similar. That being said, the dialogue did ring true enough for me to believe that they were actually discussing a modern reality TV show, where the producers start with the story they want and manipulate the contestants to get to it.

I was a bit surprised that they weren't more unscrupulous, actually, given what I've come to expect from your writing. I had assumed that Freeman would be shouted down over concerns of duty of care, etc, but as it turned out the impression was of a harmonious roundtable. Good, bad, I don't know, as a fallback position I'm going to say that avoiding the obvious isn't a bad idea.

 

[Persephone]

Production Roundtable #2: April 11

Participants

Kenneth Weiss, Executive Producer and Host of Lanakila Dreams, (Host)
Asuka Mahi’ai, Director of the Alolan Service Pokémon Institute, (Trainer)
Dr. Eliza Freeman, Child Psychologist, (Psychologist)
Haru Sasaki, Head of Wardrobe Department, longtime crew member, (Wardrobe)
Hawk Evans, Host of Roughing it with Hawk Evans, (Wilderness)
Robert North, Security Consultant, (Security)


Weiss (Host): A fair bit has happened since we last spoke and we’ve added a new face to the roundtable. I think most of you have met him but, Rob, would you mind introducing yourself?

North (Security): Hey, everyone. I’m Rob. I work for Alolan Security Consultants.

Weiss (Host): Would you mind briefing us on the Team Skull situation?

North (Security): Sure. The skulls are cowards. Now that you’re guarded they won’t go out of there way to bother you. Things should be safe for the time being.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Safe enough to let the contestants split up?

North (Security): They’d need an individual guard following each of them full-time. Not for the regular skulls, your people could handle that, but toss in Plumeria plus a couple skulls and there might be trouble. I saw the video from Iki Town and that was her using one pokémon, holding back. If she went all out you’d need a professional to stop her. Maybe Miss Mahi’ai could, but no one else I’ve seen around.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): And what would be the cost of more guards?

Weiss (Host): We’d have to cut the budget back on supplies, contests and cameos, but we could afford it.

Evans (Wilderness): I’ve been reading up on the skulls and their leader, the Guzma fellow, he sounds like he could pack a punch.

North (Security): He’s on probation. The police are surveilling him and we have our own investigators making sure he doesn’t step out of line. It looks like he’s being a model ex-criminal for now.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): If that’s settled, can we move on?

Weiss (Host): Of course. Is there anything you want to talk about, in particular?

Mahi’ai (Trainer): What, exactly, is wrong with Valentina?

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Now, now. Let’s not be racist—

Mahi’ai (Trainer): Haru, please shut the fuck up.

Freeman (Psychologist): She’s come down with a head cold. She’ll be allowed to leave in a few days, carry weight again in a week.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): Two things, there. One: the nurse said she was out for a long time, and she has an existing brain injury. I’m not a doctor but one and two together are worrying.

Evans (Wilderness): Brain injury?

Mahi’ai (Trainer): Ugh. How does HIPPA work on this?

Weiss (Host): I’m technically her guardian right now. I can share her file with anyone I want.

Evans (Wilderness): And do you have it on you? Because that sounds really concerning.

Weiss (Host): I don’t, I’m afraid. Asuka, you seemed to know the particulars.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): I really don’t.

Weiss (Host): Dr. Freeman?

Freeman (Psychologist): She has cortical blindness from childhood head trauma.

North (Security): Which means?

Freeman (Psychologist): She suffered brain damage due to a hit to the back of her head. Valentina’s eyes work fine but her brain can’t process the input well. She’s reported other symptoms of…

Dr. Freeman checks her phone.

Freeman (Psychologist): Nausea, dizziness, and headaches when she tries to focus too much on her vision or if the environment is too confusing. I suppose it’s possible her collapse is related to that; blood loss to the brain certainly can’t help her. But she says that this sort of thing has happened before and she has documented hypotension so it’s more likely related to that. She needs a full examination once she gets back in Hau’oli, but the nurse has given her the go-ahead to proceed for now.

Evans (Wilderness): So… she can see, but she just doesn’t like doing it? That doesn’t sound like ‘blind’ to me.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): She told me she can see color and some movement. Some tunnel vision when she really tries, but she hates doing it. Near total vision loss at night. She definitely meets the legal standard for blindness.

Evans (Wilderness): But she needs braille?

Mahi’ai (Trainer): She could probably work through print eventually on a good day if the text was big enough but, look, not the point. Can we talk about why she collapsed sobbing into my arms? The nurse said something about mental health problems and that’s almost as concerning to me as the brain injury.

Freeman (Psychologist): Confidential.

North (Security): And Weiss can’t just wave his arms and unseal those records?

Freeman (Psychologist): No.

North (Security): Damn.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): Fine, but, Dr. Freeman, where have you even been?

Freeman (Psychologist): Sinnoh.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): Why?

Freeman (Psychologist): Another patient of mine.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): And I take it that’s confidential?

Freeman (Psychologist): Yes.

Evans (Wilderness): I also have concerns. She seems… troubled. Like there’s always something hanging over her head.

Freeman (Psychologist): The examining nurse, with my consultation, decided that she could continue to travel.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): And we’re not going to get any more information out of you?

Freeman (Psychologist): She would be dealing with her issues whether or not she was on the journey. Valentina has said multiple times she would like to continue.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): She’s a kid with a brain injury. You think we can really expect her to know what’s best?

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Where would she go?

Mahi’ai (Trainer): Hmm?

Sasaki (Wardrobe): She’s a recent refugee with no relatives in the country. She’s not quite fluent in the native language and her only friends here are also on this show. If we kick her out, what happens to her? Sure, she’s a child, but the decision she’s making is a very rational one.

Weiss (Host): Are there any other questions about Valentina’s situation?

Freeman (Psychologist): It’s not a question, but a statement: I’m a little peeved that you aired Kekoa’s remarks on Valentina context-free without consulting me first. It unnecessarily torpedoed the relationship and she needs all of the emotional connections she can right now.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): There was a point to that.

Freeman (Psychologist): Oh?

Sasaki (Wardrobe): I think that’s a good segue into cast dynamics.

North (Security): Wait. Before we move on, you all are aware of the trial captain situation, right?

Mahi’ai (Trainer): Yes.

Evans (Wardrobe): No.

North (Security): Ok. Illmia’s retiring. His replacement’s already been picked and she’s setting up her trial at Ten Carat Hill right now. Might be a few weeks before she’ll take challengers, though, and the kahuna’s still requiring two trials since the delay won’t be very long.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Then maybe we shouldn’t go directly into the individual cast members. Rather, should they split up or not?

Weiss (Host): I take it that you have thoughts on the subject.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Of course. I think they should stay together until the end of the island. Not only for cost reasons, but because it allows for them to really bounce off of each other for a longer period than usual. Makes the friendships and rivalries more satisfying to watch.

Evans (Wilderness): But splitting off reduces their time under cameras. I think Valentina will take the option to leave.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Will she, though? She’s a very practical girl who knows how little her money on hand will last her after buying her own supplies. Is it enough to get her through the weeks until the new trial opens up? Maybe. But she’s cautious and responsible so I doubt she’ll break off and face a whole new world alone and blind.

North (Security): She would have at least one guard with her.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Doesn’t strike me as the type of girl to be fond of large, armed men constantly around her.

North (Security): Are you implying we’d do something to her?

Sasaki (Wardrobe): No. Just that she might think you would. There’s a streak of paranoia in her. All she’d need is someone to whisper the right words in her ear and her mind would do the rest.

Evans (Wilderness): I think you might be forgetting that she isn’t big on Kekoa right now.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Don’t blind people have great ears or something? Just have her “accidentally” overhear some intern or whatever say, “He just said what everyone else was thinking.” She’ll stop hating him quite so much.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): That can’t be good for her self esteem.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): It’s reality television, sweetheart. I don’t know what you were expecting.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): You said there are strict laws in place.

Freeman (Psychologist): There are. The proposed action probably doesn’t violate them.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): You’ve got to be shitting me.

Freeman (Psychologist): Afraid not.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): Don’t you have an oath or something not to do things like this?

Freeman (Psychologist): If I became aware of ongoing or potential child abuse I would have to report it.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): And wrecking a kid’s self worth doesn’t count?

Freeman (Psychologist): I don’t think Sasaki’s proposal is technically child abuse.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): What would?

Freeman (Psychologist): Starvation, serious preventable illness, unreasonable risk of injury, directly inflicted injury, sexual abuse or particularly egregious mental harm. Even if it’s legal, can we not intentionally hurt her right now? She’s… fragile isn’t the proper word. Stressed, I suppose.

Evans (Wilderness): I don’t think she’s capable of being alone at this point. I’ll tell her that directly if need be.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): If that’s wrapped up, Genesis will have to stay with the group. Kekoa won the polling; vulpix crushes dratini; Genesis is going to be losing out on prize rights. She might be out of funds for a long time and she can’t afford to waste her money on gear. Kekoa can easily be shamed into keeping the girls around so they still have access to the gear. They will remain together and we can talk about character dynamics as such.

Weiss (Host): We designated Genesis as the protagonist last time. Let’s start with her. Her polling was mixed. Almost no one had strong opinions on her. Kekoa and Valentina were both polarizing and, to some degree, unlikeable, so she definitely has the most room for her numbers to expand.

North (Security): I know I’ve only been here for a few days, but if I may?

Weiss (Host): Go ahead. You are an equal participant here.

North (Security): Thank you. She seems awkward, closed-off, nonconfrontational—a little bit scared. I think you’d need to coach her on how to be a hero if you wanted to frame her as one.

Evans (Wilderness): I think you just described half of early teenagers.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): And Kekoa is the other half.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): I think we made several miscalculations about her last time. She hasn’t been rushing to preach, she’s barely mentioned her family and she hasn’t said anything at all to Valentina about her heritage. The reason we couldn’t find anything to say about her is because we were going for an angle that almost doesn’t exist.

Weiss (Host): I take it you have a replacement in mind?

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Of course I do. She has a classic quest for identity in the works. She clearly isn’t everything her parents wanted, but there isn’t much else there yet. At least, that we’ve shown. We either nurture another side or gradually reveal it. And, given the Illmia development and her loss this round, we can add in a subplot about a rich girl learning how the working class live. Point her to little jobs she can take to get money. Doesn’t matter if they’re real or not so long as she thinks they are. She’s a good girl; she’ll want to help out. Won’t take too much prodding.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): Her parents are going to hate that.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Enough to withdraw?

Mahi’ai (Trainer): Have you ever met them in person?

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Is that a “yes?”

Weiss (Host): There would be consequences for them if they void the contract. I still wouldn’t make the independence plot explicit. Let’s go with the working class one for now. Let’s move on to Kekoa.

North (Security): Once again, only been here a few days, but he really looked like a dick in the first episode. He’s not that bad in person, but as far as the audience can tell…

Weiss (Host): Interesting that you think that. He had reasonably high popularity among men, rather low popularity among women. Valentina had nearly the opposite dynamic. But our viewership skews male and men like him more than women like Valentina, so he carried the round.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): I want to switch him to protagonist.

Evans (Wilderness): The other two hate him.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Sure. He started the show with a big, colossal, character-defining fuck up. That’s the inciting incident of his arc. Now he has to spend the rest of the time he’s forced into close proximity trying to make it up to the girls and, at least as far as the audience can tell, changing into a better person. Audiences love unlikeable men who get changed by the girls around them.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): And if he doesn’t get forgiven?

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Most viewers will see the girls as stuck-up bitches and come to root for him anyway. Either way, he gets sympathy points.

North (Security): Thank the gods for sexism.

Freeman (Psychologist): He is remorseful and the remarks were made either in a different context than that shown or out of ignorance. I don’t think you would have to fake the redemption arc.

Weiss (Host): I’ll consider it. Now, then, we’ve already talked about her a bit, but: Valentina. Dr. Freeman, how soon do you think we can start putting her near the spotlight?

Freeman (Psychologist): I don’t know. I’d give her three days with almost no cameras, a week with very few and then another week where she isn’t in the spotlight. Things might progress in such a way that she needs more or less time than that, though.

Evans (Wilderness): Let the girl have her rest.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): We’re going to have a very long round this time. I agree she should have rest; audiences adore it when it looks like we’re going out of our way to respect the contestants. Still, I think we should think ahead about what we can do with her near the end of the round.

North (Security): I don’t know what you’d already decided upon for her, but she seems both nice and vulnerable. Maybe she could be a sort of foil for the other two, where they protect her and she tries to help them through their problems? It lets the other two keep the spotlight while still giving her some reason to be here.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): I like the way you think.

Freeman (Psychologist): Our sessions are already quite full, but if we were allowed to meet more frequently I could work with her on tips for helping other people. Serving as a field therapist of sorts.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): Is she really up for taking on other people’s problems on top of her own?

Freeman (Psychologist): I think she already does that without our prompting.

Weiss (Host): I think I will continue to consult with Dr. Freeman on the matter and slowly adjust our approach mid-round. I’m going to let this one run for a full thirty days with low rewards so that even if the new trial opens up quickly they won’t feel compelled to rush towards the grand trial. I don’t think any of them would fare well in that at this point.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): I would try and get them all to pick up new team members. I’ve been trying but so far they’ve all seemed a little hesitant.

Evans (Wilderness): That happened last season.

North (Security): What’d you end up doing?

Weiss (Host): We used our cameo budget to set up situations where they felt obligated to accept a new pokémon. Upside is that we can control their teams a little bit, angle for ‘mons that are either popular or reinforce the branding. If the dry spell in captures persists we can resort to that. For now I suggest we just encourage them to get more pokémon on their own. Special event pokémon tend to draw attention away from the starters, and we want to focus our marketing upon them right now.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): If I could pull in, with no cost, a pokémon that I think would be accepted and good for a contestant, could I do that?

Weiss (Host): What do you have in mind?

Mahi’ai (Trainer): A guide pokémon that I trained that never wound up getting used. I’d have to talk to her current owner, but I think she could be good for Valentina.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): Is the ‘mon at least cute? Pixie, for all of her flaws, is cute.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): She’s cute and has a rather strong personality.

Sasaki (Wardrobe): I am entirely fine with this development.

Mahi’ai (Trainer): Once again, don’t get your hopes up.

Weiss (Host): I think that wraps things up for the night. Thank you all for coming.

 

[Ambyssin]

Okay, this time I put the titles of each person into my review notes so I could keep track of who's who. I admit that, since we're going mostly from Pixie's perspective and not using actual human names, I did struggle keeping up with the different people in the first roundtable, since I was used to Pixie's declarations.

I'm not really sure I have too much to say to this. If I'm reading titles right that Mahi'ai is Matriarch, yes? In which case, wow, you somehow managed to make her even more of an asshole than Pixie portrayed her as, which I think is impressive in a twisted sort of way. I was not expecting someone who handles service pokémon to be so crass. Not to mention the shade thrown at Valentina. We know her issue with Team Skull resembling cartels, but they don't and Dr. Freeman (who seems like the typical stone-faced medical doctor) isn't going to say anything.

The favorability ratings and comparisons feel extremely meta to me. It's almost like these characters are kind of saying how your average reader is viewing each othe kids at this stage. Because I more or less agreed with some of the basics, Kekoa's an ass, Valentina's a wreck, and Genesis is just... there. If I had to go and make a prediction, I'll say that I think the group's plans to make Kekoa into a likable guy are going to fall rather flat on their face and end up accentuating the good qualities of Valentina and Genesis more. Either that, or he's totally going to play along for the sake of the game, but be even worse to the girls when he thinks he can get away with it. Either way, I'm interested.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Hmm, I thought this was one of the fics I was more caught up on reviewing for. Oops. ._.

Anyway, Pixie's stubborn conceited self is still somehow as adorable as ever to read. I say somehow because those feel like traits of an unlikeable character and they're present the most. But the way she clings to Valentina and is protective of her and views the world in all sorts of colorful terms really brings her narration to life and connects me as the reader to her.

I will say it gets a bit much for me, trying to remember what all the terms refer to, but it's not impossible to follow along with and get the gist of things. I just have a bad memory; large pokémon casts with nicknames versus species names are the same for me. But I might suggest a small key to reference regardless? And/or more references in narration itself?

I feel bad for Valentina, given her situation. We talked about it in PM, but I can still really see how badly effected she is, even in the second roundtable interview when she's not even present. It's good to see she's got some staff sticking up for her amidst the crowd just wanting to watch a reality TV show. I'm rather surprised, though, that they're allowed to "hurt" them, just not kill them, whether it's through lack of financials or whatever. I can't imagine that passing an ethics committee in a region where kids get to travel with powerful monsters... or perhaps it's because kids are allowed to travel with powerful monsters that the ethics committee has some low ass standards.

Probably my favorite interaction with Pixie and Valentina is them having a mutual understanding of Pixie not wanting Valentina to betray/abandon her. Of course the zorua's gonna complicate that a bit, but the scene where Valentina promises she's not leaving but has to add to the team regardless is sweet. Pixie may not believe her, really, but who can blame her for not trusting anybody?

Your portrayal of the trial was great, too. From Pixie's POV, it's hilarious. The battle itself felt a tad melodramatic at parts, but overall I like your interpretation of roar and the zorua hijinks. It also felt a tad off to me that Pixie appeared to compare Valentina to prey with the whole pouncing part, but I still can't exactly place why.

Unsure of what to think of Genesis and Kekoa. The latter, I just haven't seen much of, but I'm sure I will soon-ish, especially if they're aiming to mark him the star of the show. Genesis's POV was a nice touch, but if it's not a recurring thing, switching POVs, might feel massively out of place later on and appear to have been only done for convenience's sake.

I think that's all I got. Do let me know if my memory's failed me on some of these points. And, as usual, I'm looking forward to moar Pixie shenanigans. :3

 

[Persephone]

There's an updated cast page on my blog.

Chapter Three: Bittern Peak
Part 1: Kukui

The conversation always starts simply enough. Your Ph.D in Pokémon Studies comes up. They are suitably impressed and ask: What do you study? You say: Moves.

What follows is predictable, too. Their face shifts down into some mix of pity, scorn and disbelief. And you get it: Pokémon Studies encompasses extraterrestrial biology, regeneration of lost limbs within a week’s time (sometimes much less), invasive species, and husbandry of species domestic and exotic. Steven Stone did his rather famous dissertation on the taming of metagross, setting a whole new bar for pokémon research. Yours was on primarina songs. They’re incredibly fascinating, but you don’t have an alien spider capable of shredding buildings to show for it.

That’s why the average trainer, the sportsmen, are unimpressed. The academics hear you say the word “moves” and assume you’re just a slightly more educated sportsman. Which might be true. You were a trainer before you were a researcher and you’re pretty sure your team could wipe out anyone else’s at the last seven conferences you went to. (Dr. Stone had been at the one before that.)

Yet pokémon moves seem to be a field that no one’s studied because everyone thinks that everything is known. Truth is, you’re pretty sure that no one knows anything.

There are two types of moves: innate and conditioned. Innate moves are tricks and powers that pokémon have based on their anatomy. Even if they break known physics a little bit to pull it off, there’s at least a clear organ doing the physics-breaking and an evolutionary purpose for it. Ninetales blizzards, snorlax body slams, primarina songs, magnezone thunderbolts.

Conditioned moves don’t seem to have any clear causation but some pokémon can use them anyway. Sometimes even almost all members of a species can use a trick they shouldn’t be able to pull off. Lycanroc stone edges are the conditioned moves you’ve studied the most. Weird thing is, conditioned moves seem to look the same across species. A machamp raised in Johto will use stone edge about the same way as a lycanroc that’s never left Alola. Dr. Michael Esprit and his daughter proved that most pokémon use roughly the same brain patterns for conditioned moves, even if their nervous systems are radically different.

That’s the scientific background on moves. Truth is, you’re also quite fond of the practical application of them. You think that movepools can predict a battle’s winner more reliably than experience or skill can. That goes triple for low-level battles where movepools are shallow enough that it’s hard to improvise.

Take today’s battle: an Alolan vulpix against a dratini. One trainer’s literally blind and she’s not giving any commands, but that barely even matters. Dratini led off with a thunder wave, which is one of the more useful utility moves. Slows down a single opponent and makes stalling them viable since eventually you will get a free turn to exploit. Also knocks most birds right out of the air.

Unfortunately, dratini doesn’t have another good move to capitalize on the opening. It slithers forwards to use wrap (you suspect that’s an innate move, but all wraps look about the same to you and you’ve never done much research on dragons). Wrap + Thunder Wave would ordinarily be a pretty good combination, but vulpix also has two moves and both are very good counters to the strategy. Powder snow snipes dratini once or twice as it approaches. But even if dratini starts to constrict vulpix, which appears to be its only way of doing damage, then vulpix can just rely upon her innate talent to freeze the air around her. That forces dratini off, or at least hurts it more than its hurting vulpix. Herps, especially dragons, hate weaponized cold. Type-advantage isn’t really a thing, at least not to the degree the average trainer thinks it is, but anatomic weaknesses are very real. Even if the dratini stayed on, you’re pretty sure vulpix has roar. You’ve done field work on vulpix (and raised a ninetales of your own) and most juveniles with a branching seventh tail know roar (or, at least, will learn roar if they’re ever stressed enough to need it – another thing no one quite understands). Roar can force the dratini off and stop it from doing damage. It’ll slither forwards, get hit with another powder snow or two, repeat.

There was only ever one outcome once you knew the species and the moves. Maybe if both pokémon were more experienced dratini could’ve mixed in projectile attacks and kept things interesting—maybe fire attacks could be used to melt the ice enough to create a slippery battlefield, helping out the mostly-aquatic herp. On balance, a more experienced vulpix could start throwing confuse ray and disable around to disrupt complex plans, bringing things back to pure type-advantage. But a dratini with substitute could avoid most of the disruption in turn. But icy wind would hit broad and hard enough to negate substitutes, unless the vulpix knew ice shard instead which would allow for fast strikes before substitutes formed. Agility on either side could make it harder to land projectiles and—

*​

You can appreciate the theatrics of the scene. The last glimmers of the sunset reflected over the water fifty feet below. Tiki torches lining a circle with a small, smoldering fire at its center. Four people sitting around it. Genesis is crouched awkwardly on a tripod trying to figure out what to do with her legs. The boy has a nicer leaning chair-type contraption (note to self: learn formal name) and is tipping himself almost perilously far back in it. The other girl is just sitting on the ground like the cold, hard earth doesn’t bother her at all. It apparently bothers her vulpix as she’s being quite particular about not letting any part of her body fall off her trainer’s lap and on to the ground.

And then there’s Weiss. Thank the gods he’s not pretentious enough to wear a suit in a situation like this. It was the one thing that dampened his star as a kid when you religiously watched every episode and rerun of the show back when it was still on PBS. Before privatization and Kanto and the subsequent renationalization.

Weiss is still a little overdressed with a fleece vest and a button up that has to be way too hot to tolerate, day or night. Doesn’t seem to bother him, though. He keeps up a friendly smile and leans slightly forward on his stool. It’s a good habit for working with kids. Never, ever let them think that any part of the journey sucks, because then it’ll get in their head and you’ve lost them, maybe for good.

There’s a gaggle of cameramen and boom operators and spectators around the scene, all trying to stay just out of the shot. You’re standing next to Asuka, your fellow Route 1 researcher. She’s been avoiding you all day, lurking in the wings of every space with an ever-present glower. Asuka’s bad with kids. Human kids, anyway. Best you’ve ever seen with kittens.

Weiss clears his throat, waits a few seconds and speaks. “This will go about the same as last time back in Iki Town. I’ll say some things you already know and then tell you a few things you don’t. How long the round is, what you have to win or lose, any rules changes. Any questions before we start? I think the crew will need another minute to set things up.”

None of the kids respond verbally. Genesis crosses her legs and shoves her clasped hands down between them. Nervousness? You’d swear Valentina was asleep if it wasn’t for her hand occasionally moving to stroke her vulpix. Impossible to tell if her eyes are open behind her glasses. Would that even mean anything? Do blind people just keep their eyes closed all the time? Or sleep with their eyes open? Kekoa leans forward a little bit and balances the chair. He seems the most likely to speak but in the end he doesn’t. Weiss lets the question die in the evening air.

“Ready to film.”

Weiss looks back at the cameraman and flashes a thumbs up.

“You kids ready?”

He gets a half-hearted yeah and mmm-hmm.

“Valentina, you ready?”

She perks up and her vulpix flicks a tail against her chest. “I said yes.”

“Alright. Just didn’t hear it. Let’s begin in three, two, one.

“It’s the end of day twelve, start of Round 2. That means that the tutorial phase is over and you’re free to split up and head out on your own if you’d like. And, while it’s not exactly a rule change, something happened you should know about. Captain Illima is stepping down. A new captain will take his place in the next few weeks. To give both you and her time to prepare for the trial, Round 2 will run through the end of Day 41. That gives you a full thirty days from the end of Round 1 until the rules and prizes will change on you. Oh, and while you’re allowed to split up, I ask that you stay on Melemele for now. Wouldn’t do to take things too fast.

“Now, prizes. We’re taking the reward for winning a trial or grand trial all the way down to $100 for now. Another incentive to take things slow. The big prize and punishment will be entirely up to the audience at home. After Episode 5 airs on Day 35, we’ll run another poll. Whoever comes on top wins the round. Whoever comes on bottom, loses. You all have different prizes to gain should you win. Kekoa, you will win a Mega Stone. They’re not popular in Alola and you’ll need a much higher license to use it, but it will be another power-up at your disposal. Genesis, you will be freed from the restriction imposed at the end of this round. Valentina, you’ll win a Z-Ring, same as last time.

“If you lose, you all face the same consequence: no Pokémon Center stays. And before you ask, no, that doesn’t apply to your pokémon. Just you. It means that if you want to spend a night in the great indoors you’ll need to fork over the cash. And since cash isn’t going to be freely flowing this round, that could be a pain at the start of the next one. Now, if you win a challenge this round you can just hand over that prize and the round winner will receive that instead of what they could win. Genesis, prizes held in trust will count for preventing a loss and the winner will receive it immediately. But you’d have to wait to get the one passed your way.

“Now, any further questions?”

The kids shift a little bit as the monologue ends. Valentina leans back and braces herself with her hands. Genesis uncrosses her legs. Kekoa leans forward into a less relaxed position.

“That’s a long time without a shot at prize money,” Kekoa notes.

Weiss cracks the same smile he’s worn for over two decades.

“Get a job, kid.”

*​

Just as you reach the Pokémon Center, Kekoa steps out into the morning air. He has a leash in hand with his rockruff on the other end of it, pulling a little bit harder than she probably should. Rockruff aren’t exactly the tamest canines in Alola and nowhere near the calmest. You’d have personally gone with lillipup as a service dog, but you trust Asuka’s methods.

“Hey,” you call out and wave your arm. Not like he’d really miss the 6’ guy wearing shorts and a lab coat.

“Hey,” he responds. A man with a handheld camera steps out of the Pokémon Center during the awkward pause. Huh. You hadn’t figured they’d film him literally walking his dog, but you suppose that as a kid it was the mundane husbandry parts that you liked the most, and that means they have to film mundane husbandry.

You smile. “Mind if I join you on your walk?”

He shrugs. “Sure.”

You follow him down the path. It winds through the small grove by the Pokémon Center and off towards the cliffs. The path itself is hard stone, polished down by weathering or man. The majority of Bittern Peak Commonwealth Park is weathered rock surfaces for ecology reasons you aren’t sure you’ll ever really understand. Something about wind, rain and mountains.

The government makes a point of keeping the paths near the bay smooth for tourists. Not that there are any now. Not quite tourism season and the island challenge season won’t start for another few weeks. It’s pretty empty now beyond a few people by the guardrails talking and taking pictures. Probably just Hau’oli residents out for a quick getaway.

“I’ve trained a few rockruff before, y’know?”

“It’s not that hard.”

“Actually, rockruff are very hard. Part of their typing.”

Kekoa groans and you suppress a smile. If the kids think you’re uncool, that makes them feel a little bit cooler. And they need the self-confidence boost more than you do.

“I know that. Makes her hard to pet.”

“So, you do want my advice?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Now you smile for real. “’course you didn’t. But if you did, their ears aren’t too hard and have a little hair on them. Best place to scratch. Never pet from head to back, as that means running your hand over the collar.”

He doesn’t answer for long enough that you move your gaze away from him and back to the bay.

“Thanks.”

“No problemo. Anything else you don’t want advice about?”

Kekoa kicks a pebble. Away from the cliffs, thankfully. Could be dangerous if there was anyone down there, unlikely as that is at this point of the day and year.

“How do I get a higher license?”

“Get ready to read a lot more. It’ll be about the same as your Class I exam, just with harder questions. Some specifics for random species that need a Class II. Why they’re classified like that, how you care for them, all that. Those’ll really only be for the common ones. Some more difficult questions about protected habitats, battling rules, training methods for whole classes like insects or birds. Asuka can give you more detailed information. Might be worth getting a Class II and starting your Class III while you have some downtime.”

“Yeah. I was thinking about putting most of my time into that and just coasting on Diana for a while if I have to fight. Go into Akala able to catch the good stuff.”

“Not sure I’d go against Hala with only a rock-type.”

He frowns and averts his gaze. “…I’m figuring that out.”

“Bunch of migratory birds in the park this time of year. Bittern peak, the rookeries, the meadow, even the caves all have flying-types. The birds have babies, too, some of which are Class I. Or there are some shorebirds around here if you’re more into that.”

“Like?”

“Delibird, spearow, wingull, psyduck, pikipek and zubat are all Class I. Vullaby, oricorio, hawlucha, noibat and rufflet are all Class II if you want to hang around Route 3 for a while longer. I’d recommend any of the Class IIs, pikipek or the bats. Psyduck can work out if you’re very patient, though.”

Kekoa steps up to the guardrail and leans forward on it. You can’t see his expressions like that but aren’t sure whether you should step forward yourself or not.

“Could I catch a delibird and then just adopt it out after the grand trial?”

Yup. You’re going to step forward.

“It’s legal. It’d work. But if you’re trying to patch up your image, it might not go over well. Feels wrong to tear a pokémon away from its current life just to throw it away a few weeks later.”

He looks at you. You can tell he was going to glare but caught himself just before it came out, making his eyes cast mixed signals. He tears his gaze away almost as quickly as he established it.

“Yeah. I guess.” He pauses for almost a full minute and begins drumming his fingers on the metal. “Messed that up. Never thought they’d put it on camera.”

You gently push yourself off the rail, walk over and put a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re thirteen. You made a mistake. It’s part of growing up. Just apologize and then act like you meant it until everyone forgives or forgets. Trust me, better in the long run.”

Kekoa steps back and glares at the camera.

“They’re going to televise that, too. They want us to, I dunno, bond with each other, but then they go and make that impossible. Only thing we can afford to be honest about are our pokémon.”

You’d never really thought about that in decades of watching the show. How airing live and letting viewers affect things in almost real time, the exciting parts of the show, would affect the people on it. The people your age at first.

“They give you a therapist, right?”

“Yeah. She was gone when the episode aired, got back two days ago…”

“I think that’s your safe place to vent. I wouldn’t get in a habit of trash talking your teammates anyway. It feels good in the short term but it doesn’t solve anything.”

Kekoa starts walking forward and his rockruff almost immediately pulls the leash taut again.

“I’ll think about it.”

It’s a start.

*​

You find Genesis at the trial site. She’s sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed by the water. There’s a cameraman standing silently at the clearing’s edge.

You aren’t sure if it’s rude or profane to break her meditation. Thankfully she hears your steps and turns around on her own.

“Oh! Hi, professor. Sorry I didn’t approach you yesterday but everything was kinda stressful and—”

You dismiss her with a wave of your hand.

“You’re busy. I understand. You don’t have to apologize about it.”

“Sorry.”

You smile and begin to fold your legs so you can sit down. The stone is damp and still cold from the morning air and the breath of Seaward Cave.

“So how have you been?”

“Ok. Um, the show’s… progressing. Won a trial two days ago, (lost a battle yesterday, she mutters), Joshua’s fine… oh, and thank you for the help studying. For him. I appreciate it.”

The dratini pokes his head above the water’s surface at the mention of his name and swims to the edge before hauling himself up and slithering over to Genesis. You aren’t terribly familiar with snakes and the ripple of his muscles beneath is skin is equal parts fascinating and primally unnerving.

“He seems to like you.”

“He certainly likes crawling on me.”

“I think that means affection.” You glance back at the cameraman. The question you want to ask, how she’s feeling rather than how the quest is going, might not be fair to ask her when the answer could very well end up on a television screen in her parent’s living room. Kekoa and Valentina at least don’t have to worry about that specific problem, morbid as that advantage may be. “I actually wanted to talk about your license.”

“Is something wrong?”

You shake your head.

“No. Opposite, really. The other two have a Class I license right now, which is lower than I’d like. I typically encourage new trainers to have at least a Class II when they set out, but most just get the one they need for their starter. I’m asking them to study while there’s downtime, but you don’t really have to. Class III is perfectly normal for finishing the entire island challenge. So, we can talk about new pokémon.”

Genesis fidgets and her dratini tightens his grip.

“Assuming you want new pokémon.”

“What’s the new captain’s deal?” She asks the question and then immediately frowns. “That could’ve been worded better.”

You ignore the apology.

“Her name’s Lucy. She’s a psychic specialist who’s going to run her trial out of Ten Carat Hill. Just finished her island challenge a few months ago.”

Genesis bites her lip. “And we won’t have the option of challenging together?”

“Probably not. But there’s always a chance she goes along with it.”

“Then I guess I should pick up a dark-type.”

“That was going to be my advice.”

Genesis leans back and spreads her arms out to catch her weight. Dratini nearly slips off but adjusts himself at the last moment before anything but the tip of his tail can hit the ground.

“I’m not from Melemele. What dark-types are there here?”

“Well, if you’re staying in the area I’d recommend picking up a vullaby. It’s easiest to stick to one general type of pokémon so you don’t have to think of new strategies for every team member, can reuse TMs and don’t have to manage six radically different care styles. And flying is one of the best types to specialize in. Mandibuzz are really bulky to go with your eventual dragonite, and fly stall is one of the best styles. Downside? Vullaby take forever to really grow up. Maybe longer than the island challenge to evolve. So, combined with dratini…”

“I would be at a disadvantage until the very, very end?”

“Pretty much.”

She sighs and sits back up. Slowly enough that dratini can roll with the movement.

“Any other dark-types?”

“Of course. There are probably inkay right here in the bay at this time of year. Hypnotists and tech fighters, but malamar can pack a punch when used properly.”

“Can I really hypnotize psychics, though?”

“Maybe not. You’d just spam dark attacks with your inkay for now. The tech stuff is for later.”

“…I think I’ll pass. I kind of want a normal, soft mammal.”

Yeah. You get that. Your braviary, magnezone and primarina are wonderful, but the former two aren’t cuddly and the latter really shouldn’t be cuddling mammals.

“Well, there’s a zorua pack roaming Route 1 these days, usually around the residential parts. Might be hard to find them but if you split off from the group or convinced them to head back south you’d probably come across one by the time the round ended.”

“Zorua are the things the Mormons use, right?”

“Different subspecies, but yes.”

She frowns. “I think I’ll pass.”

“Well, always meowth. Nanu swears by the things as starters.”

“I’ve heard they’re mean.”

“I think there’s a meowth type of person, y’know? Might not be you. And that’s fine. The island challenge isn’t so difficult that you have to use pokémon you don’t like to win it.”

There’s a long pause before she asks another question

“Any other dark-types?”

“Well, I guess there’s grimer. Helps your dratini’s fairy weakness, has its one weakness covered in turn. Not a bad core for a team and sets up an amphibious theme. Lets you fight on land or water. More important here than most other regions.”

“Grimer, huh?” The idea gets a smile out of her.

“You wouldn’t have to touch it much. Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.”

“What would my parents say if I brought a muk home?”

You shrug. “They aren’t here now. Your journey, your team, your choice.”

Genesis glances at the camera. You’ve heard her apologies about not being good with communication, but you understand the look. ‘That’s not entirely true and you have to know that.’ You do know that. But sometimes you have to tell kids little lies because they deserve not to know the full truth.

“Thank you,” she says, and you aren’t sure if she means it.

*​

You knock thrice on the door.

“May I come in?”

There’s a rustling on the other side, a pause, and the sound of some object moving along the door. Then it opens.

You have to look down to see her. The girl’s hair is a mess covering half her face and she’s facing straight forward into your chest.

“Hey, there! Can I come in!”

She adjusts her head upwards so that her gaze almost reaches yours. She’s not wearing her everpresent shades so you can actually see her face which is… really red and puffy right now. Either her sickness got worse or lighting and makeup did more for her than you’d thought possible yesterday.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Professor Kukui. I’ve been around set the last few days,” although, you suppose, she’d spent most of that time in bed, “and I’ve just been going around to talk to each of you about your next steps.”

“I’m… sorry. But ‘professor,’ that means…?”

“Doctor. Not in the medical sense; I study pokémon. Pokémon moves. I give out starter pokémon, help new trainers get into things, sometimes escort Melemele kids around on their island challenge.”

There’s another pause as she considers you. Not… visually, of course, but you get the impression she’s still looking at you and absorbing information in her own way.

You don’t like it.

“Come in.”

Valentina takes a few measured steps back and extends her arm. She arches her feet and pivots, hand still extended (raised out and up, which looks unfortunate and you aren’t sure if you should tell her that) before finally striking her hand against the top bunk of her bed. Then she slowly steps forwards, turns around, listens to her vulpix bark (presumably to signal that the fox is not about to be crushed, which come to think of it must happen sometimes) and then slowly sits down on her bed. The sheets are tossed and wrinkled and you get the impression between everything that you’ve just woken her up from a nap.

Not a great move, but you also aren’t sure if there was going to be a better time today to talk to her. You’ll make it quick, though. You sit down on the bunk across from her. She has a wing to herself. Probably for health reasons.

“So, thinking about getting any new pokémon?”

“Not really, no. Pixie doesn’t want friends and so long as she keeps winning the battles she has to, I won’t get her one.”

“I have a ninetales and I think I can say that all vulpix are like that. They don’t mind team members already on the time when they join, but they’re almost never fond of newcomers. Territorial pokémon express it in different ways, and that’s how they go about it.”

Valentina crosses her legs and folds her arms. It’s not quite the same as how Genesis does it. Valentina seems to squeeze into herself as tightly as she possibly can. Makes her look even smaller than she actually is.

“How’d you solve it?” she asks.

You laugh.

“I didn’t. She was the last pokémon I added to my main team. She’d probably flip out if I tried to add anything new, except maybe a male ninetales. I think she wants pups at her age and evolutionary stage. She’s sort of in a relationship with my lycanroc, but she won’t actually mate with anything but another ninetales so…”

Maybe you shouldn’t talk about the particulars of pokémon sex on camera with a child you barely know.

“Do you know how other trainers do it?”

Her vulpix starts growling and she extends a hand to it, which the fox turns away from.

“Dominance. Vulpix are hierarchal in the wild. Usually a female team member either takes up a maternal role or beats the crap out of them once the vulpix crosses a line. After that they start to go along with what that pokémon, and thus the trainer, wants. For a starter… well, you’re a girl. I wouldn’t recommend trying to physically fight her, but if you kill her with kindness and enforce boundaries, maybe you’d get her to respect your maternal role. Eventually. Taming isn’t an art or a science so much as repeatedly doing something that sounds stupid and hoping it works.”

Valentina withdraws her hand from the vulpix and the fox shifts her eyes and ears to track it but otherwise acts like she never noticed it at all.

“So, are you feeling better than you were?”

“There are no cameras here. You can say what you want to.”

“Well, then. How are you feeling?”

She shrugs.

“I don’t like doing nothing. I want to leave soon.”

You smile, even knowing that it’s pointless.

“That’s the spirit! Now, you do know about Hala, right?”

“Hmm?”

“Hala. He’s the kahuna. You’re going to have to battle him at the end of the island. After you clear the next trial. He specializes in fighting-types. That’s not great news for a young vulpix.”

The vulpix fluffs up her fur and harumphs. She has spunk, even for her species. Unfortunately, confidence without power behind it is a good way to constantly wind up out of your depth.

“I’m just saying that if you do want to specialize in fairy-types, might be a good time to pick up one that already has the typing. You’ve got cutiefly, flabebe and cottonee in the meadow, if you want to stay here.”

“We’ve talked about it. Leaving for Bittern Peak soon.”

“Oh. When was that decided?” You’ve spent the morning moving between kids so you aren’t sure when they had time to conference each other from opposite ends of the area, or why neither Kekoa nor Genesis brought this up with you.

“This morning. By phone.”

Oh. Right. Phones. Duh.

“You were listing pokémon?”

“Yup! So, you’ve got the meadow fairies if you want to snag one up right now before you leave. They’re all common. Then you have mime jr. down in the Hau’oli area—they’re also psychic resistant, for what it’s worth. And if you managed to pull off a Class III license in the next month, which is difficult but possible, then there are mawile on the island. You’d need to actually beat the trial to catch one, and by that point it’s probably not going to be tamed by the time you fight Hala, but there’s always at least one in the shelters. People catch a cute pet and find out it bites, hard.”

There’s a pause.

“What is a mawile?”

Right. Not from here.

“It’s a bipedal steel-fairy-type. Main body looks humanoid and cute, but they’ve got a massive prehensile horn they use to hunt with. Sometimes begs for pets, bites its trainer’s hand and laughs.”

“Ok. And mime. jr.?”

This could take a while.

*​

Bittern Peak changes as you climb. The base is forested. Not quite as dense as Routes 1 and 2, but it’s respectable. Some of the trees are big enough for a toucannon to nest in. Right above that is thin, scraggly forest. While escorting one boy or another around the islands (might’ve been Hau, come to think of it), you decided that it was the plant equivalent of a young teenager’s beard.

Those parts of the hike go fine. Valentina can’t carry gear, but the peak is a day hike anyway. Some mudsdale or a car or whatever are bringing it around for her. You’d offered, but then she’d try to take some anyway and Weiss had stepped in to keep stupid decisions from being made. Stupid decisions are part of the show’s appeal (it’s about kids who act like kids), but there are benignly stupid decisions (taping a crude drawing of some genitalia to Guzma’s wimpod) and really dangerous ones (taping a similar drawing to his golisopod—your arm still hurts if you press it at a certain spot from a certain angle).

What makes Bittern Peak really special though (aside from the caves) is the summit. The tallest vegetation disappears, not because of the altitude so much as weather, pokémon behavior and soil. The ground up there is a mix of giant grey boulders and ranger-carved paths past them. The wind begins to pick up with less vegetation and your lab coat begins to flap madly around you with enough power that it’d probably hurt to get slapped by it. But that’s not the real challenge of the peak. That’s at the very top.

The ascent to the Crow’s Nest (no honchkrow have ever been seen nesting there but the name’s stuck), that’s the tricky part. There are a handful of mid-sized stones here and there to use as footholds. But for the most part it’s a fifty foot near-vertical climb on pebbles and gravel that constantly give way every time they’re stepped on. Once you reach the base of the final climb you glance around at the kids (and cameraman), laugh, and take off running. It is best to do it fast because time spent still is time spent slipping. This isn’t your first or second or tenth time climbing the peak either, so you have a general idea what types of formations are your friend and which aren’t. Still, you’ve broken a sweat by the time you reach the top.

The top is a solid oval slab with occasional boulder outcroppings, but it has its own problem: it’s really, really windy. You’ve seen kids’ hats fly off and over the edge before they even notice. But if you can deal with that and the chill it brings, it’s one of the best sights on Melemele. There’s Valley Meadow below filled with yellow flowers. Then on one side of the peak is Route 3 and most of the park’s area, a barren and stony place with massive cliff faces. On the other side is Route 2, all vegetation and smooth beaches. Ten Carat Hill’s to the south looming up even higher than you are right now. And off in the distance is Hau’oli. It’s not a tall city, but you can still clearly see some of the buildings from here.

You turn back to the ramp up. Kekoa’s climbing after you and he’s… ok. He nearly slips once or twice, but he catches himself in the end and gets up. He goes a bit faster and more forcefully than you’d like and you think you see a stray pebble he kicks up nearly reach the bottom of the ramp once or twice. His rockruff is the opposite and climbs flawlessly like the path was just simple dirt.

You weren’t expecting quite as good of a climb from Genesis and, well, you’re right. She’s tall and young which means that her body’s done a lot of growing that her brain hasn’t quite had time to process. Her height at least helps in giving her fewer steps, but by the end she just gives up and crouches down to try and rock climb the wall like it was a vertical surface. It works, but it’s slow going. Slow, safe going. You’ll take it.

And then there’s—wait, you really hadn’t thought that one through. She starts anyway when Genesis reaches the top. You can see her pull the vulpix’s leash short, and the fox does fine on alpine surfaces but… she also probably has never had to guide a human up something like this. Around the quarter mark you hear Valentina scream like, well, a little girl. You watch as she loses her footing and slams down hard into the stone before losing half her progress in the ensuing pebbleslide. She tries to push herself back up but only succeeds in falling again and losing more ground.

You send out braviary.

“Pick her up.”

He looks around, finds his target and starts running… right off the opposite edge of the cliff face. Genesis cries out in shock but there’s nothing to be worried about. He’s just catching the wind. A second later he swerves around and swoops low to the earth. The vulpix screams (you’d swear screams are infectious today…) and starts shooting out ice but most of it goes wide in the wind. Braviary scoops Valentina up in his talons and swerves again to drop her off somewhat forcefully on the top of the peak. You give him a treat (and a reprimand on the force) and withdraw him.

Vulpix joins her trainer about ten seconds later, carrying a pair of glasses in her jaw. You hadn’t even seen those fall off her face.

Valentina bends down and picks the glasses up before wiping them on her shirt. She frowns, but goes forward and puts them on her face. The glasses are very visibly cracked. Not that it affects her vision, but it is distracting to look at. Her hands, arms and legs are also covered in tiny bleeding cuts. You’re torn between pulling out the first aid kit to disinfect and bandage every single one or just accepting that it would be futile.

Ultimately, you decide upon the latter plan. Weiss touches down on top of the peak less than a minute later and has his charizard swerve around to bring the cameraman up as well.

Once his dragon is withdrawn he turns to Valentina.

“What happened?”

“Fell.”

“I see.”

And that’s the end of that.

You glance around again on reflex and confirm that there’s no one else on the peak. Not this early in the morning during the off season. And you’ve already obtained permission to battle here. Now you just need to change into your mask and… there’s nowhere to change into your mask, is there? How are you supposed to fight a battle royale without the mask?

Fine. It doesn’t matter. The blind girl wouldn’t even notice it. Which is a shame because you think she could use cheering up.

“Alright. I know you’ve already fought one battle royale, but get ready for another (Woohoo!). You three against each other and me, one pokémon each.”

You pull the third pokéball to the left from your belt and release it, bracing for the shockwave as your snorlax materializes on the ground.

“Last one of you with a pokémon standing wins a shiny new pokédex. But, if you manage to trip up my snorlax—not even knock out, just trip up—the winner will get a rotodex instead. New model, sentient companion, step up in every way. So, any questions?”

“Yeah. Are you serious? Are we really going to fight that thing?” Genesis asks.

“What is it?” Valentina follows up.

“Yes, you are! He’s a snorlax. Big-eating bear pokémon and a normal-type! (Woohoo!)”

Kekoa whistles and his rockruff steps forward. He mumbles something but you can’t hear it over the wind. Valentina’s vulpix steps forward a moment later and Genesis sends out her dratini.

“Well! Let’s get this going in 3… 2… 1… Go!”

No one goes for a good fifteen seconds.

You see Kekoa’s mouth move but can’t hear the words, and a second later his rockruff comes charging through the wind and leaps up to hit… dratini. He attacks dratini. The rockruff grabs the snake in her mouth and starts shaking. Out of the corner of your eye you see another attack coming. Kekoa shouts “Throw her,” and his rockruff launches dratini into the air and right into an incoming powder snow. There’s an arc of lightning a moment later that goes from the snake to the attacking fox.

“Stop attacking me!” Genesis shouts.

“Some of us would like to win!” Kekoa replies, entirely missing all of the advice you’d given him.

“What’s going on?!”

They aren’t going to take down your snorlax. They definitely could have. Powder snow to make the rock slippery, sand attack to blind, thunder wave to paralyze. If they’d done all three you would have forfeited. But, as they continue to yell at each other over the wind, it doesn’t look like they’re going to make it happen. Now you have to attack, and anything you do is going to be a knockout. Even snorlax’s pulled punches hurt.

If you have to take someone out of the match, well, Kekoa ignored your advice.

“Snore, IB, L1, TRockruff.”

The air on the mountain nearly goes still for a single second before a burst of ice fights its way across the wind to scrape against rockruff. And then the beam explodes into a barrage of icicles. Vulpix runs into one of them tongue out, the battle temporarily forgotten. Dratini tries to dodge them but ultimately gets pelted by a few. Rockruff winds up buried up to her chin in frozen and fused ice shards.

Kekoa summarily withdraws her.

It occurs to you a moment later that you’ve left a vulpix and a dratini out against each other. And, as you analyzed two days prior, there’s really only one way that fight can end. You could put your finger on the scale, well, put a snorlax on the scale, as it were. But the girl’s already having a bad day and Genesis doesn’t really need to study any further…

Valentina forfeits immediately after Genesis does.

*​

She looks pretty miserable that evening. She finally washed the blood off her legs and got them taken care of, but there are still a few new stains and there are yellow bruises across her arms and knees. Didn’t seem like she hit the ground that hard. Must bruise easily. Either way, doesn’t look good for the camera. She’s sitting on her hammock when you find her and has either given up on the glasses or just doesn’t wear them in bed. Her vulpix, as always, is curled up in her lap.

“Hey, Valentina. It’s Kukui.” Asuka told you to say that to avoid a repeat of your first meeting and it seems like a good idea.

“Oh. Hello.”

She raises her head but her face betrays no emotion.

“I have your pokédex right here.”

You hold it out to her. She tepidly moves to take it but obviously can’t see where she’s taking it from. You go the rest of the way and place it into her hands. But you keep holding onto it yourself, finger hovering over a button.

“One thing to start you off: I need you to say your name, slowly and deliberately.”

“…Valentina…Cabello…”

The screen flashes red.

“Welcome, Valentina.”

That startles her and you have to strengthen your grip to keep the pokédex from falling. It wouldn’t break (the trainer models are stupid tough), but some models would and your reflexes are honed by paranoia and budget constraints.

“It talks?”

“Sort of. It’s not a full rotodex, but I got you one with voice controls. Can’t give you pictures but it has everything else. Now, let’s get you started. Say ‘load vulpix trainer guide.’ Nice and slow.”

“Load vulpix trainer guide?”

“Vulpix: an ice-type pokémon. Stage two of three.

“Overview: The Alolan ninetales is one of the most popular pokémon native to Alola for its aesthetics, lore and battle utility. However, they are notoriously moody creatures and make somewhat poor pets due to their temperament and care requirements. The trainers that do manage to tame them—”

“Say ‘pause.’”

“Pause.”

The pokédex stops talking.

“It has an article for every species commonly found in Alola. If you want the data for a species that isn’t, that can usually be downloaded at the bigger Pokémon Centers. Each article has a few different sections: Overview, Physiology, Behavior, Husbandry, Battle, Acquisition, Breeding and Subspecies. You can skip to any one of those sections. If you scan a pokémon it can pull up some data on it. It’ll pull up more data on pokémon that you own. You can also use it to make notes, pull up information on battle strategies and Alolan locations, download news and weather reports, a lot of things. Just say ‘load help menu’ if you need to know how to use anything.

“Oh, and one final thing. My anniversary’s tomorrow—”

“There’s, um, a word…”

“Congratulations?”

“I think so.”

You smile. “Thank you. I’m going to ride braviary over to Akala for the day and maybe the day after. What I was saying was, in the wild vulpix live with and are trained by their mothers. Yours might need to pick up some more moves if it’s going to win the next few trials, so I thought I’d leave my ninetales with you for a few days.”

“…that’s very nice of you. But, um, they… eat a lot, right? I don’t think I have the food.”

“Miss Mahi’ai has the food. You won’t have to pay for it.”

“Oh. Then, sure. I would like to meet your ninetales.”

You clap your hands and Valentina recoils. Crap.

“Perfect. Now, let me just…” Second ball to the right. “Kalani, come out!”

Kalani materializes in a burst of light. She’s standing on all fours, tails hoisted high off the potentially dirty ground. She shakes herself off and stretches out while she gets her bearings—and then she catches the scent of a vulpix. Kalani takes a few steps forward to the hammock, tails still held high, and stares in at the pup. The vulpix for her part takes a few steps out onto her trainer’s knees until their noses touch. Then Kalani lurches forward and gently wraps her jaws around the vulpix. The pup squeals in surprise as Kalani takes it and slinks into the forest.

 

[Ambyssin]

Okay, it's time to shake the rust off, since it's been a while.

The opening is interesting in the way that it's trying to make sense of what Kukui actually studies. You're probably just flexing your muscles from writing The Alola Pokédex here. Personally, trying to ground moves in science with organs and physics is something that's going to cause me to zone out and skim through stuff, but it at least fits with Kukui being a professor and all that jazz. But once he actually starts talking I like his laid back, cool/off-kilter uncle style that he's got going. Like the part where he thinks to himself he's got to boost Kekoa's confidence and tries to nudge him away from his Delibird idea instead of reprimanding him like your average adult would be tempted to do.

And we finally get some of Genesis' religious side showing up with the Mormon jab, along with her more privileged upbringing actually getting shown with her worried about her parents response to a Muk and the mention that she has a Class III license while Kekoa and Valentina do not. Bless him, he's even trying with Valentina. You sneak some impatience into his voice (he's human, after all), but I think it works. Then, we get to the battle royale part and I like that his in-game portrayal is basically a character he plays for the kids. That's really cute. I also like that he's attempting to work in a way for the kids to team up against up, but naturally Kekoa ain't interested in that and goes for Genesis right away. I like the logic behind having Snore take his rockruff out, though I'm curious about his way of ordering attacks.

I don't really have much else to say, other than I laughed at the mental image of a bigger fox essentially fox-napping Pixie at the end there... with love, of course! I expect hilarity to ensue next chapter... or, at the very least, intense amounts of fangirling from Pixie's perspective.

Finally...

She’s sort of in a relationship with my lycanroc, but she won’t actually mate with anything but another ninetales so

i can get down with this ship :V