Fighting 3.11: The Wasteland
Kekoa
January 17, 2020
You pick at your breakfast in the darkness, slowly bringing bites to your mouth. You’ve mostly gotten the hang of putting the spoon into your mouth. Putting it into the bowl still gets you sometimes. And it’s awkward every time you slam your spoon into the table on accident.
Cuicatl isn’t bothered. For her it must be like nothing’s changed at all.
“Hey, Kekoa,” Cuicatl says.
“Yeah?”
“You seen Noci today? She isn’t answering me.”
That does explain why she’s using her cane. Thought that maybe she was just doing it for the novelty.
“Cuicatl, I haven’t seen shit today.”
You wish this Center had inkay like the one in Hau’oli did. Lyra disagrees because of her hate on for psychic-types but that’s on her. She can trip all over herself if she likes. You’ll take the light.
“She isn’t answering me and I can’t sense her.”
You scoff. “Just have the nurse check her tracker.”
“Doesn’t have one. Can’t put it in her skin and she kept taking off her collar. Said she didn’t want people to spy on her.”
Oh. What. The fuck? You start laughing hysterically. It’s not funny to her, but, seriously? Can’t she see it? “They don’t want people spying on them. But when
they do it, that’s fine.” What a hypocrite.
(Your laugh is deeper and it makes you feel warm despite the cold.)
You hear footsteps approach the table. You still can’t tell them apart like Cuicatl can. She apparently knows how heavy you step, the type of shoe you wear, and how fast you usually go. All stuff that’s worthless to know unless you’re blind or an alien snuffs out the light.
“What’s so funny?” Lyra asks.
Great. Her. You’re tolerating each other because Cuicatl wants you to. Wouldn’t say you’re friends. Or anywhere close to friends.
“Her beldum doesn’t like being spied on.”
Cuicatl sets her spoon down gently against the edge of her bowl. There’s something almost… pathetic in the sound. You can’t place your finger on why. “I can’t find Noci.”
“Oh, no.” Lyra sounds so pitying. She walks closer and accidentally hits the table, causing the bowls on it to ring out as they settle back down and stop vibrating. “I’m sorry. But I’m sure she’s fine. Made of metal. Probably just got distracted by something.”
They’re a rock. They’re obviously fine. But Cuicatl is using the voice she does when she curls up and acts like she isn’t sure if she wants to be comforted or not. And she usually wants comforted. Except for when she pushes you away.
“We can look for them while we’re out in the field today.”
“Right. Um. You still sure we want to split up?” Lyra asks. “I know there are two capture missions, but we could just do them on different days.”
“No. I’ll be fine,” Cuicatl says. And you do have to split up. She can’t use her psychic bullshit around Lyra without things blowing up.
“I’ll be on the marked path. And the meadow is full of grass, flying, and bug-types. I have an ice-type with me with a rock-type in reserve. I’ll be fine.”
“If you’re sure…”
“I am. We can meet back here at noon and make our next plans.
*
Every step you take along the boardwalk echoes out into the meadow.
Nothing answers.
Lyra walks along in front of you, absol at her side. If anything did bother you she’s in the best position to take care of it right now. You have two pokémon again, but one is an infant and the other shouldn’t be out of her ball outside. You
aren’t helpless. You could fight if you had to. Just… best to let her take the front.
Lyra’s absol stops and growls. Your hand flies down to your pokéballs. You imagine Lyra’s doing the same in front of you.
“Relax, children. I am merely a traveler,” a woman calls out from the distance. She has a soft voice, barely audible, but its unwavering and full of confidence.
“How’d you know we were children?” Lyra asks. Huh. Good catch. Not that you’ll tell her that.
“Your steps. They do not suggest weight, but there is an energy there.” Footsteps have always just been footsteps to you. But she sounds a bit like Cuicatl. Is she also blind? Would it be rude to ask? She continues before you can decide. “What are you doing in this place? There is nothing here to see and it is far too dangerous for a stroll.”
“Looking for a pokémon,” you answer. “And you?”
“What sort of pokémon? I may be able to help you.”
There’s something off with her voice, but you can’t quite place it. Probably not just the trace of an accent. Kalosian, maybe? No, it’s something familiar but just out of reach.
“Floette,” Lyra says. “My friend heard there was a rare one near here.”
Friend is certainly a word. Just not one that applies.
“A white floette, I presume?” Her voice sounds a little bit like distorted music. Sort of like Cuicatl’s singing in the cave. Is that what’s off? Or just a sign of something bigger?
You’re paying too much attention to this.
You’re paying too much attention to this.
“Yup,” you say.
“And someone is paying you for it, I assume? Either the government or the poachers.” She sounds uncannily like Cuicatl does when she knows she’s right and is setting up to win the argument. Something compels you to keep talking anyway.
“They aren’t poachers.”
“Because poaching is illegal, and they’ve made enough well-placed donations that they aren’t illegal,” Lyra says. Great. Now you’re arguing with two people. Or you could just let it slide.
That would be dishonorable. And you care very much for your honor, do you not?
But that would be cowardly.
“We don’t all have rich parents paying the bills,” you snap at Lyra.
“Is that not the mentality of the poacher?” the woman asks. “Society gives them a way out of destitution, if only they sell out the world in which they live. An ingenious trap. When all the exploited have is their heritage, persuade some to betray it. Then use that as an excuse to steal it under the guise of conservation.” She sighs. “If only your kind would use that cleverness to better ends.”
“Your kind?”
Unimportant.
She makes a disturbing amount of sense. But… the cause needs money. And anything you do now will be more than offset when your people retake the throne.
“An excuse I have heard the world over.”
Wait.
“I didn’t say that question aloud.” You’re pretty sure, anyway.
You did, actually.
Lyra’s absol begins to growl. Sort of. There’s a whimper mixed in. Her trainer snaps in frustration. “Snarl, damn it!”
“Easy, child,” the woman whispers, “her kind sense disasters. She knows full well what would happen if she made me cross.”
“I’m not scared of you.” She says it with as much confidence as she can with her teeth chattering. And not just because of the cold in the meadow.
The entire area lights up in a flash of blinding white light. For a moment you get a glimpse of someone tall and pale with a big face before the light fades again. Lyra starts to whimper alongside her absol.
“I am not human, child: I will not hurt you for the sake of inflicting pain.”
“What are you?” she murmurs.
The lights come back, far less harsh this time. Now you can see the gorgeous white flower in front of you, easily seven feet tall. “I am a florges. Be still now. You have nothing to fear.”
Florges. A
white florges. They’re banned half the world over for their habit of assassinating warmongers and polluters. Some Middle Eastern nation lost its shit and started firing on people when white petals showed up in a crowd. They’re the ultimate revolutionaries, and one is standing right in front of you.
And she has judged you and found you wanting.
She glances in your direction at the thought and then turns back to Lyra. “Can you not tell the difference between those who
can harm you and those who
will? Do you believe you must be invulnerable to be safe?”
“Fuck you,” she growls. It somehow sounds like a plea for help. Damn it, you don’t
want to have sympathy for her.
“You will never be invulnerable child, not so long as gods walk the earth.” She finally turns her full body in your direction. “Oh, but you know that full well.” The white light is suddenly filled with waves of blue and red. You grind your teeth together. Does she just like messing with people?
“In truth I do not. But sometimes humans, like plants, need pruned to properly grow.” The light evens back out to a neutral white. Her voice lowers even further to something soothing and maternal. “I am sorry for what you have gone through, Kekoa Mahi’ai. It seems no matter how long I live the humans will never learn not to trifle with beings so far beyond them…” A shudder wracks her body and she closes her eyes. “…it’s enough to make me wonder why I still walk amongst your kind.”
At the edge of your vision you see Lyra start to take a few steps backwards. The florges ignores her.
“There are still some people on the right side.”
She tilts her head and the petals at the edge of her face flutter. Lyra slowly starts to turn around, tension building in her legs. She is once more ignored.
“The right side… most humans believe themselves to be on the right side. Few are. Some fight for justice, others…” Her eyes fix on you with a newfound intensity. As if she’s staring past your mind and body into your soul. “You fight for justice, yes?”
It feels like you’re walking back into a trap. But the pressure reappears on your mind to speak rather than remain silent. “…yeah…” You can only imagine what she’s going to do with that.
“You want the liberation of your people. I sympathize. Colonialism is a blight upon the world that cannot recede quickly enough.” For a moment you have hope. They she makes eye contact again and it falls away. “Will you fight with such passion for others seeking justice? For a refugee seeking shelter in your homeland? Or for a child lost in darkness, trying desperately to avoid being taken by a strange man and sent away from his only home?”
It takes you longer than you’d like to admit to realize she’s talking about the floette.
She takes a small step forward and it takes everything you have to avoid stepping back. In the light you can see just how much bigger she is than you. How much stronger. She could snap your neck and grow plants over your corpse so you would never be found.
“If I wished to kill you,” she murmurs, “you would have never anticipated it. One moment you would be awake, and the next you would be dead.” A vine extends from her stem and rests on your shoulder. “I do not kill poachers. The buyers, yes, but not the hunters. The world is complicated, and some people are victimized and victimizer all at once. I would rather judge them too leniently than take a life I should not have. But I must stop you. I hope you can accept this.”
You nod. Whether that’s for your own safety or because you feel bad for a child in the dark… you’ll figure that out later.
“If I cannot appeal to your sense of justice, perhaps you can be swayed by your own interest. A bargain, perhaps?”
There aren’t many fairies on Akala. The shiinotic and comfey up north. The ribombee in what’s left of the meadow. A few wigglytuff around Paniola. Even if you weren’t likely to encounter one, your mother still gave you the quiet warnings every Alolan mother has told for centuries: be courteous to the fairies. Be kind to the fairies. Do not antagonize any of the fairies. But the smartest ones?
Do not bargain with or harm them, even on accident.
Said in the same solemn tone as ‘don’t hug the bewear.’
Ribombee, wigglytuff, shiinotic, they may have the blood of fairies but none of the alien intelligence. Florges do. And she wants to bargain with you.
She won’t say what her offer is, but it’s not like you really have a choice here. Even if you wanted to continue there’s no way in hell you’d live to get the money. You doubt anyone could with a florges watching over them. Whatever her bargain is, at least you would get something out of it that you would not otherwise.
The flower gently shakes her head once again. “I do not mean you harm, child. I have better things to do than becoming your master.”
You bristle at the word. Like you’re a slave. “Or a pokémon,” the florges says. “Quite a few humans use the word in reference to their team. And others say ‘trainer’ but mean something else. Trainer implies that a coaching service is being provided. Yet few humans would allow their coach to lock them up outside of training and matches. Even then, so many humans fail to understand why their captives dislike them…” She turns her head and stares out into the darkness. “Will you accept my offer?”
“Yes.” Because what else is there to do? A choice made with a vine on your shoulder isn’t much choice at all.
“So close to getting it,” the fairy muses, “yet so very far.”
You don’t know what she’s talking about: you ‘got that’ a long time ago. Run away and risk juvie or stay in foster care. Do what the system wants or be punished.
The florges sighs. Sort of. It’s not quite right, probably because she doesn’t have actual lungs. “What is it you wish of me? If I can perform it within a quarter day I shall do it.”
That’s broad. Terrifyingly broad. It means she’s confident that whatever you ask for can be countered. Like if you asked for the floette. Even if you gave it to her she could just turn around and kill you before releasing the floette.
“You would be breaking the terms of our bargain,” she says. “But I could do something similar for other requests, yes.”
You shiver. Yup. Definitely out. You could ask for help with the butterfree but you figure Cuciatl’s got that handled. If you were dumb enough to ask her to be your pokémon she’d either kill you outright or leave after six hours.
Or brainwash you. A human puppet could be useful.
“I already told you I meant no harm. Yet your mind is so quick to thoughts of violence.”
At least Cuicatl isn’t always judging your thoughts.
A wave of amusement washes against your mind. “I shall graciously allow you some quiet reflection.”
You sigh and try to focus. Can’t be too distracted when bargaining with a florges. You think back to an old conversation with Cuicatl. When Makani left you weren’t really thinking about trying again, but the pieces all fit together. Cuicatl could also help you with it, but this doesn’t feel like something the florges would mind with her talk about masters and slaves.
“I want your help finding a grubbin. And if they want to leave me after evolution, I’ll let them go.”
The florges tilts her head. An invitation to keep going?
“I had one but he left. When I caught him I didn’t ask him if he wanted to go.” Like Lyra and her noibat. And you never even took him back home. Wait, do grubbin even have social lives? Friends? Family to miss them?
“You took one without knowing those answers,” she murmurs. “Because you could. Because it was easy. Because you wanted to.”
You can’t really disagree with her. You did. You didn’t know better. Now… now you do.
“Perhaps I could obtain those answers for you. And if the grubbin wants power more than their home, then it could be a mutually beneficial arrangement. Provided that you treat them with the respect they deserve.”
The respect they deserve? You’ve been keeping them healthy. Why would that change now?
The florges takes her vine off your shoulder and begins to walk along the boardwalk in a continuous shimmying movement. “If a pokémon abducted you and promised to help you free your country, would you still work for them if they merely kept you fed and patched your body back together after they broke you? Would you go back to your cage every night, nay, every hour, content and satisfied?”
You would sacrifice a lot but. That. You slouch a bit more. To cover more of your body with your jacket. “How do you, uh, ‘give them the respect they deserve,’ then?”
The lights around her glimmer and roll. Like a one-flower rave. Or her rolling her eyes. “You could, perhaps, ask them? You are allied with one of the Harbor Queen’s spawn, are you not?”
“Spawn?” You’re pretty sure that’s an insult. Not that you remember much from Shakespeare. Haole pricks trying to teach you about the genius of their skeletons.
She curls a vine like she’s shrugging one shoulder. “An old joke with an ancestor of hers. To take him down a peg. You humans place so much emphasis on your
blood because it is an honor that requires you to do nothing to earn. He was slow to learn that lesson. You all are. And I never met Shakespeare. I had meant to, but there were always more pressing matters in the west. Conquerors and slavers to kill, cultures to study, plague victims to treat. By the time I next arrived in Europe even his children were long buried.”
You have not yet engaged with my actual point.
Right. Asking them. You. You should do that. For Hekeli—Mahina—at least. Rufflet value honor above all else and asking might lose you face. That could make everything else go worse.
“Or, perhaps, a lost child being raised by an unfamiliar species would appreciate being asked what he wants.” She says it slowly in a high monotone.
Like a mother lecturing a toddler.
The florges hums. It hits you in the brain way more than Cuicatl’s. Flashes of light and feeling vibrating on the surface of your mind. “I was already old when primates first discovered these rocks. Even your elders are still sprouts to me.”
You find your mind wandering back to the early days in foster care. How many of your foster ‘parents’ didn’t ask you anything so that they could look dominant. You would have respected them more if they did. Yet. Ihe isn’t human. Does that make it different? In which direction? Could you just have Cuicatl do it.
The florges stops and looks back at you with an almost painfully stoic look. Like she doesn’t even see you there.
“I’ll… talk to Ihe about what he wants.”
Because what else are you supposed to say when she looks
through you like that?
She nods and turns back around.
The boardwalk sprawls on in the darkness. In the distance there’s a small patch with multiple guards and a fence around it. Some fire-types and castform are keeping it lit up. “If part of the meadow survives, then the whole thing can regrow,” the nurse said. Maybe. Over years. Decades. You wonder how the grass-type pokémon trapped on the other side of the fence feel, doomed to starve just a few yards away from warmth and light.
One of Skull’s less-illegal branches runs a blog online. A few days back they posted pictures of some rich assholes crowded together under castform light having a normal day on their private beach. If the heiress hadn’t kept her castform, would that be what it was used for? Maybe it’s a scam: literally freeze your people out of the market, then buy all the land and stay hunkered down in their bubbles. Keep it all when the sun comes back. Maybe Selene’s even in on it.
“Perhaps the paranoid attract one another...”
You remember her lecturing Lyra about paranoia and you scowl.
“We’re not the same.”
“Correct.
You lack the capacity to harm the object of your paranoia.”
Harsh. Accurate, but harsh. Someday, though, you’ll have the power you need to defeat The False Queen.
“Will you, now?”
“Y-yeah.” You try to project as much confidence as you can. She already… hates is wrong, you think. But she doesn’t like you. And florges are badass assassins and warriors that can bring down corporations, empires, and armies with a few snapped necks.
“Hate is the wrong word, yes,” she murmurs. “I hate no one.”
“Even the people you kill?”
“Yes, even them. I grieve every death. Not always for the man they were, but for who they could have been. It takes talent to be truly horrific. I do not understand why they would put such talent towards ignoble ends.”
You walk the rest of the way in silence. Sometimes a bug will cry out or one of the remaining oricorio will warble. Other than that it’s just your footsteps. And whatever the florges is doing. Her actual steps are impossibly soft. Most of the noise is in a steady shimmying movement as her petals gently flap in the wind. She’s a flower. Not built for speed.
The florges abruptly stops and holds a petal out. “Ah. I believe I’ve found one. Give me a moment.”
She sinks a vine into the earth and rummages it around. Her whole body freezes up for a moment before she reels out the vine, a grubbin biting on at the end.
“Hello, cherished friend,” the florges says in her hauntingly melodic way. “I wished to mediate a bargain with you.”
The grubbin hesitates before letting go. He hisses something out in a chittering, oscillating mess of voices that drill into your head. “What?”
It takes you a moment to shake it out of your head. If that’s what translation is like, maybe you’re lucky Cuicatl never gave you a link to your pokémon. How is she not
always in pain?
“I am merely here to facilitate,” the florges turns towards you. “He wished to speak.”
Right. You take a deep breath and begin. “If you want to grow into your final form, if you want to fly, I can give that to you. I just want you to help me for a few moons afterwards. There are enemies I need to defeat.”
Another burst of terrible, vibrating
noise. “We can’t do that here.”
“I can. I have a rock that will let you.”
“Don’t believe you. Let me go.”
“I don’t think he’s lying.”
The grubbin chitters away and the florges doesn’t translate. It sounds like they’re having a conversation but you aren’t let in. Probably for the best. There’s already a headache coming in.
“She believes you now,” the florges finally says.
She. Right. You’d just kind of assumed they were—she was—like Makani.
“Good. So, uh, you willing to come along?”
This time it starts slow and soft before rising in pace and pitch. “Yes. What are you fighting? Birds?”
“Lots of things.” There’s a new flying trial on Poni, right? “Including birds.”
“Do you have food?” she asks.
“Yes. I can get you food.” Might be a bit tricky now. Later, though, once things go back to kind of normal. “Or take you to lots of good food,” you add, just to be safe.
The grubbin is silent.
“Is there anyone you want to talk to first?”
Her reply is short. A single clack of the mandibles. “No.”
Oh. Good. At least you didn’t get that wrong last time.
“Cool. And. Is there anything you want me to call you? A name?”
She has another one-sided conversation with the florges.
“She does not have a preference,” the flower finally answers.
Well, you already had a name picked out if Makani was female. “How about Leilani?” you ask. “It means child of the skies.”
Three clacks.
“She likes it.”
The wind picks up and blows straight through your layers. You realize that you haven’t really been feeling the cold as much in your fingers in the last few minutes. Probably bad. You reach to your belt and pull out a great ball you’d bought for catching the floette. Guess it’ll have to do here.
“We can talk more where it’s warmer.” And with a translator you trust a little more. One who won’t keep hitting you in the head with her mind. “For now, touch the front if you accept the deal.”
You kneel down and set it down by the bug-type. She stares at it for several long seconds before wriggling forward and hitting the capture button. The ball shakes once and then goes still before the red light fades. She’s been captured. You have a second pokémon again. You stand back up and face the florges.
“Thank you for your help.”
She tilts her head. “We had a bargain, did we not?”
“And I’m glad you did it.”
Her eyes turn hard and your breath stops. Shit. Did you say something wrong?
“Do not thank the fairies unless you mean to create a debt.
NEVER imply they would break their bargains. Others will not be as forgiving as I.”
There’s a ferocity in her voice that there hasn’t been before. For a moment you see death in her eyes and can almost
feel the power in her coiled vines. The light she emits feels less like a comfort and more of a threat. Then she turns and beckons you to follow.
You do. What else are you going to do? You have no idea where you are in the meadow. Better to trust that she would have just killed you instantly if she meant you harm. You huddle into yourself as the wind lashes your exposed face. You grew up in Alola. Things were never supposed to be this cold. Even at the base of Lanakila it wasn’t like this. It’s not as immediately bad as things were in Hoenn, but…
There’s a comparison. You hate that there’s a comparison. Hate that no one learned. That no one ever learns.
“Welcome to my life,” the florges whispers. It’s so faint that for a moment you just mistake it for the sound of the wind. “I’ve had that feeling every day for three thousand years. You never do learn. Not as a species. But sometimes I get a single idea into one of your heads.”
For the entire morning she’s sounded amused. Like she was fully in control and enjoying everything. now she sounds bitter and defeated. Like she needs a hug. Like she’s needed a hug for three thousand years. You glance at her vines. They could still definitely snap your neck.
Is it sexual harassment if you give an unwanted hug to a flower demigoddess?
“I’m fine, child. Only weary.”
Okay. Then you’ll give her space.
You go on walking for a while. Long enough to think. About what she said about blood. You get that. Maybe it’s the best thing she’s said. Haole feeling good at themselves because of the skin color they were born with.
“I think you might be misinterpreting me,” the florges says. First time she’s spoken in… a while. Wherever she’s taking you, you’re probably almost there.
“How am I? That part made sense.”
“It’s more than just them.”
What. But. Is she insulting you? Your people?
“They came here, killed most of us, stole our land, and make us serve them,” you hiss. “How are we the bad guys?”
“They did, and it was and is wrong,” the florges concedes. Now she doesn’t sound playful or haunting or bitter. Just tired. “But who was on the island before your ancestors arrived?”
A few fallers, maybe, but you don’t think they made the legends. So. “No one?”
She shakes her head. “There were birds and bugs and flowers here first. And I know you have personally tried to abduct all three.”
That’s.
That was.
Your ancestors were far kinder to the pokémon than the haole.
“Perhaps. Yet you did not know if the grubbin you abducted had a family or not. And in many months you never cared to ask.” She stops abruptly and turns around. Her eyes bore through yours once again. “You are all born in bloody soil. How could you not become bloodstained?”
The florges extends a single vine towards the path behind her. “Your friend is that way. I have no more patience for this conversation.” The lights seem to dim and warp around her until you can see the next few steps of the path but not her. That’s… fine. You can make it back from here.
You walk towards the center with a writhing feeling in your stomach that you’ve done something terribly wrong.
*
The light fades and the darkness swallows you whole before you can get to the Pokémon Center. You send Mahina out to guard you or… something. It’s that or be entirely alone in the dark with no idea what’s around you. The best you can do is slowly scoot your feet forward so you don’t walk straight off the boardwalk.
It’s slow. It’s tedious. It’s maybe a little scary. Like drowning in freezing darkness with no idea which way is up.
Big things keep flying by. They move with slow, steady wingbeats that stir up the cold the air around you. They aren’t attacking you, whatever they are. Best be quiet. Avoid catching their attention.
Trumbeak aren’t at the top of the food chain. Neither are you.
Hard, inhuman steps begin approaching on the boardwalk. Surprisingly fast for something in the dark.
“Mahina,” you call out. “Get ready.” Maybe it’ll catch the attention of the birds, but there’s something coming
now you need to be ready for.
It lets out a series of blood-curdling moans and violent, thrashing hisses that sound like they don’t belong on this planet.
Oh.
It’s just Coco.
“Hey, girl.”
She slows down and walks over to nuzzle your leg. “Cuicatl send you out?”
The dinosaur makes a mangled bellow that you’re pretty sure means ‘yes.’
Rapidly outgrowing her ‘cute’ phase. Still not into her ‘fucking badass’ one.
You can relate to that.
“Can you take me to her?”
There seem to be more and more of the birds flying by as Coco takes you closer to Cuicatl. To the Center, hopefully. Your phone was dead last you checked but it’s probably noon. Not that you had signal out here anyway. The darkness doesn’t let up even after you step off the boardwalk and onto soft grass. You’re just left to trust that Coco knows what they’re doing.
Is this what Cuicatl goes through every day? Why does she
ever go outside? You wouldn’t.
“Hello, Kekoa,” she calls out from the forward-left. Thank the gods. You’re not alone anymore.
“Hey. Uh. We by the Center or what?”
You can imagine her rolling her eyes. Yes, it’s a dumb question. No, you don’t know the answer.
“We’re at the Pokémon Center. You missed the return deadline, by the way.”
“Yeah, yeah. Little busy with a death flower.”
She pauses. Coco takes the chance to bolt away from you back to her ‘mother.’ Traitor. You have to stop moving just to make sure you don’t hit anything.
“You aren’t hurt, are you?”
“She wouldn’t have hurt me. Just killed me. And she didn’t. Still alive.”
Pretty sure you’d know if you weren’t.
“I got a new grubbin. And, uh, does translation hurt you? Because that fucking sucks if it does.”
“No…?” She sounds confused at the idea that it could. “Except for the Ultra Beasts on Ula’Ula.
Those hurt.”
Then the florges either wasn’t as strong as her or just wanted you to suffer for fun. She was just casually reading and fucking with your thoughts so you’re guessing it’s the latter. What a troll. Can’t even be mad.
“Can you help me talk to her later? Didn’t want to say more than I had to out in the cold.”
“Sure. Busy with butterfree now, but I can in a bit.”
The wings? Those. “Those things are butterfree? Why are they all coming here?”
“Found a gossip. She told all her friends the humans would take them some place warm. I’m just and catching them as they come.”
You were terrified of goddamn butterfree. You want to die of embarrassment.
If Cuicatl picked up on that she’s nice enough to ignore it. “Lyra’s shaken up pretty bad. Might want to go tell her you’re fine.”
“Cool. Can you tell me where the door is?” Because you could spend a long time searching and never find it.
“Coco? Can you help your dad out.”
The dinosaur rushes over and gently bumps your leg with her head. You really wish Cuicatl would stop telling her that you’re the thing’s father. You aren’t. You’re human and you wouldn’t know the first thing about raising a kid. You weren’t even good with the younger kids at the orphanage and they were at least human.
Wait.
“The florges knew about you,” you tell Cuicatl. “And your ancestry.”
She lets out an annoyed huff. “Great. Did you get a name from her?”
A name? Oh. Oh shit. You never asked.
“No.”
“Didn’t think you would. Fairies are weird about that. Why I don’t like them. They play too many weird games.”
“And beat up your precious dragons?”
“They
think they can beat up dragons. Just because you can absorb dragon fire doesn’t mean your skull can’t be bashed in.”
…probably best to end this conversation. Just in case the florges is still around. Don’t want her saying something she’d regret.
“I’ll be back when I’m done with Lyra.”
“No. Stay inside. You’ve been out too long.”
Long enough that you can only sort of feel your fingers. She might have a point.
Inside is warmer but not brighter. No wind. Just dead air, you, and a baby dinosaur. She stops and slaps her tail against the ground a ways down the hall. Probably Lyra and Cuicatl’s room. You reach out until your fingers find the door. Or what feels like a door. Then you knock.
“Who is it?” Yeah, that’s Lyra alright.
“Kekoa. Cuicatl asked me to check on you.” Or something like that. More like her checking in on you.
The door swings open a few seconds later. She’s on the other side. Probably. You can’t actually see her even if you could probably reach out and touch her. “Come in.”
It’s a little awkward sliding past someone you can’t see. Or finding somewhere to sit. So you just stand in the middle (?) of the room while Lyra goes back to her bed. You can hear the click-clack of her absol’s hooves on the ground as he walks.
“Did she do anything to you
that you know of?” Lyra asks. She sounds more serious than you’ve ever heard of.
“No. We just talked. And she helped me catch a grubbin.”
“Wait. Why? What did she get out of that.”
“We, uh, we had an agreement.” You know you weren’t supposed to do that. You had a vine on your shoulder. Wasn’t like you could just refuse to bargain.
“And what did she get out of it? Exact terms, please.” She sounds like a goddamn cop. Whatever. You can humor her.
“I didn’t try to catch the floette.”
“No, no. That doesn’t make sense.” She gets up and you can hear her faint footsteps as she paces in a tight circle. Or oval. Again, can’t see. “She already could have stopped you. There must have been something else. Exact terms, please.”
“I… don’t really remember.” You’d been more concerned with not dying. And what you were asking for.
“Bad. Very bad. Probably some sort of delayed suggestion. Or a memory edit? She’d only give you something like that if it helped her cause. If she gave you a pokémon it’s because she expected you to use it to advance some goal she couldn’t herself.”
She was pretty clear about not wanting to do any of that. And you’re pretty sure the fairies don’t lie or something. “She said you were paranoid. And that she wasn’t going to do that stuff.”
“It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you,” she mutters. “Then it’s just caution. And please tell me specifically what she said she wouldn’t do. Exact words are really important when dealing with fairies.”
“I don’t remember. Only thought she might hurt me once and was more focused on other stuff.”
She smacks her hands against something. Maybe each other? It’s loud and sharp. “Damn it, Kekoa, this shit is important.” She sighs and falls back down on her mattress. “What did you do that she threatened you?”
“Apologized and thanked her for doing what she said she would.”
She doesn’t immediately lay into you. That’s surprising. Maybe she would have made that mistake, too.
“Okay so you have no idea what you’re doing with some of the ficklest pokémon in the world. Got it. Guess I’m going to have to give you lessons.”
“Excuse me?” You don’t need lessons from
her. She’s some rich brat doing this for fun. You’re better than—
…
Oh.
Right.
Uh.
The florges might. The florges is still wrong.
Right?
“I’ll think about it.”
You can hear the mattress shift as Lyra gets back up. “I’m going out to relieve Cuicatl before she gets frostbite again. We’ll talk more when I get back.”
Hopefully you’ll have an answer by then.
