*Seated on a bench by the Crossroads, lost in thought as the sound of busy pokémon bustling by fills the air...*
You'd be forgiven for thinking that flight would be the most exciting part of becoming a vikavolt. Skara had thought so herself, once upon a time. She remembered fantasizing about it as a small child, about being able to dart through the air instead of having to crawl or hope she could find a place to anchor some silk for a swing. She remembered watching her parents take off in the mornings, imagining that the sky touched everything on Mondhame and so they could go literally anywhere. They wouldn't, of course—Father was always bound for the shop, Mother for her patrols—but they
could have, and that meant that one day
she could, too. She could've seen the city, or the ocean, or the mines where they dug up the sparkling elemental stones the merchants showed off when they came to town. And Cibus, even on fire all the time forever as it was, must surely have had some wonderful vistas to admire from above.
Instead, the first thing she'd stretched after the shell split and loosened its deathgrip were her legs. Mists take the damn wings for all she cared, she had
legs again. One pair fewer than she was used to, sure, long and spindly and awkward to balance on now that her mandibles were bigger than her entire charjabug body, but.
Legs. Legs that could carry her to a destination before sundown. Claws that were actually useful for climbing and for being able to hold her own badge.
Skara had reached out of that accursed box, grimaced as the blood flowed through muscles that ached from disuse and reconfiguration, tapped gingerly at the ground, tentatively tried to pull herself forward. Her reward had been toppling over, forward and sideways, still mostly tangled in the shell but now with front-heavy jaws in the way for bonus instability. She'd heard Araun trying and failing to stifle a snort behind her. She'd laughed and not even bothered to hide it. She could
move.
Even now, several days later, she wasn't sure what had actually caused the evolution as Araun had carried her back from the battle. Maybe she'd reacted, somehow, to all the strange, super-powered lightning flying through the air as that pikachu energized his teammates. Maybe the Frozen Summit had an electromagnetic charge she hadn't had time to read about before arriving. Maybe it was just more Cibus Eterna Matter Light Tree nonsense, once again rendering her every attempt to understand her situation pointless.
It was probably that last one. Perhaps it was for the best if she just accepted that and stopped worrying. Cibus was a fog-damn mess, and given the current excitement back home that was saying something, but how different was it from home, really? There was
a logic to whatever the heck was happening, even if it never would make sense to her personally. So leave the logicking to Pop, to the God Squad, to the members of Team Spectrum whose worlds were more similar to this. Do as they did, add her skills to theirs, and that would be enough.
It's not your job to be clever, Paldros always told them.
It's not your job, or my job, or anyone's job. Clever is dangerous, because the dangerous things are cleverer than you. Clever is what gets you mocked, taken, broken, changed.
Follow your training. Follow the rules.
And that Skara could do. Train, with proper focus, with useful attributes to pour that focus into. She could move. She could fly. (Eventually.) She had lightning,
real lightning, not just that background buzzing static charge. She could learn to do what that pikachu did, perhaps. And if it ever really came down to raw firepower... well. She was no Brisa, no battling expert, but just by virtue of her species she imagined she could give the luxray a run for her money.
She still needed to learn to harness all that energy safely, of course. Make sure she actually had the word down pat this time and could stop saying it out loud like a little hatchling.
(
You don't need the words here, remember? That's not how Cibus works.) Araun nudged her telepathically, and she winced.
So what? she shot back. Old habits died hard, and all the better that they did. She had to keep up her training.
Some hesitation from Araun, and then: (
Will that actually matter? I don't think you're gonna remember any of this when you go home... wouldn't it be better to lighten up, since you've got the chance?) Yes, it mattered. After every other attempt to make herself useful had failed, it was the only thing she had to fall back on. It was her last bastion of familiarity and routine, of
discomfort.
Araun sighed, whined a little, let it go. Skara shook her head and spoke, verbally this time. "C'mon. I've still got more practicing to do, and you said that place with the pasta had salads. That should be a short enough trip from here for a test run, right?"
It should've been, certainly. This morning she'd finally got the hang of keeping her elytra open and out of her own way, and she imagined she could lock them in place long enough for that distance. The vikavolt shifted position, spread her wings, muttered the word under her breath as she gave the muscles a spark of lightning to kick them into high gear, jumped from the bench—
—and took a digger right into the paving stones, smashing into them jaws-first, pitching forward, and coming to rest on her back with a clatter and an audible
*kk-zzzt*. Araun didn't bother trying to hide the laugh this time as he hopped down from his seat and set to turning her over with his nose. Skara could sense that, at least for now, he was enjoying himself enough not to resume his nagging. She decided that distracting him and cheering him up had been her plan from the outset, one hundred percent, and that the delibird guffawing at her from across the street was definitely worth it. Kinda.
Araun set her back on her feet. Skara didn't try spreading her wings again, instead just putting one claw in front of the other as she and her familiar turned toward the restaurant. She would need to learn to fly eventually, and with training and routine it would come.
For the moment, though, she didn't mind not flying, not training, and simply taking the time to stretch her legs.
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