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Heya, it's been a while, but for those of you happened to remember some of the chatter associated with Hunting Game in the lead-up to its release might have remembered me mentioning that I'd written it in part as a mechanical pilot to an anthology of some shorter and more lighthearted one-shots I had in the oven. Well, that'd be this one that you're reading right now.
Now, if these one-shots happen to read familiar to you... well, they should. The initial set of one-shots published here are expanded and overhauled versions of the drabbles I submitted for the Third Anniversary Drabble Bingo way back in May 2022, so while some details got changed around, the stories were largely the same. I have included the original drabbles in spoiler blocks along with the prompts they answered for posterity's sake, though they should be considered as a curiosity rather than as content to pick apart in depth. Not least of all since they're quite unpolished relative to the final product.
Time will tell just how much things wind up outgrowing that initial base of stories since this one-shot collection happens to have one of those "theoretically indefinitely expandable premises", but as my latest sideshow to a sideshow I’ve got going on from my main work, this is one of those "bumps whenever I have time, energy, and motivation to make things happen" projects. But hey, there will be at least seven stories in this thing for your reading pleasure before I decide that I'm done with it.
These one-shots are uploaded in the order they were originally written in and are designed to be read in any order the reader pleases. To that end, I've added a cute little table of contents added as a little flourish for those that want to just skip straight to one or another story with little blurbs about what their rough premises are. But that's enough rambling from my end for now. Let's get right into things...
Like a Dragon
It is the world of Pokémon and you are a dragon, a word that means many things to many sorts. Mighty and meek. Strong and weak. Covered in scale and fur and most everything in between. These are your stories, ones about the various creatures who can claim such a title.
Even if some of them might seem strange to others at a first glance.
A Guarding Dragon It is in the nature of dragons to stand guard over their treasures. Even if you are a Flapple, you are no different.
A Dragon's Ferocity Ampharos are unassuming creatures, ones that a human might find cute and unthreatening. You thought the same once, until you saw one display a power and ferocity like your own. A Dragon's Lineage The birth of a child is a milestone in the life of any Pokémon, not least of all for a dragon. Few things are said to be stronger than a parent’s love, but can that still be the case when your child is so different from you?
A Dragon's Savior When others speak of a dragon, they might reflexively think of strong and fearsome creatures that make the world tremble at their approach. You are a dragon and are none of those things. And in your current predicament right now, you find yourself wishing that such a dragon was around to come to your aid.
A Dragon Someday Last year, your closest friend, your partner, was taken from you because you didn’t have the strength to fight off your enemies. In your quest to get him back, you’ve come across treasures that promise to give you just the strength you need… if you can just steal it first.
A Flightless Dragon Bagon like you are creatures who hear the call of the heavens above, enough so that you can feel it in your bones… even as your attempts to fly keep bringing you crashing to earth. Your place in the sky like a proper dragon lies just beyond your grasp. Perhaps all you need to claim it is just a little leap of faith.
A Dragon’s Valor Charizard are supposed to be noble creatures that fly about the sky in search of powerful opponents, creatures with the might of a dragon who back down from no challenge, even if some might insist they’re not truly dragons. You thought that you would also be like that after finally leaving your smaller, meeker self behind… except it’s proving harder than you expected.
Turffield had always been a quiet town, its rhythms dictated by the surrounding farms and their harvests. While life had taken a quicker pace in the town itself, especially after the local stadium was built, its surroundings remained as quiet and bucolic as ever. And so it was for you that day, on the same old dirt lane, next to the same old apple orchard, all under the same old sky under the drifting clouds.
You even stood guard on the same old stand put out for harvest time: a shabby table with a raised ledge at its deep end you sat on, overlooking cardboard cartons resting at an angle that were stocked with the same red apples that grew year in and year out. They were set out next to the same old sign and the same old chipped cup offering them up for sale. Three for the price of one of those ‘soda pops’ that were all the rage.
Clink.
Along with the same clatter of metal against porcelain that jolts you to attention. You raise your eyes briefly from your disguise and see a gray-haired woman dropping some spare change into it before grabbing at one of the apples on the shelf. You let your gaze linger jealously on her for a moment, only to turn away and slink back into your cover as the sound of footsteps shuffles off. Just another normal sale, and from one of the same old customers to this orchard. One that’d probably been giving business for quite a while.
The family that ran this orchard had set aside a small portion of their stock every growing season for travelers for years, perhaps for centuries. If the stories told by your mentor who used to keep watch for the orchard were to be believed, they’d kept this practice alive since the times when humans wore metal armor and fought with blades much as Sirfetch’d do. Times that even a dragon would find to be from a distant, unrecognizable era. Fortunately, the process by which the orchard sold off the part of its stock you watched over was simple to understand: take an apple from the hoard of red fruits set out, and then add some change to the hoard of coins in the cup. A gesture of goodwill and trust to those passers-by.
“Oi, look, there’s free food just lying around there.”
Except, every year, there were always a handful of travelers that would abuse that trust, and you were pretty sure you could see a few more of their ilk right now from your hiding place: a stocky young man and a gangly girl. The pair were both dressed in black with ridiculous pink hair and face paint.
That was why you were here: to serve as the orchard’s trusted guardian over its little hoard of fruit and coins. The loutish humans hadn’t noticed you yet, and you keep a careful, watchful eye over them as the man reaches for one of the apples and bite into it much to his partner’s skepticism.
Your mentor told you stories in the past of how sometimes it was best to take a gentler approach with passersby who would abuse the trust of the orchard. When they were needy or desperate, or when they’d simply failed to read the sign. Circumstances that merited a stern but patient warning, or sometimes even a blind eye in understanding.
“Aren’t you supposed to pay for that first, bruv?”
“I don’t see anyone actually bothering to sell them. And someone just left this money lying around! Finders keepers!”
Though from the man’s words and way he was reaching for the coin-hoard in the cup, a gentle approach would clearly not do. You uncoil yourself from your hiding place, a larger apple hiding in plain sight on the raised shelf at the top of the stand, and stretch your neck out to telegraph your warning.
“Wait, why does it suddenly smell like flowers right now?”
The humans turn and look up at you, with your disguise revealed. You uncoil your body and spread your wings, fanning them wide to make yourself look bigger and remind the pair that even if it was a modest hoard, that it was yours and since you were a dragon, that they stole from it at their own peril. To make your message clear, you raise your voice and let out the fiercest roar you could muster…
Which judging from the look on the man’s face, still needs a bit of work to make it sound more imposing.
“Ah, it’s just a Flapple,” he scoffed. “What, come here to help yourself to some apples, too?”
You narrow your eyes and feel bile build up at the back of your throat after seeing the man pick up the cup. You’d given him fair warning, now it was time to show this would-be thief that you meant business. You spit up a spray of fluid at his coat, which sizzles against the fabric, bubbling up as the acid eats away at its surface. That gets your message across, and the humans’ arrogance quickly evaporates as their eyes shoot wide and they recoil with startled yelps.
“Ack! Blimey!”
“I told you you were supposed to pay for that!” the woman cried. “Let’s get out of here!”
The man hurriedly throws aside his jacket as your acid burns holes into it and the pair take off running down the path, the man dropping his purloined apple along the way. Good riddance, really.
You make your way down from your perch and right the cup and the coin-hoard, carefully returning the loose coins that came out. Then you turn your attention to the jacket and tug at it to move it off the path. No sense in leaving it lying around to make other travelers unsafe and scare them off. You bite down on a corner and pull it away onto the other side of the road, when you hear a jingling noise. A quick nose into a pocket and search with your claws turns up some coins in it.
Enough to have bought at least three of the stand’s apples had the man just been honest.
You take the coins and add them to the cup, before taking the bitten apple the loutish man abandoned and returning to your perch. For whatever reason, humans had a habit of turning up perfectly good apples after someone else gave even the littlest of bites to them, but that was hardly a loss for you.
It was back to the same old quiet, watching over the same old stand on the same old lane outside of Turffield. Except now you had a snack as you waited for the next traveler to come by.
Original Drabble:
Charizard
Cute but Ferocious
Flapple
Dragons' Lineage
Goomy
A Dragon Someday
Ekans
Flightless
Exeggutor
Turffield had always been a quiet, humble town, with its rhythms dictated by the growth and harvests of the nurturing bowl of its many terraced farming fields. While life had taken a quicker pace in the town itself, especially after the construction of its stadium, its surroundings remained as quiet and bucolic as ever. And so it was for you that day, on the same old dirt lane, next to the same old apple orchard all under the same old sky under the drifting clouds.
There was even the same old stand that got put out at around harvest time, stocked with the same red apples that grew year in and year out next to the same old sign and chipped cup offering them up for sale. Three for the price of one of those ‘soda pops’ that were all the rage.
The family that ran this orchard had set aside a small portion of their stock every growing season for travelers for years, perhaps for centuries if the stories you’d heard passed down of this field being around back in the times when humans wore metal armor and fought much as a Sirfetch’d might with sword and shield were to be believed. It was a simple enough process, take a piece of the hoard of apples set out, add a piece to the hoard of coins in the cup. A gesture of goodwill and trust to those passers-by.
“Oi, look, there’s free food just lying around there.”
Except, every year, there were always a handful of travelers that would abuse that trust, including the pair of louts in black with ridiculous pink hair and face paint that you could see from your hiding place: a stocky young man, and a gangly girl. That’s why you were there: to serve as the trusted guardian of the little hoard of fruit and coins. The pair hadn’t noticed you yet, and you kept a careful, watchful eye over them as the man reached for one of the apples and bit into it much to his partner’s skepticism.
Your mentor had told you stories of how sometimes it was best to take a gentler approach with ones who would abuse the trust of the orchard. When they were needy or desperate, or when they’d failed to read the sign. Circumstances that merited a patient warning, or sometimes a blind eye in understanding.
“Aren’t you supposed to pay for that first, bruv?”
“I don’t see anyone actually bothering to sell them. And someone just left this money lying around! Finders keepers!”
Though from the way that the man was reaching for the coin-hoard in the cup, a gentle approach would clearly not do. You uncoiled yourself from your hiding place, a larger apple hiding in plain sight on the top of the stand, and stretched your neck out to telegraph your warning.
“Wait, why does it suddenly smell like flowers right now?”
The humans turned and looked up at you, with your disguise revealed, you uncoiled your body and spread your wings with the fiercest roar you could muster…
Judging from the look on the man’s face, you still needed to work a bit on making it sound threatening.
“Ah, it’s just a Flapple,” he scoffed. “What, come here to help yourself to some apples, too?”
You narrowed your eyes and felt bile built up at the back of your throat after seeing the man pick up the cup. You’d given him fair warning, now it was time to show this would-be thief that you meant business. You spat up a spray of fluid at his coat, which made a sizzling noise as it bubbled up from acid eating away at it as the humans’ eyes shot wide.
“Ack! Blimey!”
“I told you you were supposed to pay for that!” the woman cried. “Let’s get out of here!”
The man hurriedly threw aside his jacket as your acid bored holes into it and the pair took off running down the path, the man dropping his purloined apple along the way. Good riddance, really. You righted the cup and the coin-hoard, carefully returning the loose coins that came out. Then you turned your attention to the jacket and tugged at it to move it off the path. No sense in scaring away other travelers with it. You bit down on a corner and tugged it away onto the other side of the road, when you heard a jingling noise. A quick search of a pocket revealed some coins in it. Enough to have bought at least three of the stand’s apples had the man just been honest.
You took the coins and added them to the cup, before taking the bitten apple and returning to your perch. For whatever reason, humans would turn up perfectly good apples even after a little bite, but that was hardly a loss for you.
It was back to the same old quiet, watching over the same old stand on the same old lane outside of Turffield. Except now you had a snack as you waited for the next travelers to come by.
Finding hunting grounds was a challenge for any dragon, and especially so for hydreigon. Long ago, the gods gave your kind the power to make the world tremble, but that power had its price: three-heads, ever hungry. As such, Hydreigon had to have a nose for finding grounds that would sate that hunger, even if it meant looking in unlikely places.
You remembered when you first heard the rumors, of untouched hunting grounds south and west of the shrines to the great dragons. Grounds where prey were plentiful in number and grew fat and sleek from verdant fields. You can see them now as clear as day through three sets of eyes
You look down at the silhouette of your wings over the treetops to make sure that you’re not dreaming: green, rolling plains just beyond the forest. And milling about on top of it, a veritable sea of bleating, yellow wool.
“So the stories really are true…”
Your stomach growls at the sight and your mouths begin to water. Somehow, such rich hunting grounds had gone unclaimed all this time. All yours for the taking. And to think that your peers opted to squabble over competing claims in the mountains for prey that could slip away into caves and crags at a moment’s notice!
… Though perhaps things weren’t so black-and-white. These fields were supposed to be tended to by humans, you had been warned when you were younger not to hunt in such places. When you questioned why, you were told that as balance to the toll of tooth and claw the gods allowed Pokémon to take on humans that interfered in their affairs, that the gods also saw it fit to allow humans to similarly punish Pokémon that did likewise to theirs… and of those of the Pokémon that made cause with them. Which those Mareep almost certainly have done.
But they are humans, and you are a Hydreigon. They are said to quake in fear at the sight of your kind, even the ones who left the wild to den among them. Your kind by contrast, has stories in both your and their folklore of your kind’s mightier individuals laying waste to their villages.
But there is no need for things to come to that today: you didn’t come to hunt humans, so your quarrel isn’t with them anyways. If they wished to make it so for the sake of a few unwary Mareep… well, you’ll believe they can win that battle when they emerge from hiding from their dens and challenge you themselves. You are the Hydreigon, after all. They are the weak creatures dependent on hiding behind the strength of others.
You bank in the air along the edge of the forest and swoop lower, glancing over your shoulders to make sure another dragon hasn’t tailed you. The skies are clear but for clouds, and it’s all the encouragement you need to dive out towards the flock of Mareep in the fields, building up bluish, fiery light in your mouths.
A few of the Mareep spot you and freeze, frantically bleating out warnings to their fellows, but it is too late. You spit up a Dragon Pulse, and then another, and another. Three Mareep crumple to the ground, singed with might of your dragonfire. Their peers break away in a panic, but that is just fine by you. Your have already felled your prey before they knew what hit them. When you finish them off, you will be rewarded with a fill of succulent and still-tender meat. The just reward the gods are said to give to hunters that do not revel not in the fear and pain of their prey and quickly finish them off.
A quick swoop down and you are there to seize one of the felled Mareep with your leftmost head, biting down into her wool. You feel a feeble pulse in your jaws, but with the condition she is in, you doubt the sheep will wake up before you can carry her off and dispatch her in a quieter place away from your foes’ grasp.
You hastily flap your wings and make your way over to the second and do the same with the rightmost head as a few electric bolts sail in. The Mareep are attempting to close ranks to aid their fallen comrades. But those attacks are from Mareep, while you are a Hydreigon, and they bounce off your hide like little pricks from a Combee. Perhaps less so, since Combee pricks can be surprisingly painful sometimes.
A bellowing roar turns back a good number of the sheep in a panic and a few wingbeats later, you make your way to the third Mareep and open the jaws on your central head. This one wakes up as you approach and flinches with a low whimper after he sees you.
“I suppose my luck was bound to run out,” you grumble to yourself. This Mareep’s fear will make his meat tough and stringy compared to the other two. Perhaps you’ll eat him first to just get it over with so your meal will end on a less disappointing note.
You bare your fangs and prepare to bite down and fly off, when a blinding flash sails in and numb warmth courses through your body. You lose your grip on the other two Mareep and fall back with a pained bellow. You beat your wings and even your body out, turning your heads to see the rest of the Mareep pulling your prey away from your grasp and an Ampharos approaching with a piercing glare, sparks still dancing on his hide.
“You should know better than to prey on Pokémon that trade life under the wild’s rhythms for those set by humans. Especially ones that have done you no wrong,” the ram bleats. “The gods do not smile on Pokémon that would harm them like this.”
You blink incredulously at the Ampharos, before flitting back and coiling your necks. It occurs to you that he would be much bigger and more filling quarry. And without any hint of fear about him, the meat from his body would surely be more pleasing to consume. Even so, the ram struck you harder than you expected, and harder than you’d care to let him know. So you bare your fangs back and unfurl your six wings to their full span, snarling to remind this interloper that you are a Hydreigon, while he is a mere Ampharos.
“I think that I’m more familiar with the ways of the gods than a human pet,” you sneer. “And what do you think a mere grazer like you can do to me?”
The Ampharos narrows his eyes, letting static crackle on his body before he glares daggers at you and speaks in a calm, unfazed tone.
“Kill you. With the very power that you wield as your own,” he answers. “We Ampharos have the strength of dragons coursing through our veins, and as the Lead Ram of the Floccesy Ranch Flock, I have come far along enough to be able to use it.”
At this, you burst into laughter, struggling with all your might not to fall out of the air and bowl over onto the grass. This Ampharos… the creature that should be quailing in his tracks and begging for his life right now, is threatening you? You’d heard that being in the care of humans went to the heads of some Pokémon, but this was just too much.
Just then, a weak jolt of electricity courses through your body and you stop laughing as your limbs lock up and grow stiff. Your eyes widen briefly, but you recompose yourself and turn with a snarl. After all, you are the Hydreigon, and he is a mere Ampharos. Your kind eats Pokémon stronger than him on a regular basis.
“Burn!”
You disgorge a blue pulse of dragonfire, which makes the Ampharos stagger back much to your satisfaction. You let out a bellowing roar and fight against your stiff wings to fly at the ram as smoke swirls, opening your jaws wide to tear into him. It is then that the smoke clears and much to your alarm, the Ampharos is still standing, with an orb of bluish dragonfire in his mouth.
A sharp yelp comes from your throats, one that catches you off-guard with how much it sounds like the frightened bleating of the Mareep from earlier. Something that you will make a point of never telling another soul about in your life. You hurriedly try to pull up, when burning pain shoots through your belly. The world spins about you as you lose altitude and crash onto your side on the ground with a loud thud.
You lie there in a daze briefly as you struggle to make out swirling colors and shapes that won’t stay still. H-How on earth had this happened? You are the Hydreigon, he is the Ampharos! Th-This was completely backwards from how things were supposed to go!
You yelp after a sharp kick strikes your stomach and rolls you over onto your back. Something presses down on your central throat and you start to have trouble breathing through it. You look up, and there is the Ampharos standing over you, static dancing on his hide. Your ears pick up bleating jeers from all around you, as the Mareep aren’t afraid of you anymore and are eager to make sure you know it.
This is it. You’re going to die here. You want to face the end with bravery and dignity, like a dragon is supposed to in such situations, defiant even against the final blow. Contrary to all your expectations, the Ampharos has emerged the victor from your struggle after all, and you know he has every right to claim you.
… It proves harder than you thought, and waiting for death is a more frightening experience than you expected. You screw all six of your eyes shut as a shiver runs down your body. Things begin to grow a bit hazy, and while you’ll never admit it if you somehow survive this, but you’re pretty sure you’re whimpering right now. It’s lower and rougher, but it’s not wholly unlike the sounds the last Mareep from earlier was making after he came to.
But the killing blow doesn’t come. You still hear the Mareep’s bleating all around you, and you still feel the aching pains wracking your body, so you’re not dead yet. You crack your eyes open warily, and see the Ampharos’ foot still on your central throat. The static has died down on his hide, and in its place, he looks down at you with a piercing glare.
“I would just like to remind you that I warned you this would happen,” the Ampharos huffed. “Fortunately for you, we ‘pets’ don’t live by the rules you do in the wild and there is no blood to be avenged. Go and hunt elsewhere.”
The Ampharos lets his foot off your throat. You roll over onto your stomach and wheeze for air out of fright. You had no idea that Ampharos could become this fierce, this powerful. You look back at the sheep, who is beginning to have impatient sparks dance on his hide again.
“And don’t come back here,” he warns you. “If I see you in these fields a second time, I’ll see to it that you won’t live to tell others about losing twice to an old ram.”
There is nothing left to be said between you two. You yelp and scrabble onto your stubby legs. After pitching startledly to the ground from a failed attempt at taking off, you leap into the air and fly off as fast as your wings and your wounds from battle will let you.
Somewhere south and west of the shrines to the great dragons, there are untouched hunting grounds where prey are plentiful in number and grow fat and sleek in verdant fields. Someday, a dragon with great strength might claim it for his own.
But that dragon is not you. You’re not going to tempt fate and you’re going to put a healthy distance between you and that accursed Ampharos. There was a lake you spotted north of here about fifteen minutes ago by flying: you’re going to go there, lick your wounds, and try your luck fishing for Basculin.
Original Drabble
Charizard
Cute but Ferocious
Flapple
Dragons' Lineage
Goomy
A Dragon Someday
Ekans
Flightless
Exeggutor
Finding hunting grounds was a challenge for any dragon, especially one with an appetite as big as yours. Though that came with the territory of being a Pokémon of your kind, the gods had given you the strength to make the world tremble, at the cost of it needing to be ever fed. You remembered when you first heard the rumors, of untouched hunting grounds south and west of the shrines to the great dragons, where prey were plentiful in number and grew fat and sleek from verdant fields.
You could see it as clear as day through three sets of eyes, and you still found yourself looking down at the ground at the silhouette of your wings over the treetops to make sure that you weren’t dreaming: a verdant, rolling field just beyond the forest, with a veritable sea of bleating, yellow wool.
“So the stories really are true…”
You heard your stomach growl at the sight and felt your mouth began to water. Somehow, such rich grounds had gone unclaimed all this time. All yours for the taking. To think that all this time your peers opted to squabble over competing claims in the mountains instead.
… Perhaps things weren’t so black-and-white. These fields are supposed to be tended by humans, and it is said that as balance to the toll of tooth and claw the gods allow Pokémon to take upon humans that interfere in the affairs of Pokémon, that they saw it fit that Pokémon that interfered with the affairs of humans would be similarly punished.
But they are humans, and you are a Hydreigon. They are said to quake in fear at the sight of those of your kind who den among them. As they should, since your kind's mighty ones have stories in folklore of laying waste to their villages. Your quarrel isn’t with them anyways, and if they wish to make it so… well, you’ll believe they can win it when they emerge from hiding from their dens to challenge you. You are the Hydreigon, after all. They are the weak creatures dependent on the strength of others to stand up to Pokémon.
You bank in the air and dive towards the flock of Mareep below, building up bluish light in your mouths. A few of the Mareep turn and bleat out warning, but it is too late. You spit up a Dragon Pulse, and then another, and another. Three Mareep crumple to the ground, singed with bluish dragonfire. Their peers break away in a panic, but that is just fine by you. Your prey has already been felled before they knew what hit them. When you finish them off, you will be rewarded with your fill of succulent and still-tender meat, as the gods are said reward to hunters that hastily dispatch their prey and revel not in their fear and pain.
A quick swoop down and you are there to seize one of the Mareep with your leftmost head, biting down into its wool. You feel a feeble pulse in your jaws, but with the condition it is in, you doubt the sheep will wake up before you can carry it off and dispatch it. You hastily flap your wings to make your way over to the second and do the same with the rightmost as a few electric bolts sail in. But they are from Mareep, while you are a Hydreigon, and they bounce like little pricks off your hide from a Combee. Perhaps less so, since Combee pricks can be surprisingly painful. A few wingbeats later, and you make your way to the third Mareep and open the jaws on your central head. This one wakes up as you approach and flinches with a low whimper.
“I suppose my luck was bound to run out at some point,” you grumble to yourself. After all, this Mareep’s fear will make his meat tough and stringy compared to the other two. Perhaps you’ll eat him first to just get it over with.
You bare your fangs and prepare to sink in, when a blinding flash sails in and you feel numb warmth course through your body. You lose your grip on the other Mareep and fall back with a pained bellow, turning your heads to see an Ampharos approaching with a piercing glare, sparks still dancing on his hide.
“You should know better than to prey on Pokémon in the care of humans,” the ram bleats. “The gods do not smile on Pokémon that would harm them like this.”
You blink incredulously at the Ampharos, before flitting back and tensing your heads. It occurs to you that he would be much bigger and more filling quarry, and without any hint of fear about him, the meat from his body would surely be more pleasing to consume. Even so, the sheep struck you harder than you expect, and harder than you’d care to let him know. So you bare your fangs back, unfurl your six wings to their full span, and snarl to try and remind this interloper that you are a Hydreigon, while he is a mere Ampharos.
“I think that I am more familiar with the ways of the gods than a human pet,” you sneer. “And what do you think a mere grazer like you can do to me?”
The Ampharos narrows his eyes, before letting static dance on his hide before narrowing his eyes at you and speaking in a calm, unfazed tone.
“Kill you. With the very power that you wield as your own,” he answers. “We Ampharos have the strength of dragons coursing through our veins, and as the Lead Ram of the Floccesy Ranch flock, I have come far along enough to be able to use it.”
At this, you burst into laughter, struggling with all your might not to fall out of the air and bowl over onto the grass. This Ampharos… the creature that should be quailing in his tracks and begging for mercy right now, is threatening you? You’d heard that being in the care of humans went to the heads of some Pokémon, but this was just too much.
Just then, a weak jolt of electricity courses through your body and you stop laughing as you feel your limbs lock up and grow stiff. Your eyes widen briefly, but you recompose yourself and turn with a snarl. After all, you are the Hydreigon, and he is a mere Ampharos. Your kind eats stronger Pokémon than him on a regular basis.
“Eat this!”
You disgorge a blue pulse of dragonfire, which makes the Ampharos stagger back much to your satisfaction. You let out a bellowing roar and fight against your stiff wings to fly at the ram as smoke swirls, cracking your jaws open to tear into him. It is then that the smoke clears and much to your alarm, you see the Ampharos still standing, with an orb of bluish dragonfire in his mouth.
The next thing you hear is a noise coming from your throats that is closer to the sound of the frightened bleats of the Mareep from earlier than you will ever tell anyone else in your life. You hurriedly try to pull up, when you feel burning pain strike you in your belly. The world spins about you as you crash onto your side on the ground.
You lie there in a daze briefly. H-How on earth this all happened? You are the Hydreigon, he is the Ampharos! Th-This was completely backwards from how things were supposed to go!
You yelp after you feel a kick on your stomach and roll over onto your back. You feel something press down on your central throat and hear bleating jeers from all around you. This is it. You’re going to die here. You try to be brave and face the end with dignity as contrary to all your expectations, the Ampharos has emerged the victor, and brace for the final blow.
It is harder than you thought, and waiting for death is a more frightening experience than you expected. You screw all six of your eyes shut and feel a shiver run down your body. While you’ll never admit it, you may or may not have also made a few noises not wholly unlike the ones that the last Mareep from earlier did after coming to. But you can still hear the Mareep bleating all around you, and you still feel the aching pains wracking your body, so you’re not dead yet. You crack your eyes warily, and see the Ampharos’ foot on your central throat, its owner looking down at you with a piercing glare.
“I would just like to remind you that I warned you this would happen,” the Ampharos huffed. “Fortunately for you, there is no blood to be avenged, and we ‘pets’ don’t live by the rules of the wild. Go and hunt elsewhere.”
The Ampharos lets his foot off your throat. You roll over onto your stomach and pant for air out of fright. You had know idea that Ampharos could become this fierce, this powerful. You look back at the sheep, who is beginning to have impatient sparks dance on his hide.
“And don’t come back here again,” he warns. “If I see you in these fields again, I’ll see to it that you won’t live to tell others about losing a second time to an old ram.”
There is nothing left to be said between you two. You yelp and scrabble onto your stubby legs and after pitching startledly to the ground from a failed attempt at taking off, leap into the air and fly off as fast as your wings and your battle fatigue will let you.
Somewhere south and west of the shrines to the great dragons, are untouched hunting grounds where prey are plentiful in number and grow fat and sleek from verdant fields. Someday, a dragon with great strength might claim it for his own.
But that dragon is not you. You’re not going to tempt fate and going to put a healthy distance between you and that accursed Ampharos. There was a lake you spotted about fifteen minutes northward during your flight, you’re going to go there, lick your wounds, and try your luck fishing for Basculin.
For a Pokémon, dwelling among humans comes full of quirks and oddities, and it’s rife with occasions you’d never encounter while living in the wild. The humans have their orbs with simulated habitats that carry Pokémon both great and small in them. They bring in a variety of contraptions that they use to carry themselves around or keep their dens lit and warm regardless of the time of day or the season—including the one you’re in now. And of course, they have access to medicines and machines that allow Pokémon to recover from wounds that would be mortal in the wild.
But the human oddity that holds your attention most right now is a cylinder sitting on the tiled floor of the hallway of the human den you’re in. The cylinder looks much like a light-creating contraption humans call a “lantern”, but this one has a purple and yellow egg resting inside of it behind a layer of clear glass. If you hold your head in front of it right, you can even see your reflection in it. Your white and blue scales along your serpentine body, the blue orb on your neck, and the pair of wings on the sides of your head.
“Are you sure this will work out?”
The hissing voice that reaches your ears and prompt you to give a quick turn of your head to your left, reveals an Arbok staring worriedly down at you, giving an unconscious waggle of her tail back and forth. Your mate... and your partner, as the two of you are both trained under the same human.
She glimpses briefly at the egg in the contraption—an “incubator”, you’ve heard it called—and flicks her tongue briefly before looking away from you with a low sigh.
“My kind doesn’t normally rear children for long,” she says. “No longer than it takes for them to slither off into the grass,” she continues, turning aside with a hint of hesitation. “I’m… not sure what I’d be able to offer our child when I don’t know the first thing about watching over one.”
You flatten out your head-wings and suck in a sharp breath. If you were still back in the wilds, you would never hear the end of this from your peers. They’d have no shortage of words to say about how you chose a mate who by nature wasn’t used to staying and nurturing her child. About how you sired a child who would never be able to fly alongside you; nor to fight as you could, for they would never wield your dragonfire. One who would draw mockery and laughter from dragonkind were he or she to claim the title of ‘dragon’.
You shake your head to try and dismiss those thoughts. Why were you dwelling on them anyways? You’d come to live with humans precisely because those other dragons didn’t lend you aid at a time of need in the wild. Because none showed up when you were swept onto sharp rocks by a rogue wave when you were still a Dratini, and were left with deep wounds from it. Wounds that kept you from moving about in the water properly and made you gravely ill after they grew infected. If you hadn’t been discovered on that beach by humans all those years ago, you likely never would’ve lived long enough to worry about a child at all.
She’d even given you a chance to return back to the wild after evolution wiped those wounds away… and you’d turned the chance down, because you’d made friends with the other Pokémon that traveled with the humans you came to know.
Including the Arbok with whom you’d sired the egg in the incubator you’re staring at right now. Your whole life has been marked by taking chances and making choices that aren’t possible for you in nature. Why should that change now?
“We aren’t living like that,” you insist. “There’s room for us to try things differently.”
A crack sounds out, as a fissure runs down the length of the shell and violet scales nose at it from underneath. The Arbok sets her teeth on edge and looks around worriedly.
“Of all the times for Belinda not to be here,” she murmurs.
You’re a bit nervous yourself, and you find yourself sharing your mate’s wish that your trainer were present at the moment. But she won’t be back to this den for a few hours still, and you’re pretty sure that in this case, you’ve learned enough from her in order to get by at the moment.
“It’s alright,” you insist. “I think that I can get the machine open.”
You nose at the plastic covering over the front of the incubator and after a few fumbling noses at it, it slides open—just in time for the egg to split and the form of a young Ekans to emerge with a few tired groans. This is your child who you’ve been waiting for all these weeks. It takes a while before you can spot the appropriate patch of scales that lets you know for certain, but this is her.
You pause and your heart swells for a moment as you lower your snout at the young serpent. She abruptly coils up, and then shrinks back with a sharp rattle of her tail that makes you hesitate.
Are you scaring her? You hesitate and try to pin the wings on your head back to make yourself look smaller and less imposing.
“H-Hi there,” you stammer. “I… I know that I probably look different than what you’re expecting, but I’m your-”
You don’t get to finish your words before you hear a startled hiss. Before you know it, you feel is a heavy smack at your snout from a lunging tackle, followed by the stabbing pain of fangs sinking into it.
“Agh!”
You lurch backwards from the incubator and fight every bone in your body to not thrash about. A quick glance down your snout reveals your child dangling from your snout, her top fangs sinking into them past your scales. Your mate slithers over and hurriedly nuzzles at the Ekans, speaking in a soothing tone with a soft hiss.
“Easy! Easy, little one! There’s nothing to worry about! That’s your father!”
You wince a little as you feel a weight let go of your snout. Your child hits the floor and slithers behind the Arbok.
You nose at your wounded snout, and brush away a couple droplets of blood against your scales. It occurs to you that you’re still feeling healthy at the moment. Guess your mate’s reassurances that her kind starts their lives without poison weren’t just empty words. You turn back to your mate, and see your child craning her head out warily from behind her mother to look at you.
“Da-a da?”
It will take some weeks before your child’s grasp of her voice’s rhythm and tone begins to allow her to speak coherently, and you’re not sure whether or not her letting go of you was a fluke or not. You see your mate nose at her to try and calm her down, as your eyes begin to drift towards the floor of the human den.
You start to get doubts again. Over whether this was a good idea. Over whether this will even work. Sure, Belinda will be there to help care for your child as your trainer, but with how different you and your mate are, will your child love you the way you want to love her back?
“Dada.”
You feel scales brush up against yours, and look to see your child has come up to you and begin curling around your body. Or she’s trying to, at least. Your worries and fears ebb away then, as you resolve that whatever the future holds for your family, that you’ll work things out.
“Y-Yeah, th-that’s me. Dada. You- You kinda gave me a scare there.”
You nose at your child and she noses back at you. You don’t know whether or not she will ever be able to call herself ‘dragon’. Or whether she’ll ever be able to share any of your ways. But right then, right there, you are convinced that in all the ways that matter, that she is just like you.
Original Drabble:
Charizard
Cute but Ferocious
Flapple
Dragons' Lineage
Goomy
A Dragon Someday
Ekans
Flightless
Exeggutor
Life with humans is full of quirks and oddities, where Pokémon come across things they would never encounter while living outside their care in the wild. There are the orbs with simulated habitats that carry Pokémon both great and small in them. Healing medicines and machines that allow Pokémon to recover from wounds that would be the end of a Pokémon in the wild.
But right now, the oddity that holds your attention right now is a cylinder that looks much like a lantern, with a purple and yellow egg resting inside of it. If you hold your head right, you can see your reflection in it. Your white and blue scales along your serpentine body, the blue orb on your neck, and the pair of wings on the sides of your head.
“Are you sure this will work out?”
And a quick turn of your head reveals an Arbok staring worriedly down at you. A partner of yours that shares a human. And… your mate.
“My kind doesn’t normally rear children for much longer than it takes for them to slither off into the grass,” she sighs, looking away. “I’m… not sure what I’d be able to offer our child when I don’t know the first thing about watching over one.”
You flatten out your wings and bite your tongue. You would certainly never hear the end of this were you back in the wilds, of how you chose a mate who by nature wasn’t used to staying and nurturing her child. To sire a child that would never be able to fly alongside you. Would never be able to fight as you could. That would never wield your dragonfire. That would draw mockery and laughter were he or she to claim the title of ‘dragon’.
… Why were you dwelling on this anyways? You’d come to live with humans precisely because those other dragons didn’t lend you aid. Because you’d been discovered injured along a beach as a Dratini with wounds that kept you from moving about in the water properly. You had been given a chance to return back to the wild after evolution wiped those wounds away… and you’d turned it down, because you’d made friends with the other Pokémon that traveled with your trainers.
Including the one you’d had the egg you were staring at in the incubator right now with. Your whole life has been taking chances and making choices that weren’t possible for you in nature. Why should that change now?”
“We aren’t living like that,” you insist. “There’s room for us to try things differently.”
A crack sounds out, as you see a fissure run down the length of the shell and violet scales nose at it from underneath. The Arbok sets her teeth on edge and looks around worriedly.
“Of all the times for Belinda not to be here,” she murmurs.
“It’s alright,” you insist. “I think that I can get the machine open.”
You nose at the plastic covering over the front of the incubator and after a few fumbling noses it slides open, just in time for the egg to split and the form of a young Ekans to emerge with a few tired groans. This is your child who you’ve been waiting for all these weeks. It takes a while before you can spot the appropriate patch of scales, but this is her.
You pause and feel your heart well for a moment, as you lower your snout at the young serpent, who shrinks back at first with a nervous rattle of her tail. Are you scaring her? You hesitate and try to pin the wings on your head back to make yourself look smaller.
“H-Hi there,” you stammer. “I… I know that I probably look different than what you’re expecting, but I’m your-”
The next thing you feel is a heavy smack at your snout from a lunging tackle, followed by fangs sinking into your snout.
“Agh!”
You lurch back, and fight every bone in your body to not thrash about. Your mate hurries over, and hurriedly nuzzles at the Ekans, speaking in a soothing tone with a soft hiss.
“Easy! Easy, little one! There’s nothing to worry about! That’s your father!”
It will take some weeks before your child begins to speak coherently, but even so, she lets go and slithers behind the Arbok, craning her head out warily.
“Da- Da da?”
You nose at your wounded snout, and brush away a couple droplets of blood. It occurs to you that you’re still feeling healthy at the moment. Guess your mate’s reassurances that her kind starts their lives without poison weren’t just empty words.
You start to get doubts again. Over whether this was a good idea. Over whether this will even work. Sure, Belinda will be there to help care for your child, but with how different you two are, will she love you the way you want to love her back?
“Da da.”
You feel scales brush up against yours, and look to see your child curling around your body. Or trying to, at least. Your worries and fears ebb away then, as you resolve that whatever the future holds, that you’ll work things out.
“Y-Yeah, th-that’s me. Da da. You- You kinda gave me a scare there.”
You don’t know whether or not your child will ever be able to call herself ‘dragon’. Or whether or not she’ll be able to share any of your ways. But right then, right there, you are convinced that in all the ways that matter, that she is just like you.
You keep your body close to the ground under the shade of a canopy of leaves overhead. A large bush that you might have been happy to gorge on in better times, when the dark was there to disguise you and the rain was there to aid your movements. But as the heat in the air and the rays of sunlight trickling in through the gaps between the leaves reminds you, now isn’t that time, and you don’t dare budge in your hiding place.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. You were supposed to have gone foraging while the nightly rains made it easier for you to move about. You were supposed to have eaten your fill of leaves and berries hours ago, and then gone back to your hiding place to rest alongside your peers.
But then you ran into that Serperior on the prowl and you were forced to hide in these bushes. You’d tried to keep an eye out for a chance to sneak past the fearsome serpent, but you were lethargic from not having had the chance to eat beforehand. One thing led to another, and before you knew it, the rains stopped and the sun began to peek over the horizon.
For some Pokémon, the night was dark and full of terrors. But with your slow gait and your frail body, damp darkness was your ally. The beating sun had long dried up that dampness outside, and it won’t be until about midday until light rains come again to the island that you live on and make moving around easier again.
Or at least easy enough to try and sneak back to your den by going from bush to bush. You’d tried to stay alert and conserve your energy until that time came, but between your hunger and the daytime heat eating away at the damp layer of slime on your body, you kept having trouble staying awake.
Worse still, every now and then, your antennae would pick up movement from just outside the bush you were hiding in, like the heavy footsteps you sense passing by you right now. Just as in those prior occasions, you keep still and try to tell yourself that whatever is on the other end hasn’t seen you. That if you just stay quiet, you can hold on and inch away back to safety. But it was your evolution that had mucus that would burn to the touch. If whatever found you set upon you…
You try not to think too hard about it. Suffice to say, you don’t have such natural defenses just yet, and you’re stuck here waiting and trying to remain still and quiet like your life depends on it.
Because in all likelihood, it does.
Except, this time the footsteps return. Your small eyes shrink to pins and you desperately hold your breath, when the bush around you erupts with activity. A pair of gray, chitinous horns slice through the foliage right above you, just barely missing your antennae.
You scream, and spit up a stream of blue dragonfire at your attacker before you break from the bush and slime ahead as fast as you can… which is probably pitifully slow in comparison to your attacker. You turn your eyes as much as you can and see your foe is a hulking, brown beetle, with barbed pincers at the top of his head and a mouth full of sharp, fang-like mandibles.
You remember there is a ledge just up ahead from your hiding place that goes down to the beach. Down to where humans sometimes come onto this island from the sea. If you can just make it there, maybe you can buy some time for the Pinsir to lose sight of you. Enough time for you to find another bush to hide in.
Except, the dew and nightly rains have long dried out. You hurriedly inch forward, contracting your foot as the edge comes into view. Any relief you have is swiftly quashed by the sound of an overpowering hiss. The Pinsir is behind you, coming at you lunging with his pincers, aiming to grasp you between them and finish you off. You flatten yourself against the ground as the pincers snap shut just overhead with a sharp clack and you throw yourself off the ledge.
You hit the grass below as the impact knocks the wind out of you. You lay there stunned for a moment and try to get up when you hear wings buzzing. You look behind you and see the Pinsir has followed you, evidently having seen your leap of faith this entire time. You let out a low whine as the beetle clicks his mandibles, and steel yourself for the end.
That is when you see a sudden shock of green and brown swoop down, trailing telltale flecks of fiery blue that looks just like your Dragon Breath. The blur crushes the Pinsir to the ground, before jerking back up high into the sky. You look as the Pinsir struggles against the ground in a daze, before he hurriedly scrabbles away and limps off into the brush.
Your breaths come tense and heavy as you look up, and see a towering tree above you. Or at least you think it is a tree until it turns and cranes downward. The things that look like coconuts at first glance turn out to be a trio of heads, and you freeze as they study you carefully.
“You look tired, young dragon,” the Exeggutor says. “Why do you move about in the sun in such a state?”
You breathe in and out sharply as you feel an overpowering urge to flee, when it occurs to you: this Exeggutor has saved your life. Even if he is tall and imposing, if he meant you harm you, he’d have done so by now.
The least you can do as a thanks is to give him an answer in reply.
“Because I was stranded while I was foraging for food,” you explain. “And I was set upon by my enemies while I was weak and vulnerable.”
The Exeggutor stares at you for a quiet moment, before shaking his leafy heads. The great dragon cracks a trio of small smiles and rumbles in reassurance.
“It won’t be much longer until the daytime rains, little one. This is where I normally sun myself before they come. Won’t you stay and rest a while?” the tree-creature asks. “As one dragon to another, I can lend a helping frond this once.”
You’re still in disbelief over everything that has happened. But you need a shaded place to rest, and no bush on this island carries sort of power your unexpected guardian just wielded.
And so, even if part of you is still wary, even if it is still afraid. Your words wind up leaving your mouth without you thinking.
“Of-Of course.”
The tree-dragon rears back up, his head stretching high up into the sky where the birds might fly as shade falls on the grass around you. Exhausted, you inch forward and flatten yourself against it near the Exeggutor’s legs, closing your eyes as sleep claims you.
You wake up to the patter of rain against your body. You yawn and turn your eyes skyward, finding the Exeggutor turning to glance you over before he cranes his head down to speak.
“I’m afraid this is where we must part ways,” he says. “My rhythms call me to the west of the island for when the rain parts for the afternoon sun. And yours…”
The Exeggutor motions off inland, where you see your fellows inching along. Goomy and Sliggoo, making their way down from the hilltop to forage. Your eyes brighten from the sight and you start to set off, only to catch yourself as you turn back to the great tree dragon towering up into the skies above.
“I don’t know how I can ever repay you,” you murmur.
“Be careful and patient, young dragon,” he answers. “If the fates smile upon you, you too will grow strong and tall one day. Knowing that you’ll use it to help another dragon small in stature just as another did for me when I was once small and weak is thanks enough.”
You don’t know if that day will ever come. Especially since you’re sure you’ve never heard of your kind growing tall enough to tower into the sky like this Exeggutor. But you give the dragon your word and begin to slime off, calling out to your peers in the distance.
You’ll have quite the story to tell them after you’ve eaten your fill and finally make your way back home. Of how a fellow dragon saved your life, one taller and stronger than you could’ve ever imagined.
Original Drabble:
Charizard
Cute but Ferocious
Flapple
Dragons' Lineage
Goomy
A Dragon Someday
Ekans
Flightless
Exeggutor
This wasn’t supposed to happen. You were supposed to have gone foraging while the nightly rains made it easier to move about. To eat your fill of leaves and berries and go back to your hiding place to rest.
And then you ran into the Serperior, and were forced into hiding in these bushes. You’d tried to keep an eye out for a chance to sneak past it, but you hadn’t had the chance to eat beforehand, and before you knew it, the rains stopped and the sun began to peek over the horizon.
For some Pokémon, the night was dark and full of terrors. But with your slow gait and your frail body, damp darkness was your ally. The beating sun had long dried up that dampness, and it wouldn’t be until about midday until light rains came again to the island that would make movement easier. At least enough to try and sneak back to your den going from bush to bush. You’d tried to rest and conserve your energy until then, but between your hunger, the daytime heat eating away at the damp layer of slime on your body, you kept having trouble dozing off.
And every now and then, your antennae would pick up movement from just outside your bush, like the heavy footsteps you were sensing passing by you. You’d keep still and try to tell yourself that whatever was on the other end hadn’t seen you, that if you’d just stay quiet, you could hold on, and inch away back to safety. But it was your evolution that had the mucous that would burn to the touch. You were stuck here waiting and trying to remain still and quiet.
Except, the footsteps returned this time. Your small eyes shrank to pins and you desperately held your breath, when the bush erupted with activity. A pair of gray, chitinous horns sliced through the foliage just above you, just missing your antennae.
You screamed. And spat up a stream of blue dragonfire at your attacker before you broke from the bush and slimed ahead as fast as you could… which wasn’t all that fast in the grand scheme of things. You turned eyes as much as you could and saw your attacker was a hulking, brown beetle, with barbed pincers at the top of its head and a mouth full of sharp, fang-like mandibles.
There was a ledge just up ahead that went down to the beach. Down to where humans sometimes came and went on this island. If you could just make it there, maybe you could buy some time for the Pinsir to lose sight of you. To find another bush to hide in.
Except, the dew and nightly rains were long dried out. You hurriedly inched forward, contracting your foot as the Pinsir came at you when he lunged with his pincers. To grasp you and finish you off. You flattened yourself against the ground as the pincers closed just overhead with a sharp clack and you threw yourself off the ledge and hit the grass below.
You lay there stunned for a moment and tried to get up when you heard wings buzzing. You looked behind you and saw the Pinsir had followed you, evidently having seen you and your leap of faith this entire time. You let out a low whine as the beetle clicked his mandibles, bracing yourself for the end.
That was when you saw a sudden shock of green and brown, trailing telltale flecks of blue like your Dragon Breath barrel in. The blur crushed the Pinsir to the ground, before jerking back up high into the sky. You looked as the Pinsir struggled against the ground in a daze, before hurriedly scrabbling away and limping off into the brush.
Your breaths came tense and heavy as you looked up, and saw a towering tree above you. Or at least you thought it was a tree, until you saw it turn and crane down. The things you thought were coconuts turned out to be a trio of heads, and you froze as they studied you carefully.
“You look tired, young dragon,” the Exeggutor said. “Why do you move about in the sun in such a state?”
“Because I was stranded while I was foraging,” you explain. “And I was set upon by my enemies while I was weak and vulnerable.”
The Exeggutor stared at you for a quiet moment, before shaking his leafy head. The great dragon cracked a trio of small smiles, as he rumbled in reassurance.
“The daytime rains won’t be much longer. This is where I normally sun myself before they come. Won’t you stay and rest a while?” the tree-creature asked. “As one dragon to another, I can lend a helping frond this once.”
“Of- Of course.”
The tree-dragon reared back up, his head stretching high up into the sky where the birds might fly as shade fell on the grass below. Exhausted, you inched forward, and flattened yourself against the ground, your eyes closing as sleep claimed you.
When you woke up, you felt the patter of rain against your body and awakened to find the Exeggutor turning to look over you before craning his head down to you.
“I’m afraid this is where we must part ways,” he said. “My rhythms call me to the west of the island for when the rain parts for the afternoon sun. And yours…”
The Exeggutor motioned off ahead, where you saw your fellows inching along. Goomy and Sliggoo, making their way down from the hilltop to forage. You set off, before turning back to the great tree dragon that towered over you and gave thanks.
You would have quite the story to tell your peers after you’d eaten your fill and finally made your way back home. Of how a fellow dragon saved your life, one taller and stronger than you could’ve ever imagined.
You crouch as you peek out from the bushes along the stone fence line, the salt tang in the air pricking your nostrils as you crouch and pull a set of sharp leaves on your arms taut into each other as blades. Humans call the place you’re in ‘Mossdeep City’, and you are in one of its neighborhoods somewhere in its northwest tip. Here, the houses are big with broad yards, ones that belong to humans with many treasures.
Treasures that you and your human partner used to ambush such humans for.
You paw at a small, black wristband hiked further up your right arm and ask yourself why you feel so nervous right now, when it occurs to you that if your partner was here, he’d pull you back into your Pokéball on the spot and give you an earful later. You don’t know what exactly he’d say, since your grasp of human language is still a bit shaky, but the gist of it would surely be that taking this sort of risk for a treasure was a terrible idea and that you were an idiot for even thinking about doing it.
Your partner instructed you in the past that it was not safe to go through houses such as these blindly. Many of them are watched by the likes of guarding Manectric, and others have eye-like machines hidden about which allow humans to see those who prowl about their territories and track them down later. It was better to snatch the things of the humans from these big houses while they were out and about in the busier parts of the city, where a human like your partner could lose a pursuer among the crowds as easily as you could among the treetops of a forest.
You look out from your hiding place and see a broad, green lawn—a rarity for houses outside this neighborhood. You start to feel your stomach knot up as you realize that all the tricks you and your partner used to use won’t work here. You’ll be completely in the open the moment you leave your bush, so it is imperative that you slip in and out unseen.
Your earlier plan had been to try and snatch your mark’s treasure back deeper in town, when you’d first seen this man and overheard him with some companions of his. You hadn’t made out all of his conversation, but he’d apparently found stones that made Pokémon stronger. You’d tailed him the entire way back on your own, occasionally stopping and pretending you were waiting for a trainer if passersby found your presence as an unattended Pokémon strange. It’d cost you an opening to make your move more than once already.
Now, your attention drifts back to the scene at the house where your mark is seated on patio furniture near an overlook of the sea: a white-haired man in a black suit… who is tending to a Metagross. You gulp and begin to understand why you haven’t seen any guards here. This human and just this companion of his alone are already strong enough to be their own guards, to say nothing about any others that might be hiding in those other Pokéballs on the holster around his waist.
You feel a cold shiver run down your spine and start to get second thoughts about this whole idea. Attempting direct battle with those two would be tantamount to suicide. You’d feel much more confident if your trainer were still here for you. If he were, he’d simply distract the man and his companion while you cut open the bag, snatched those stones within it, and ran off. He was always crafty with battle strategies, and were you caught, he could even potentially get you out of trouble by pretending you’d been misbehaving and feigning an apology.
Except, he isn’t here alongside you right now.
You glimpse back at the wristband on your arm. As the memories of your trainer locked up in that little silicone strip start to swirl about in your memory.
Your trainer was a kind human. He never treated you ill, and was always there to come to your side when you were hurt or frightened. He was a bit loud and brash, but you frankly preferred having a partner of that sort who wasn’t afraid to stir up trouble on behalf of his friends.
… Right, trouble. There certainly was no shortage of that when you two were together. Perhaps you should’ve suspected that something was wrong from the way you and him kept getting into fights with other humans, often over little trinkets or bits of paper and metal that humans value. Sure, as long as you were able to overpower their Pokémon, those fights usually came to an end quickly: after all, you were the one with Leaf Blades, and humans tended to lose their will to fight without a strong partner at their side.
But other times it had been you who lost the battle, even if you took it all in stride. It was thrilling, almost like hunting: but with key differences. Even if you failed, you’d get more second chances, and your human and you would be there to have each other’s backs.
… Until one night last year, when those second chances ran out. You’d ambushed your foes to snatch their belongings like many a time in the past, except partway through the battle, one of your usual enemies intervened, a human in a peaked cap with a Growlithe. You remember a flash of panic coming over your partner’s face, a gout of fire hitting yours that hurt more than you expected it to, and then everything going black when you hit the pavement.
You remember waking up afterwards on a bed in the backroom of a Pokécenter with your mouth muzzled, your ankles zip tied, and your wrists similarly bound behind your back. You panicked and called out for your trainer, expecting he’d be there to help you like he always was. He never came, and the Chansey on-staff told you not to expect him, and to not cause trouble since you were only allowed to be out of your Pokéball at that moment because your wounds needed overnight observation.
One thing led to another, and after wriggling the zip ties around your wrists loose enough, you cut your limbs loose and broke from your bedding to try to fight your way out of the room to freedom. That didn’t last terribly long since there was a human with a peaked cap waiting outside in the hall partnered with the biggest Arcanine you’d ever seen. Before you knew it, the fight was over, with you pinned to the ground on your stomach with a snarling mouth filled with sharp fangs hovering just overhead.
Things were kinda hazy after that moment. You remember curling up under the Arcanine’s grasp and sobbing and begging for him not to roast you before one of the Pokémon on staff hit you in the face with Sleep Powder. It’s probably for the best, since from what you can remember of that moment, you know it’s not one of your prouder ones.
When you came to again just before daybreak, you woke up with a fresh set of zip ties on your limbs, fastened tight enough to start digging into your scales, and saw the Arcanine and his trainer scowling at you at your bedside. You panicked at first, but gathered before long that at least you weren’t going to die. The way the Arcanine pointedly told you afterwards that if you’d caused further trouble, you’d have your arm leaves cut and either spend the rest of your observation period sedated and drooling into your bedding or be sent back to your Pokéball regardless of your wounds was a good enough hint.
You heeded the hound’s warning since your fighting spirit had long worn down since your earlier encounter, but your trainer still didn’t come. It took all your courage to ask the Arcanine when your trainer would come for you, when he answered you with words that haunt you to this day:
"Your trainer isn’t coming. He’s been taken away to be penned up for harming other humans and Pokémon. He’ll most likely be there for a number of years."
You started to cry after that and begged and pleaded for you and your trainer to be let go. You tried to explain that you didn’t know your trainer had put you up to something he wasn’t supposed to and just been trying to help him like any Pokémon with a human would. He was your dearest friend, and you swore up and down that if they’d just let him and you go that neither of you would cause any harm afterwards.
In retrospect, you're not sure why you thought your words would make any difference.
Right, that’s why you’re doing this. For your trainer. To get the strength to find him and reunite with him. It was admittedly a shot in the dark, but you reasoned that one of those stones in the man’s bag might help. Maybe there was one inside that could make you stronger. Heavens knew you could’ve used something like that back when your partner was around. Before that night the humans in the peaked caps took him.
You suck in a breath and try to dismiss those memories as you look back out at the lawn, but a few continue to linger stubbornly. Mainly ones that have got you worried about your entire plan right now.
You think back to when you were discharged from the Pokécenter after that awful night and were passed back along with your Pokéball to your human’s parents, an elderly couple who live here in Mossdeep City. Most of the trip went by inside your Pokéball after it was pushed into a darkened container before it was removed and you were unceremoniously dumped out into the outside world, still-quivering, onto their doorstep. The humans in peaked caps pulled your human’s parents aside to explain something to them, while the Arcanine from your Pokécenter room was there too and sternly warned you to stay out of further trouble.
In the dog’s words, continuing on your trainer’s path would almost certainly bring you to an unpleasant end. You remembered him telling you that there were analogues to the buildings with human cages for Pokémon, in which Pokémon would be penned up in their Pokéballs for most hours of the day, and only let out for short periods of time into drab, featureless rooms. Being sent to such a place was one potential fate for Pokémon that kept getting into trouble the way you did. Getting cast out into the wild and being forced to relearn how to survive that lifestyle was another one. If you really got into trouble, the Arcanine warned you that you could even be put to death.
That last thought makes your attention drift from the yard outside your hiding place and sends a shiver up your spine. You’ve been ignoring the Arcanine’s warnings for some time now, and while you haven’t gotten caught yet, if you did, you don’t know what threshold the humans would use to decide whether or not to take your life.
You remind yourself that you’re not taking this great risk for the thrill of it. As far as you know, you’re the only one out there, human or Pokémon, that still cares about the fate of your partner.
Your trainer’s parents would normally be the ones to come and defend him when he was younger, but ever since you were handed over to them, they seemed to have forgotten about him. They stopped talking about their son and took down the pictures they had of him around the house. They even got rid of most of his belongings, with the band on your arm being one of the few items you were able to snatch away for yourself.
They don’t pay you much mind either and basically ignore you as long as you come home at night and don’t show up obviously injured. You don’t know whether or not it’s because you remind them of the son they seemingly forgot, or if it’s just because they’ve grown older and more sedentary.
The various friends your trainer used to have similarly haven’t done anything either. You haven’t even seen them beyond a couple chance encounters on the street. Their own Pokémon told you that there was nothing to be done for your human until he was released from his captivity.
That left just you to try and get your trainer back, but you would need strength for that. Strength more than what your occasional scuffles in this town’s back alleys and snatched item here or there from your daytime wanderings would accomplish. Strength like what those stones are supposed to provide, which from what you overheard from the man in black’s Pokémon said, carry a power that can transform Pokémon entirely.
You snap back to attention after hearing heavy footsteps and see the man and his Metagross head off for the house, with his bag sitting unattended on the patio table.
This is your big and only chance. It could be the last thing that you or your partner ever stole for all you care, so long as it helped you get him back.
You burst from the brush, reminding yourself to make this an in-and-out encounter. You bolt up to the table and hop up one of the chairs, hurriedly tipping the bag over and pawing through its contents.
Inside, you find all sorts of rocks. Small ones, large ones, rough ones, smooth ones. Tools for measuring them, tools for chipping away at them. … Was this human raised by an Aggron or something? Since you can’t say you’ve ever run into a human that cared about rocks this much before.
As you paw through the stones, you see it: a round, light-blue stone with an orange and white swirl. That must be one of the ones that made Pokémon stronger.
Just then, you hear a door slam open and freeze up. You wrap your claws around the blue stone and leap off the chair, bolting across the lawn for the fenceline. You leap to try and scrabble up it, when a harsh, metallic voice barks at you to stop.
You see a bluish aura envelop your body, and your eyes shrink to pins as an unseen force abruptly freezes you in midair and holds you aloft. You thrash about to try and break free, to no avail. You gulp and look back, as the man in black approaches you and the Metagross with him holds you aloft with telekinetic force, glaring daggers at you all the while before it gives a passing insult at your intelligence for thinking it wise to steal from them.
“‘Grovyle the Thief’, huh? Whoever put you up to this one’s been reading too many children’s stories.”
‘G-Grovyle the Thief’? ‘Stories’? You didn’t pick up all of the man’s words, but humans have ones about Grovyle that steal things?
You try to glare back and flash your leafy blades to show that you won’t go down without a fight, when his Metagross lets out a metallic-sounding hiss and makes a clacking noise under its body before telling you to go ahead and make its day. You shiver at the sound when you realize the noise probably came from the Metagross’ mouth. Metagross are supposed to be vicious predators that pin their prey under their bodies to devour them, and this one has you completely at its mercy.
You suddenly feel so small and alone. No human partner, and this was your desperate attempt to get him back. You pull your tails tight against your body and begin to stammer an explanation back in your tongue as your words come out in a squeaking stream. That you were never really going to hurt anyone. That you’ll leave right away if the man in black will just tell his partner to let you go. That Grovyle don’t taste good for anyone to eat, and especially not for Metagross.
The Metagross growls and remarks about you putting up a ‘pathetic display’, while the human doesn’t seem to pick up on anything you said and begins to approach. You draw in shallow, tense breaths and let out a frightened whine as he nears; then you look up and blink in confusion.
He’s… smiling at you right now. You’re not sure why, but he turns his eyes down at your paws still wrapped around the blue stone and points at them with one of his fingers.
“Oh, you were trying to grow stronger, weren’t you?”
‘Stronger’? This human knows about that? About how you’re trying to get strength to get your partner back?
The man says something quietly to the Metagross that makes the Steel-type sigh. The force holding you pulls you back from the fence and lets go. Without thinking, you turn to run, but before you can get more than a couple steps away, a sharp bark rings out and demands to know where you think you’re going. You skid to a stop as the Metagross blocks your path and tells you that it and its human aren’t done with you. Because of course they aren’t.
You gulp and shrink back, and look at the white-haired man, only to see that he doesn’t seem angry with you. The Metagross relays the man’s question to you and after a moment’s hesitation, you give a timid nod back to him in reply. The man hesitates after your answer, before making his way back to the bag you tore up to fish through the other rocks that were inside it.
You’re not sure if you’re in trouble right now or not. The human seems friendly… but definitely not safe. You look down at the blue stone in your paws. From how little you understand his tongue, it’s for the best not to make assumptions: for all you know, he’s toying with you right now before he turns you over to the humans in the peaked caps… or feeds you to his Metagross.
When you look back up, you see the man return with his right hand cupped around something. It’s probably a Pokéball. He must think you live in the wild and be planning to try and catch you. You’re pretty sure it won’t work since you can still go in and out of your trainer’s just fine… not that the man in black would know that.
“I’m afraid you wouldn’t have any luck getting stronger with that stone though. That’s for my partner; this was the one you wanted.”
Something about the stone you’re holding. Something about his Metagross. You forget for a moment that humans can’t understand Pokémon tongue and reflexively open your mouth to ask him to explain, only for him to pre-empt you by opening his right hand and showing off a pair of spherical stones in his grasp. One of them is a light green stone with a red and green swirl in it. You look down at your body and then at the stone, then at the one in your paws and off at the Metagross.
His Metagross then asks you how you planned on being able to use a Metagrossite in the first place. You blink at the question and suddenly feel a lot stupider. Of course a stone that would make a Pokémon stronger would look like the Pokémon that it would work on, and you snatched the one that looked nothing like you!
“I found this Sceptilite on a recent caving expedition, but I don’t really have need for it myself. Not too many of my friends would be able to use it, either. But it could make you strong, and awaken the might of a dragon in you for a short time.”
You missed most of his explanation, but managed to pick up part of his last few words. ‘Might… of a dragon’? You turn and ask the Metagross if that little rock would make you into a dragon? As in those strong creatures that fly about the skies as they please? The ones that humans tell myths of roosting in this land and soaring up to strike stars from the heavens? Of controlling time from a distant land in the far north?
You don’t know how on earth that’s possible, but you certainly aren’t going to turn it down right now. That’s exactly the sort of power you’d need to get your partner back.
The Metagross swiftly crushes your excitement by pointing out that the stone would indeed do that… for a Sceptile, while you are a Grovyle.
You hang your head a little with a low, disappointed whine when you remember that there is a second stone of many colors with a swirl in it in the man’s hand as well. One that seems to match a pin that’s set in place on the collar of his suit. What’s that one for?
“It’ll take you some time to use that Sceptilite, and you also wouldn’t be able to use it on your own. You’d need the help of a human like me that you deeply trust. Though it looks like you already have someone like that, don’t you?”
You follow the human’s finger towards the armband around your wrist. The second stone… is for your partner? The Metagross confirms your theory and explains that this second stone is a ‘Key Stone’, and it apparently works together with stones like this ‘Sceptilite’ somehow.
You don’t understand how those things work, and you’re not fully sure why these two are just dangling them in front of you. The man in black holds out the hand with the stones, and then the other empty-palmed. You hear the sound of heavy footsteps and see the Metagross backing out of the way, and cast a glance between your escape route and at the man in black.
“So what do you say, Grovyle? Seem like a fair trade for that Metagrossite and letting you go?”
The Metagross tells you its trainer is offering you a trade and encourages you not to turn it up, since it frankly would’ve preferred to Meteor Mash you and call it a day. You look at the blue stone in your paws, and the pair in the man’s hand. You could turn and flee now while the path is open, or you could take a risk and give up this stone that he evidently cares so much about, which surely must be valuable if he’s willing to give up two others in exchange for it.
You hesitate for a moment, when your mind turns back to your partner, waiting caged and alone somewhere, and you look at the two stones in the man’s hand. In a swift motion, you make the trade and palm the green stone and the iridescent stone.
You back up for the stone fence, nervously reminding the man that you made a trade and that he promised you your well-being. Your words go over his head, but beyond giving an unamused scowl, his Metagross does not move to cut you off, and the smile remains on the human’s face as he looks down at you.
“I figured you’d like it. Just don’t get yourself into trouble trying to impress your friend, okay?”
You nod back and clutch onto the stones before hastily scrabbling over the fence and into a back alley behind it. You stay there panting tensely for a while, when you gape up and see that the sun is further towards the west than you remembered it. It’s time for you to go home before your trainer’s parents get too worried about you.
The whole time, you make your way down confident and at peace, without the earlier nervousness you’d had for much of the day. You don’t know when the day will come, but someday, you will be a dragon. And one way or another, you will wield that power alongside your old friend. Together.
Original Drabble:
Charizard
Cute but Ferocious
Flapple
Dragons' Lineage
Goomy
A Dragon Someday
Ekans
Flightless
Exeggutor
You crouch and peek out from the bushes along the stone fenceline, the salt tang of the air pricking your nostrils as you crouch and pull leaves on your arms taut into each other as blades. Humans call this place you’re in ‘Mossdeep City’, and were your partner here, he’d surely pull you back into your Pokéball. You don’t know what he’d say, since your human is a bit rusty, but you’re sure the gist of it would be that this was a terrible idea.
After all, the houses here are big, belonging to humans with many treasures. Your partner instructed you in the past that it was not safe to go through such houses blindly. Many of them are watched by the likes of guarding Manectric. It was better to snatch the things of the humans from the big houses while they were out and about in the busier parts of the city, where a human like your partner could get lost among the crowds as easily as you could among the treetops of a forest.
You thought of trying to do that back deeper in town, when you’d first seen this man and overheard him with some companions of his. You didn’t make out all of his conversation, but he’d apparently found stones that made Pokémon stronger. Maybe there was one that could make you stronger. Heavens knew you could’ve used that back when your partner was around.
Your attention drifts back to the scene at the house. A man in white hair in a black suit can be seen tending to a Metagross. You begin to understand why there’s no guards here. This human and the companion you can already see are already strong enough to be their own guards. Attempting direct battle with them would be tantamount to suicide. The easiest way to get at it would be for your partner to distract the man and his companion while you cut open the bag and snatched those stones within it and ran off.
Except, your partner isn’t here. You glance at a small black wristband on your arm. It’s your trainer’s. Perhaps you should’ve suspected that something was wrong from the way you and him kept getting into fights with other humans, often over little trinkets or bits of paper and metal that humans value. But you took it all in stride. It was thrilling, almost like hunting, and you had his back and he had yours.
… Until the night that the humans in the peaked caps took him away. You remember waking up afterwards in a strange place, coming to cornered by a snarling Arcanine that worked with them. There was the moment after that where you bowled over sobbing and begging not to be roasted, but you don’t like thinking too much about it. It’s not exactly one of your prouder ones. After you realized you weren’t going to die and calmed down a bit afterwards, you gathered your nerves to try and face down the imposing hound. It took all your courage as you tried to explain that you’d just been trying to help your trainer like any Pokémon would, and begged and pleaded for you and your trainer to be let go, insisting that you wouldn’t cause any harm afterwards.
You don’t know if your words had any effect. In the end, your trainer was taken away in a black-and-white car, and you had never seen him since then. You were passed back along with your Pokéball to his parents, an elderly couple who live here in Mossdeep City, dropped off still-quivering on their doorstep as the humans in peaked caps explained something to them, and the Arcanine with them passed you a warning to stay out of further trouble.
In the dog’s words, continuing on his trainer’s path would bring him an unpleasant end. He remembered being put into something called ‘stasis’ being one of them, as was being cast out into the wild. If you really got into trouble, the Arcanine warned, you could even be put to death.
You shiver a bit at the last thought. You don’t know what threshold the humans would use to decide to take your life. But as it stands, you’re already taking a great risk. Your trainer’s parents seemed to forget about him after the humans in peaked caps took you back to them. They stopped talking about him, and took down the pictures they had of him around the house. They don’t pay you much mind either and basically ignore you as long as you come home at night and don’t show up obviously injured. You don’t know whether or not it’s because you remind them of the son they seemingly forgot, or if it’s just because of them growing older and more sedentary.
But it quickly became apparent to you that if anyone would get your trainer back, it’d be you. But you would need strength for that. Strength more than what your occasional scuffles in the back alley and snatched item here or there from your daytime wanderings about the town would accomplish. Strength like what those stones are supposed to provide, with a power that can transform Pokémon entirely.
You snap back to attention and see the man and the Metagross head off for the house. This is your big chance. It could be the last thing that you or your partner ever stole for all you care, so long as it helped you get him back.
You tip the bag over and paw through its contents, where you find all sorts of rocks. Small ones, large ones. Tools for picking at them. Was this human raised by an Aggron or something? As you paw through them, you see it: a round, light-blue stone with a orange and white swirl. That must be one of the stones that made Pokémon stronger.
Just then, you hear a door slam open and tense up. You wrap your claws around the blue stone and take off running for the fenceline. You leap to try and scrabble up it, when you feel your body abruptly freeze in midair, and see a bluish aura envelop your body. You thrash in the air to try and break free, but to no avail. You gulp and look back, seeing the man in black approach you as the Metagross with him holds you aloft with telekinetic force, glaring daggers at you all the while.
“‘Grovyle the Thief’, huh? Whoever put you up to this one’s been reading too many stories.”
‘G-Grovyle the Thief’? A ‘story’? Humans have ones about Grovyle that steal things?
You try to glare back, but you can’t help but shiver after his Metagross lets out a metallic-sounding hiss. They are supposed to be vicious predators that pin their prey under their bodies to devour them, and his has you completely at his mercy. You pull your tails tight against your body and begin to stammer an explanation back in your tongue that you were never going to hurt anyone, that you’ll leave right away if you’ll just be let go, and the Grovyle don’t taste good for anyone to eat, and especially not for Metagross like his.
You’re pretty sure that you might as well have blurted out “please don’t hurt me, I’m just a little gecko” and the human would’ve understood just as much. You draw in shallow, tense, breaths as he approaches, when he looks down at your paws and points at them with a small smile.
“Oh, so you were trying to grow stronger, huh?”
‘Stronger’? He knows about that? You feel the force holding you let go and turn to run, only for the Metagross to block your path. You let out a low whine and shrink back, and look back at the white-haired man, only to see that he doesn’t seem angry with you. You give a timid nod back, and the man hesitates, before making his way back to the bag you tore up to fish through it.
You’re… not sure if you’re in trouble right now or not. The human seems friendly… but definitely not safe. You look down at the blue stone in your paws. From how little you understand of his tongue, it’s for the best to not assume things. For all you know, he’s toying with you right now before he feeds you to his Metagross.
When you look back up, you see the man approaching with his right hand cupped around something. Probably a Pokéball to try and catch you. You’re pretty sure it won’t work since you can still go in and out of your trainer’s just fine… not that the man in black would know that.
“I’m afraid you wouldn’t have any luck with that stone though. That’s for my partner, this was the one you wanted.”
Something about the stone you’re holding. Something about his Metagross. You forget for a moment that humans can’t understand Pokémon tongue and reflexively open your mouth to ask, only for him to pre-empt you by opening his right hand and showing off a pair of spherical stones. One of them is a light green stone with a red and green swirl in it. You look down at your body and then at the stone, then at the one in your paws and off at the Metagross.
You suddenly feel a lot stupider now. Of course a stone that would make a Pokémon stronger would look like the Pokémon that it would work on, and you snatched the one that looked nothing like you!
“I found it on a recent caving expedition, and actually don’t have a need for it myself. Not too many of my friends would be able to use it either. It’ll make you strong, to awaken the might of a dragon in you for a short time.”
You missed most of his explanation, but managed to pick up part of his last few words. ‘Might… of a dragon’? As in that little rock would make you into a dragon? As those strong creatures that fly about the skies as they please? The ones that humans tell myths of controlling time from the far north?
You don’t know how on earth that’s possible, but you certainly aren’t going to turn it down right now. That’s exactly the sort of power you’d need to get your partner back.
“Though you won’t be able to use it right now. It’s a Sceptileite, after all. You’d need to grow a bit before you could use it.”
Except, you can’t use it right now. You hang your head a little with a low, disappointed whine when you remember that there was a second stone of many colors with a swirl in it. What’s that one for?
“You also wouldn’t be able to use it on your own. You’d need the help of someone like me that you deeply trust. Though it looks like you already have someone like that, don’t you?”
You follow the human’s finger towards the armband around your wrist. The second stone… is for your partner? You don’t understand how things work fully, but the two apparently work together somehow. The man in black holds out the hand with the stones, and then the other empty-palmed. You hear the sound of heavy footsteps and see the Metagross backing out of the way, and cast a glance between your escape route and back at the man.
“So what do you say? Seem like a fair trade for that Metagrossite and letting you go?”
You look at the blue stone in your paws, and the pair in the man’s hands. You could turn and flee now while the path is open, or you could take a risk and give up this stone that he evidently cares so much about. You hesitate for a moment, when your mind turns back to your partner, and you look at the two stones in his hand. In a swift motion, you make the trade and palm the green and the iridescent stones.
You nervously remind the man that you made a trade and that he promised you your well-being. Your words go over his head, but his Metagross does not move to cut you off, and the smile remains on his face as he looks down at you.
“I figured you’d like it. Just don’t get yourself into trouble trying to impress your friend, okay?”
You nod back, clutch onto the stones and hastily scrabble over the fence and into the back alley. You stay there panting tensely for a while, when you gape up and see that the sun is further towards the west than you remembered it. It’s time for you to go home before your trainers’ parents get too worried.
The whole time, you make your way down confident and at peace, without the earlier nervousness you’d had for much of the day. Someday, you would be a dragon. And one way or another, you would wield that power alongside your old friend. Together.
A loud crash rings out after your head strikes the floor, the momentum rolling you onto your back. You lie there for a moment, looking up at the ceiling and at the shelf along the wall that you dove off of for the fifth time, where you can see books and various odds and ends belonging to your trainer.
You turn your eyes down at your blue and yellow scales and your nubby arms and let out a sulking growl. You’re still no closer to flying than you were the first time you dove off the shelf, or the day earlier, or any number of days before that.
You get up and reorient yourself with your surroundings, namely your trainer’s bedroom. Ahead of you by the window is the bed your trainer sleeps on, still messy from not being tidied up in the morning. To the right, there’s a large, squarish box called a ‘television’ that has a gray plastic device with pads with multicolored buttons on it connected by cables hooked up to it. Sometimes it has gray devices with stickers on them wedged into it, but today it has a translucent blue one in it that itself has a yellow card seated in it. It got moved from the living room after a black one like it took its place a couple years ago, and your trainer mostly uses it these days for playing some video games that have gotten popular in recent years. Ones that he played on some sort of plastic brick before he got that blue device.
They’re the same ones that the small row of little dolls on the television are from. Like the one that looks like some sort of Feraligatr mixed with a Gyarados. Or the one that looks like a shrunken Rhydon. Or the one that looks like a Sharpedo with a spear on its snout. Strange creatures that at once feel vaguely familiar to you, yet not, for reasons you can’t place.
And off to the left, there’s a desk for schoolwork and a set of boxes called a ‘computer’ there. Next to it, there’s a Wartortle stirring from basking under the sun: Roy, your trainer’s starter. He’s a leader of sorts for the team of Pokémon who share your trainer. You flinch a bit, thinking he’s going to get up and scold you, only for him to briefly pull his head and limbs partly into his shell, before turning with a sleepy murmur.
You’re a little surprised that he’s so unfazed by the racket you’re making, but after diving over and over again onto the carpeted floor for the umpteenth time, he must’ve gotten used to it.
You give the side of the shelf a growling headbutt and fume to yourself. Your kind is supposed to be able to fly! But in your trainer’s cramped house here in this town, with everyone pressed up against each other in a sprawl, your opportunities to practice are limited to dives off furniture when others are out of the house… or aren’t paying attention, like how your trainer is busy right now with some ‘laundry’ thing with the other humans of his family.
You should probably stop before anyone notices since you get scolded whenever your dives wind up damaging something or distracting others, even if your trainer and his family have grown more and more used to your attempts to practice flying. But what did they expect? Dragons of your kind are supposed to fly, you know it in your bones. Bagon like you in the wild supposedly feel that way enough to leap off bluffs and even cliffs to try! Like the fake ones in your Pokéball, except much taller and real.
... You wonder if any of them ever got any closer to flying than you have.
But your “cliff” here is this shelf. It’s taller than Roy, or any of your teammates, but that’s not saying a whole lot, especially when your trainer stands taller than it. Agh, if only you could go someplace higher up! You’d heard that some Pokémon needed to have space to dive first before they could fly, maybe that’s what you’re missing right now.
You don’t know for sure if it will work, but diving off the bedroom shelf isn’t going anywhere at this rate, and if you believe what Roy tells you about human beliefs, repeating the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is considered a sign of insanity among humans.
Except, you’re here in this little three-story house amid a sea of others just like it. It’s not as if you’re going to just conveniently find a cliff here to jump off and try…
You feel a breeze blow in through the window and look off at your trainer’s bed. The window behind it was left ajar to help cool the room down since it’s been fairly warm this week.
… It occurs to you that you’re on the top floor of the house right now. Even if the height out the window is surely still short compared to a cliff, it is taller than the jump off the shelf.
Maybe it’d be enough for you to finally fly?
It’s not as if you have anything better to do right now. Roy’s dozing off, and your other teammates are busy elsewhere in the house. You make your way over to your trainer’s bed, and after a few fumbling attempts, you clamber up it. Then you go up to the windowsill, and over to the window where you put your nubby arms up to the gap.
“Nrgh…”
You tug at the window to open it wider, but you keep struggling to pull it open. After eventually getting it wide enough to slip a leg in, you decide to wedge your body between the window and push it open with a creak.
You step back and look down from the windowsill. You can see the windows of the lower levels of your trainer’s house below; the entire building is much deeper lengthwise than what one would expect when initially seeing it from its entrance. Like most of the other ones on this street are. The side you’re facing overlooks the side alley where trash gets left to be picked up, with a fenceline barely a human arm span apart that separates the house from the alley’s pavement.
You go up to the ledge, but once there, you hesitate. Is this a good idea? You’ve made this jump once before and gotten chewed out over it by both Roy and your trainer. Something about it being dangerous. You hadn’t been able to fly when you tried that time, but almost felt like you were.
You’re older and more experienced now. For some Pokémon like Taillow that’s all it takes, from what you’ve heard. Maybe… just maybe, things will be different this time if you try.
“Whuh? Marl?”
You stiffen up and look back down at the desk where your Wartortle teammate is getting up and rubbing his eyes. He stares at you blankly for a moment, before seeing you at the edge of the windowsill with the window open and you ready to leap through it. His red eyes widen in alarm, and he starts to dart over with a claw held out to grab you.
“Wait! Marl! What are you-?!”
If Roy’s going to get you in trouble, you might as well just jump. And so you ignore his cries and leap ahead, lowering your head into a dive. You flap your arms for good measure, so that way it’ll help you pull up as you near the ground.
Except, you didn’t realize how close to the house you were—
CHUNK!
Your head hits something hard and stony, and you pinwheel forward like you did after diving off the shelf in your trainer’s room. Except there’s no carpeted floor below you this time. You briefly feel air underneath you, before your left leg smacks the pavement and the rest of your body follows.
You hear a faint crack and agony shoots through your leg.
Then the air fills with your screams.
Everything after your dive from the window went by in a blur. You remember bawling from the pain in your leg and crying out for your friends for help. It wasn’t long before Roy wrangled your trainer and your teammates along. After discovering that so much as touching your left leg hurt you, your trainer recalled you to your Pokéball and everything went black.
When you came to, you woke up on a bed in the backroom of the local Pokécenter: at once the pain in your leg came back and you started to cry again. After calming you a bit, the human and Pokémon nurses there put your left leg in a splint and cast, which held it still and helped make the pain more manageable.
A little while later, your trainer and teammates were allowed into the room, and they came in to try and comfort you.
You were discharged from the Pokécenter within the day. The Chansey that worked there told you that you’d broken your leg from your fall. Evidently Bagon’s armored heads didn’t do much to defend them if they fell on other parts of their bodies. Your wound was beyond the ability of the machines there to heal, and was so severe that your Pokéball would put you in stasis whenever you were in it. Hence why you blacked out and didn’t see the normal simulated mountains and cliffs in your Pokéball or the world outside in its sky when you were recalled.
That’s what you were told, anyways. In order for your leg bones to heal as quickly as possible, you’d need to have Potions applied periodically and rest outside your Pokéball with your leg in its cast so that your trainer and teammates could keep an eye on you as your leg bones stitched themselves back together.
Which in practice meant your trainer or one of your teammates would stand watch by you as you laid in a tatty bed set on the floor. It apparently used to be Roy’s when he was smaller, and judging from the rips and tears in the fabric from what looked like bite marks… you honestly had no reason to disbelieve your teammates.
And so there you are, on the floor of the bedroom where the gray box with cables would normally be, in this chewed-up bed, lying down and looking up at the ceiling much as you did just after diving off the shelf yesterday. Except this time, you can’t even hope to get up onto the shelf on your own.
You look down the hallway after hearing chatter and footsteps and see your trainer, a younger teenaged boy with a face that other humans kept having the hardest time picking out. He’s tending to a Flaafy, a Murkrow, and a Cubone and packing up a bag. Heading out, it looks like.
“Marl?”
You turn your attention and look up at the other side of the bed to see a Wartortle’s face peering down at you worriedly. Right, it’s Roy’s turn from among your teammates to watch over you. You… haven’t really been keeping track of time with how miserable you’ve felt since coming home.
“How are you holding up, Marl?”
“Awful,” you reply.
The turtle grimaces briefly, before pawing at the back of his head by one of his furry ears and looks away.
“I… kinda figured,” he sighs back. “I don’t mean to kick you while you’re down, but at least you now know why you’re not supposed to jump from the window, right?”
You get up and grit your teeth. That wasn’t your fault. It was the fault of that stupid wall in the alleyway! If it wasn’t there, you’d have landed on your head like you were supposed to if you weren’t able to fly and none of this would’ve happened!
You say about as much back to Roy, and try to sit up only to feel pain shoot through your splinted leg. You try to blink back a few tears, and curse yourself for failing to do so. As if you needed to look any weaker or more pathetic right now. You wipe the tears away and try to put on a brave face, but you find yourself unable to do much other than look down at your bedding with a glum murmur.
“I- I just wanted to fly…”
The Wartortle looks at you for a moment, before shaking his head. He gives a scratch under your chin, a trick he and your trainer picked up in the past from another human who cared for another dragon. One that could fly like a dragon is supposed to. Normally, him doing this helps put you in a good mood and makes you giggle if he brushes up against a ticklish spot.
Except, right now your leg’s throbbing and you just can’t get your mind off of it.
“You’ll get there. But… just take it easy for a while, okay?” the Wartortle tells you. “I need to help Calvin with a grocery run in a bit, so it might be a good time to get some rest.”
You freeze after the words leave Roy’s mouth. You think you really are going to cry now. You’re in pain and can’t try to chase the thing you love or do anything else but just sit here, and now your own team leader is telling you…
“Y-You’re just going to leave me here alone?” you stammer. “C-Can’t you at least bring me along in my Pokéball?”
The Wartortle hesitates a moment, before shaking his head in reply.
“Your leg won’t heal properly if you’re in your Pokéball all the time. It’ll put you in stasis in your present condition, remember?” the Water-type reminds you. “We’ll be back before you know it, I promise.”
Every word from the Wartortle is like an Icicle Spear, hitting you one after another. He turns for the door when he seems to pick up on you not feeling well. He hesitates for a moment, before turning back to face you.
“I know that humans don’t really understand Pokémon in general, Marl. But I’ll try and get Calvin to pick up something for you,” he says. “The rest of the family will check up on you if you need any help. Just call out for them.”
You feel too crushed to say anything back at the moment, and you slump into your bedding with a defeated murmur.
“O-Okay.”
Roy turns his head and slips past the door frame as you sink into your bedding. Your voice hitches, and when you think no one is watching you, you sniffle a little and begin to shed a few tears into its fabric.
“We’re back!”
You must’ve dozed off after Roy left, since the next thing you remember after crying and nodding off was hearing the Wartortle’s voice. You raise your head from your bed as the Water-type hurries in, carrying a small length of string. He approaches you with an eager smile, which abruptly slides off his face as he pauses and then bites his tongue.
“Oh. I… didn’t realize you were feeling so upset, Marl.”
You see a flash of guilt come over the Water-type’s face and narrow your eyes. He could’ve not left you behind earlier or stayed home, but no. He just had to go along to get the stupid groceries. You turn away with a pouting huff, before feeling his claws paw at your chin.
“Look, I really didn’t mean to make you feel like I didn’t care about how you were doing,” he said. “Though hopefully the surprise we got you while we were out helps make up for it a bit.”
“And what’s this ‘surprise’ supposed to be?” you grumble, without turning to look at him.
The Wartortle opens his mouth to explain, only to catch himself and think better of it before he speaks up with a small grin.
“Wouldn’t be much of a surprise if I just told you,” he says. “You’ll figure it out pretty quickly, just sit up for a bit.”
You warily sit up and shuffle onto your bum, wincing after you apply pressure onto your left leg a couple of times. It’s at that point that you hear footsteps approaching, and see your trainer come into the room holding a large red balloon.
Your face falls, and you shoot back a sharp glare at the Wartortle.
“Roy, why would you bring a balloon to taunt me like this?” you sulk. “As if I needed more reminders that I can’t fly—!”
The human teen hesitates for a moment before he stoops down and pats at your chin, and you can’t help but calm down briefly. Roy takes the opportunity to lift your arms up, as your trainer slips the cord of the balloon around you and ties it around your chest underneath your arms. At once, you feel a force tugging you from above. You look up at the balloon and then down again, when you notice it.
“Oh!”
Your feet! They aren’t touching the ground anymore!
Your feet somehow are now about Roy’s waist height off the ground. You lean forward, trying to keep your belly parallel to the ground. Much to your surprise, you manage to stay off it at about the same height. You flap your arms and stay aloft, when your heart flutters as it suddenly dawns on you…
“I’m- I’m flying! I’m flying!”
“Well, more like ‘floating’, you’re being held up by something humans call an ‘Air Balloon’,” Roy corrects you. “They don’t last that long, but they help keep Pokémon off the ground for battles, especially little ones like you.”
The Wartortle looks aside and gives a sheepish pat at his shell’s chest plates before smiling at you.
“It took a few tries to explain it to Calvin, but I figured you’d like it,” the turtle explains. “I just hope you’re not too mad at me for not being there for you earlier.”
The boy with the unplaceable face stoops down and pets you. You can’t understand most of what he’s saying to you in his tongue—that’s more Roy’s skill. But from the way his voice inflects, you’re pretty sure your trainer is asking you something. The Wartortle listens in for a moment, before he turns over to you.
“Calvin says you looked lonely in bed all day, and he wants to know if you’d like to get tugged around a bit,” the Wartortle explains. “It’s not quite the same as having a pair of wings, but…”
You start to feel tears well up in your eyes again and sniffle a bit. This time, it’s not because you’re feeling hurt or sad or alone, but because you can’t get over how you’re actually flying right now… sort of.
And so, the next words come out of your mouth without you even realizing it.
“I-I’d love that, actually.”
Five minutes later, you’re in the back alley that your trainer’s bedroom window overlooks. The air rushes against your body as you lay level with the ground, the pavement zipping past you. Your splinted leg slips from mind as there’s nothing for it to brush up against and you race past mountains and clouds in your imagination.
A length of string tied up against the Air Balloon’s cord pulls you forward, and you whoop and holler excitedly as Roy tows you after him. All the while, you flap your arms and call out for your teammate to keep going and to pull faster. There’s only so much Roy can do as a Wartortle, but he does his best, laughing and cheering you along all the while as the sky flushes orange from sunset.
In one corner of your mind, you’re sure that this must look silly to dragons who can fly like they’re supposed to: you can’t move yourself without help, you can’t steer, and you can’t do rolls or loops. Much as Roy said, it’s not really flying.
But for the rest of you, none of that matters right now. You can feel the air brush against your scales all the same, you can look some of the world down, and you’re able to share it with your friends. Just like how you will someday in the future when you’re all grown up and can spread your wings and fly just like this all by yourself.
Original Drabble:
Charizard
Cute but Ferocious
Flapple
Dragons' Lineage
Goomy
A Dragon Someday
Ekans
Flightless
Exeggutor
WHAM!
You heard a loud crash ring out after your head struck the floor and rolled onto your back. You lay there a moment, looking back up the shelf you dove off of for the fifth time, then down at your blue and yellow scales and your nubby arms. Still no closer to flying than you’d were the first time, nor the day earlier, nor any number of days before that.
The bump stirred the Wartortle basking under the sun next to a desk, but he otherwise ignored it and dozed off. Roy, your trainer’s starter and leader of sorts of the team your were on. You supposed that after diving onto the carpeted floor for the umpteenth time. You gave the side of the shelf a growling headbutt and fumed to yourself.
Your kind was supposed to be able to fly. And yet, your opportunities to practice in your trainer’s cramped house in this urban sprawl were limited to dives off furniture when others were out of the house or not paying attention or busy with things like this ‘laundry’ that your trainer was. Dragons of your kind were supposed to fly, and it was something you could feel in your bones. Your counterparts in the wild supposedly felt enough to leap off cliffs... you wondered if they got any closer to flying than you did.
If only you could go someplace taller. You didn’t know if it would work for helping you to fly, but diving off the bedroom shelf wasn’t going anywhere, and repeating the same thing while expecting different results was supposedly a sign of insanity among humans. Or at least that was what Roy had said.
Except, you were here in this little two-story house amid a sea of others just like it. It wasn’t as if you’d find a cliff conveniently here for you to jump off…
You felt a breeze blow in through the window, and looked off at the desk, and saw that the window was open on it. … It was surely still short, but it was taller than the jump off the shelf, wasn’t it?
You made your way over, and after a few fumbling attempts, clambered up the seat, then up to the desk, and over to the window where you put your nubby arms up on it.
“Nrgh…”
You tugged at the window to open it wider, but you just kept struggling to move it. You eventually decided to wedge your body between the window and pushed it open with a creak. You stepped back and looked down from the ledge. Your trainer’s house was a narrow, three-story building wedged in between others, with a fenceline barely a human arm span apart separating you from the side alley where trash was dropped off to be picked up.
You’d made this jump once before and gotten chewed out over it. Something about it being dangerous. But you’d almost felt like you were flying then, and you were older and more experienced now. Maybe… just maybe, things would be different this time.
“Whuh? Marl?”
You stiffened up and looked back down at the desk where your Wartortle teammate was getting up and rubbing his eyes. He stared at you blankly for a moment, before seeing you at the windowsill, and the window open and just waiting for you to leap through it.
“Wait! Marl! What are you-?!”
If he was going to get you in trouble, you might as well just jump. You leapt ahead and dove, hearing your friend call after you. You flapped your arms for good measure, so that way it’d help you pull up as you neared the ground. Except, you didn’t realize how close to the house you were-
CHUNK!
You felt your head hit something hard and stony, and pinwheeled forward like you did after diving off the shelf. Except there was no carpeted floor below you. You felt air briefly, before landing on your left leg against the pavement. You heard a faint crack and felt agony shoot through your leg.
And then you screamed.
The time after your dive from the window went by in a blur. You remember bawling from the pain in your leg and crying out for help. It wasn’t long before Roy wrangled your trainer and your teammates along, and after discovering that so much as touching your left leg hurt you, recalled you to your Pokéball and rushed you to the local Pokécenter.
You were discharged within the day. The Chansey that worked there told you that you’d broken your leg from your fall. Evidently Bagon’s armored heads didn’t do much to defend them if they fell on other parts of their bodies. The wound that was beyond the ability of the machines there to heal, and in order for it to heal as quickly as possible, you’d need to rest outside your Pokéball with your left leg in a splint and cast for your trainer and teammates to keep an eye on you as your leg bones stitched themselves back together.
Which in practice meant one of your trainer or one of your teammates standing watch by you in a tatty bed laid on the floor. It apparently used to be Roy’s when he was smaller, and judging from the rips and tears in the fabric from what looked like bite marks… you honestly had no reason to disbelieve your teammates.
And so there you were, on the floor of the bedroom, lying on your back much as you were when you’d dived off the shelf. Except this time, you couldn’t even hope to get up the shelf on your own. You looked down the hallway, where your trainer, a younger teenaged boy with a face that other humans kept having the hardest time picking out was tending to a Flaafy and Cubone while packing up a bag. Heading out, it looked like.
“Marl?”
You turned your attention and looked up to see a Wartortle’s face peering down at you worriedly.
“How are you holding up, Marl?”
“Awful,” you replied, prompting the turtle to paw at the back of his head by one of his furry ears.
“I… kinda figured,” he sighed back. “I don’t mean to kick you while you’re down, but at least you now know why you’re not supposed to jump from the window, right?”
You get up and grit your teeth. That wasn’t your fault. It was the fault of that stupid fence! If it wasn’t there, you’d have landed on your head like you were supposed to if you weren’t able to fly and none of this would’ve happened!
You say about as much back to the Wartortle, and sit up when you feel pain shoot through your splinted leg. You try to blink back a few tears, and curse yourself for doing so. As if you needed to look any weaker and more pathetic right now. You wipe the tears away and try to force on a brave face, before looking down with a glum murmur.
“I- I just wanted to fly…” you murmur.
The Wartortle looks at you for a moment, before shaking his head. He gives a scratch under your chin, a trick he picked up from a human who cared for another dragon. One that could fly like a dragon is supposed to. In better times, it helped put you in a good mood. Except, you had a throbbing leg right now that you couldn’t get your mind off of.
“You’ll get there. But… just take it easy for a while, okay?” the Wartortle tells you. “I need to help with a grocery run in a bit, so it might be a good time to get some rest.”
You think you really are going to cry now. You’re in pain and can’t try to chase the thing you love, and now your own team leader is telling you…
“Y-You’re just going to leave me here?” you stammer. “C-Can’t you at least bring me along in my Pokéball?”
“Your leg won’t heal properly if you’re in your Pokéball all the time for it. And I promise it won’t be for long,” the Water-type insists.
You feel as if you’ve just been frozen over in a block of ice at the Wartortle’s words, as he turns for the door. He seems to pick up on you not doing well and hesitates for a moment, before looking back towards you.
“I know that humans don’t really understand Pokémon like us, but I’ll try and get Calvin to pick up something for you,” he says. “The rest of the family will check up on you if you need any help.”
“O-Okay.”
You watch as Roy turns his head and slips past the doorframe and sink back into your bed. Your voice hitches, and when you think no one is watching you, you sniffle a little, and begin to shed a few tears into the fabric.
“We’re back!”
You must’ve dozed off after Roy left, since the first thing you remember after crying and nodding off was hearing the Wartortle’s voice. You raise your head from the bed, as the Water-type hurries in carrying a small length of string, and then abruptly pauses and bites his tongue.
“Oh. I… didn’t realize you were doing this badly, Marl.”
You see a flash of guilt come over the Water-type’s face and narrow your eyes. He could’ve not left you out or stayed behind, but no. He just had to go along to get the stupid groceries. You turn away with a pouting huff, before you feel him pawing at your chin.
“I just hope you’re not too mad at me about it,” he said. “Though hopefully this makes up for it a bit.”
“And what’s ‘this’ supposed to be?” you grumble. The Wartortle opens his mouth to explain, only to catch himself and think better of it before he speaks up.
“It’s a surprise,” he says. “You’ll figure it out pretty quickly, just sit up for a bit.”
You warily rise up and shuffle onto your bum, wincing after you apply pressure on your left leg a few times. It is then that you hear footsteps as your trainer comes into the room holding a large red balloon. Your face falls, and you shoot back a sharp glare at the Wartortle.
“Roy, why would you bring a balloon to taunt me like this?” you sulk. “As if I needed more reminders that I couldn’t fly-”
The teen stoops down and pats at your chin, and you can’t help but calm down for a moment. Roy takes the opportunity to lift your arms up, as your trainer slips the cord of the balloon around you and ties it about your chest under your arms. At once, you feel a force tugging you, and look up at the balloon, before you notice that your feet aren’t touching the ground anymore.
“Oh!”
You notice your feet are about Roy’s waist height off the ground. You lean forward, trying to keep your belly parallel to the ground. Much to your surprise, you manage to stay about the same height. You flap your arms, and stay aloft, when it suddenly dawns on you…
“I’m- I’m flying! I’m flying!”
“Well, more like ‘floating’. It took a few tries to explain it to Calvin, but I figured you’d like it,” the Wartortle corrects you. “Humans call it an ‘Air Balloon’. They don’t last that long, but they help keep Pokémon off the ground for battles, especially little ones like you.”
The boy with the unplaceable face stooped down and pets you. You can’t understand most of what he’s saying to you in his tongue. That’s more Roy’s skill. He listens for a moment, before turning over to you.
“Calvin says you looked lonely in bed all day, and wants to know if you’d like to get tugged around a bit,” he explain. “It’s not quite the same as having a pair of wings, but…”
You start to feel yourself crying again, and sniffle a bit. This time, it’s not because you’re feeling hurt or alone, but because you can’t get over how you’re actually flying right now… sort of.
And so, the next words come out of your mouth without you even realizing it.
“I-I’d love that actually.”
Five minutes later, you’re in the back alley visible from the window of your trainer’s bedroom. You feel the air rush against your body as you lay level with the ground, the pavement zipping past you. Your splinted leg slips from mind as there’s nothing for it to brush up against, as you race past mountains and clouds in your imagination.
You cling onto a length of string, whooping and hollering as Roy tugs you along, flapping your free arm as you call out for him to keep going and to pull faster. There’s only so much your teammate can do as a Wartortle, but he does his best, laughing and cheering you along all the while as the sky flushes orange from sunset.
You’re sure that this must look silly to dragons who can fly like they’re supposed to. And you suppose that Roy’s right that it’s not really flying. You can’t steer, you can’t move yourself, can’t do rolls or loops.
But none of that matters right now. You feel the air against your face all the same, and you’re able to share it with your friends. Just like you will someday in the future when you’re all grown up and can spread your wings and do the same all by yourself.
You skid back along the ground, feeling a wintery chill in the air brush against your hide. You paw at a fresh scratch on the scales on your right flank, your breaths coming out shallow and tense as a bellowing roar rings out. Your tail fire is burning fierce right now, not from determination, but from fright, as your quivering wings remind you. You try to steel your nerves, but before you get the chance, the roar’s owner—a Garchomp baring her fangs—dives at you.
Your claws abruptly erupt with green dragonfire, as you rake the Garchomp and drive her back, buying precious seconds of respite as you wonder to yourself how on earth you got into this situation. Was it when you grew nervous about being a stranger in a distant land and tried to puff yourself up and make yourself seem imposing? Was it you letting how you finally became a Charizard about a month ago get to your head? You are fully evolved and grown now; those days of cowering from a big and scary-feeling world were supposed to be over.
“Have at you!”
Supposed to be, anyways. You look up just in time to see the Garchomp dive at you, her body wreathed in a shroud of dragonfire. She slams into you with her Dragon Rush and you feel your feet leave the ground and burning pain shoot through your body—C-Charizard aren’t supposed to feel burning pain like this! Your body sails through the air in an uncontrolled tumble, and the world spins around in your vision briefly before you flop into the dirt with a dull, painful thud. You lay there stunned for a moment, when a clawed foot stomps down on your side and you see a flash of claws and razor-like teeth above you.
It is just enough to burn up those last few threads of your bravery as your mind goes into a blind panic.
“AAAAAAAH!”
You’re pretty sure that Charizard aren’t supposed to scream at this octave. Nor are they supposed to yield in battle or curl up on themselves and beg for mercy like you are doing right now. The Garchomp looks down at you with narrowed eyes and hesitates a moment when she heeds a human voice and lets go of you.
You don’t bother to wait to find out what will happen next. You scrabble to your feet and run over to a young human man waiting for you at your end of the battlefield. Your trainer. Right, you are in a sporting match. You were never supposed to genuinely be in danger the whole time, even if the Garchomp seemed to be doing her best to make it feel like life and death hung in the balance.
You duck behind your trainer with a low whine, much as you did in the past as a Charmeleon when you wound up getting in over your head in battle… and as you did more times than you can remember when the same happened to you as a Charmander. Except this time you have wings which you crane around to try and shield your head, shuddering from your encounter.
You're pretty sure Charizard aren’t supposed to do that either. You feel a hand patting at your snout and look up to see your trainer. He looks obviously disappointed, but doesn’t say much other than to make sure that you’re alright before going off to meet a human woman with green hair dressed in some sort of orange tracksuit. The Garchomp’s trainer, and the human that you’re pretty sure you just lost your trainer a decent chunk of pocket money to.
The two trainers meet in the center of the battlefield and exchange money and a few items. You follow after yours, and the Garchomp after hers. You try to avoid eye contact with your Dragon-type opponent, but you couldn’t miss her unamused scowl if you tried.
“Hrmph, next time, don’t run your mouth off looking for a challenge if you can’t back it up,” she scoffs. “‘Might of a dragon’, what a crock! Even if Charizard were dragons, what sort of dragon would act like you?”
You hang your head at her words. You don’t have an answer to that question.
About an hour later, you’re out of your Pokéball and in the backroom of a Pokécenter, getting a few lingering scrapes that the machines couldn’t treat touched up. Sinnoh is a distant land for you and your trainer, but in some respects, it’s an awful lot like your home region of Kanto. The Pokémon here by and large speak the same language you do. And the humans do likewise with the humans of Kanto. They even have human nurses and the Chansey in the Pokécenters here that look about the same and tend to Pokémon about the same as the ones in Kanto.
“All patched up and back to normal,” the Chansey presently at your side tells you. “You should be good to go and ready to battle again after a day’s rest.”
“Th-Thanks, I guess.”
Back in Kanto, you might have puffed yourself out to make yourself look stronger and tougher in front of such humans and Pokémon. Except… even with the familiar trappings, you’re not in the mood for it right now. Not after the way you humiliated yourself in front of your trainer today. You’re sure that you bitterly disappointed him, but you don’t want to think about that too much right now. At this point, you’re of half a mind to retreat back into your Pokéball and its simulated environments until your trainer is done traveling around Sinnoh and you can just go home.
After the Chansey beckons you to come along with her human, you shuffle off alongside them for the front desk, your head held low as the events of the battle keep playing over and over in your head. It was the first one since evolving where you’d been worried about how it’d go at the outset, but you were supposed to have left that sort of skittishness behind as a Charizard.
Sure, it’d be forgivable for a Pokémon of your lower forms, especially when younger. You supposed that it wasn’t that uncommon for a Charmander to cry after being startled and to try to hide away when he was afraid… like you had done on more occasions than you could remember. You supposed that costing one’s human a Gym Challenge after throwing up from fright and fleeing the battlefield like you did the first time you faced down Brock’s Onix wasn’t a common experience for Charmeleon, but it was at least understandable. O-Onix were gigantic compared to Charmeleon! Even if they often weren’t as tough as they seemed, they looked downright terrifying, especially for Pokémon the size of a young human child whose fire struggled against them.
B-But those were Charmander and Charmeleon, you’re a Charizard now. Charizard are supposed to be big and strong! Noble creatures brave enough to face any challenge to the bitter end! So why, when you found yourself outmatched, did you still react like you so often had as a Charmander or Charmeleon when you felt overwhelmed?
Before you know it, the Chansey and the human nurse take you past the front desk where you spot your trainer in the waiting room. You stiffen up and grimace a moment, before turning your head away with a low whine. There weren’t a whole lot of other ways that you could’ve embarrassed yourself and your trainer worse than you had today. How could he not be disappointed that all this time later, even when you were supposed to be big and strong, that you were still the same cowardly lizard at heart?
You brace yourself for the scolding and frustrated chewout that you’re rightfully due, except… it doesn’t come. You feel a pat at your neck and hear your trainer’s words, turning up to see him looking down at you with a regretful expression. You don’t follow everything he says to you, but he sounds… apologetic? For forcing you to deal with more than you were ready for?
You don’t know what to make of that. Other than that your trainer clearly doesn’t know enough about Charizard. Why else would he just be so unbothered by a pathetic failure like the one you had earlier today?
Your trainer tugs at your shoulder and motions off at the hallway where the rooms for travelers to lodge in this Pokécenter are. He must be in the mood to get some rest, and you can’t say you don’t agree with him. Tomorrow will be a brand-new day, one where you can put today’s failures behind you.
Hopefully.
You follow your human and pass the front entrance, when it suddenly comes alive with a soft chime. You turn your head towards it after feeling a blast of cold air and immediately stiffen up at the sight:
It’s the Garchomp and her trainer from earlier walking in.
You let out a quiet squeak and hurriedly shuffle your trainer along, but not before you overhear the Dragon-type growling under her breath about how frigid things feel outside. … The air from outside did feel a bit cold today, colder than you would’ve expected for a region that was supposed to be in its spring season.
… Maybe you won’t go into your Pokéball just yet. After a day like today, the least you can do to try and make things up to your trainer is to help keep the cold at bay for him.
The next morning, you and your trainer wake up, pack up your things, and step out of your cramped room in the Pokécenter into the hallway. Your trainer didn’t say anything about feeling cold when he woke up, so that’s a relief. You don’t know how you’d feel right now if you’d managed to fail at simply keeping him warm overnight.
The two of you make your way down the hallway and retrace your steps back to the Pokécenter’s lobby. You take a moment to stretch your wings and your limbs with a yawn to get your blood flowing and groggily paw at your eyes. It’s then that you notice that something is very wrong. All along the windows outside, you can see frost caked against the glass and icy flurries swirling over white drifts as far as your eyes can see. You blink to make sure you’re not dreaming, and quickly realize that you’re seeing…
“S-Snow?! B-But it’s supposed to be the first month of spring!”
You stand there with your mouth hanging agape, as one of the Chansey who works here happens to pass by with her human nurse and turns to you with a click of her tongue.
“Not from around here, are you?” she asks. “Cold snaps in early spring are as Sinnohan as a Mild Poffin!”
… You will have to take her word for it, since you haven’t had any Poffins in this region yet. But the Normal-type seems to be onto something. Most of the trainers with Pokémon that aren’t common to this region seem to have gotten caught unawares by the sudden cold. … Though the weather surely has to be abnormal to some extent, since even a handful of trainers with Pokémon from this region seem to have been blindsided by the overnight snow.
“You’re kidding me. One night and this is what I wake up to?”
Including the Garchomp from yesterday and her trainer. The Dragon-type stares out the window and grimaces with visible dread, as does her human. You glance over briefly at the pair and stiffen up after the Garchomp notices you from the corner of her eye, and she turns to you with a toothy frown.
“Oh, it’s you again. I see your trainer didn’t pack for this weather either.”
You cast a glance over at your trainer and see that he too is wincing at the sight of the frost and the flurries outside. A quick look over his clothes reveals you that his shirt today is short-sleeved and visibly thin. Right. He had been planning his trip around there being spring weather in Sinnoh, and he had already remarked on it being a little chilly on a few prior days. You could handle a little cold with your tail flame and the fire in your belly to keep you warm, but humans didn’t have either of those and needed their ‘clothing’ to help them deal with such weather.
You go up to the window and peer through it as your breath fogs up the glass. You rub the condensation away, when amidst the snow and the flurries, you spot a small shop with icons in the shape of human clothing down the street. You go over and tug at your trainer and point it out, who in turn does the same to the Garchomp’s trainer. You let the pair talk things over with each other in their tongue as you make your way to the door, and the Garchomp does a double-take at you.
“Wait, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to help my trainer get proper clothes, what else?” you explain. “He’ll freeze if he tries to go around in snowy weather like this!”
The Garchomp cocks a brow, before turning her snout up with an unimpressed snort.
“Whatever, it’s your burial out there.”
For a moment, you waver at the Garchomp’s retort. She is the native to this region. Does she know something about these snows that you don’t? You bite your tongue and hesitate when you hear your trainer calling out for you and see that he’s already made his way to the door.
You falter briefly. Are you in danger now? There’s not something wrong with the snow outside, is there? A few worries circle around in your mind and you find yourself pulling your wings and tail tight against yourself, when you see your trainer waiting for you at the door.
No. Even if you’re worried about what’s out there, you can’t back down here. Not while your friend needs you.
You shake your head and make your way forward. No matter what those snows hold outside, you aren’t going to let your trainer face them alone. And you wouldn’t have needed to be a Charizard to come to that decision.
You make your way to the doors and feel the icy air blow in your face. You see your trainer visibly shiver and pull him to your side and under your wing as he grows a bit more comfortable and suck in a sharp breath.
“It’s just down the street. It’s just down the street.”
And so, with wary, faltering footsteps, you set off into the winter cold together. Your partner clasped firmly at your side.
Fifteen minutes later, you return to the Pokécenter lobby along with your trainer freshly garbed in winter wear, with a second set extra, to boot. Your trainer passes it along to the Garchomp’s and then the pair exchange money.
…That was what the Garchomp was so worried about? Why, from the way she talked about the snows, you thought there were going to be ghosts or monsters hiding in the drifts to ambush you!
Your moment of satisfaction is cut short when you notice your scales feel damp, and look to see water on them from melted snow that you weren’t able to get off before coming inside. You take a moment to try and brush it off with your claws when you see a hand join in to help you. You blink and follow the arm over to see your trainer looking at you as his hand moves to your shoulder and he gives you an affectionate pat and opens his mouth to speak.
…He’s thanking you. For looking out for him back there.
You stare at him for a moment as he goes off to the counter to check out. You… didn’t think that you really did anything special back there, but at the same time, you can’t help but feel a hint of pride.
That’s when it dawns on you.
All this time, you and your human have gotten as far as you have by looking out for each other when one or the other stumbled or was weak. It was your trainer that calmed you down when you were scared, the one who helped you work up the bravery to eventually best opponents you were afraid of in battle—like Brock’s Onix. And you were there to look out for him at times like these when he just needed a bit of extra strength… or a warm body to help him stand up to the cold.
“... How on earth can you just be okay with that awful weather out there?”
You turn to your right and see the Garchomp staring at you slack jawed. She… honestly still scares you, but you don’t flinch from her this time. Seeing the way she shrinks away from a little bit of snow and treats it like it’s death incarnate helps put things in perspective.
You suppose that in a way, the Garchomp was right yesterday. You aren’t a dragon, or at least not in the same way she is. But… for the things that really count in life, does it matter?
And so with a shaky, flustered grin, you speak up and answer her.
“It’s because I’m not a dragon like you, and I don’t know if I ever will be. But I’m sure like a dragon for my friends.”
Original Drabble:
Charizard
Cute but Ferocious
Flapple
Dragons' Lineage
Goomy
A Dragon Someday
Ekans
Flightless
Exeggutor
You skid back along the ground as a wintery chill fills the air, panting frightenedly as you hear a bellowing roar. Your tail fire burns fierce, not with determination, but from fright, as your quivering wings remind you, as the Garchomp dives at you.
Your claws abruptly erupt with green dragonfire, as you rake the Garchomp and drive her back as you try to think where on earth things went wrong. Was it when you grew nervous about being a stranger in a distant land and tried to puff yourself up? Was it you letting your last evolution from about a month ago get to your head, making you think that those days of cowering from a big and scary-feeling world were over?
“Have at you!”
You look up just in time to see the Garchomp dive at you wreathed in dragonfire. You feel burning pain—Charizard aren’t supposed to feel burning pain—as the world spins around you and you flop into the dirt. You lay there stunned for a moment, when you feel yourself get pinned and see a flash of claws and razor-like teeth above you.
“AAAAAAAH!”
You’re pretty sure that Charizard aren’t supposed to scream at that octave. Nor are they supposed to beg for mercy like you find yourself doing. The Garchomp hesitates a moment when she heeds a human voice and lets go of you.
You don’t bother to wait to find out if the battle’s been decided or not. You scrabble to your feet, and over to a young human man waiting for you at your end of the field. You duck behind him with a low whine, much as you had when things went wrong as a Charmeleon, and more times than you can remember when the same happened to you as a Charmander. Except this time you have wings which you crane around to try and shield your head.
You're pretty sure Charizard aren’t supposed to do that either. You feel pats at your snout and look down to see your trainer. He’s obviously disappointed, but doesn’t say much other than to make sure that you’re alright before going off to meet a human woman with green hair with an orange suit. The Garchomp’s trainer, and the human that you’re pretty sure you just lost your trainer a chunk of pocket money to.
The two trainers meet in the center and exchange a few money and items. You follow after yours, and the Garchomp after hers. You try to avoid eye contact with her, but you can see her scowling at you
“Hrmph, next time, don’t run your mouth off for a challenge if you can’t back it up,” the Garchomp scoffs. “‘Might of a dragon’, what a crock! Even if Charizard were dragons, what sort of dragon would act like you?”
You hang your head at the Garchomp’s words. You don’t have an answer to the question.
About an hour later, you’re in the backroom of a Pokécenter, getting a few lingering scrapes that the machines couldn’t treat touched up. Sinnoh is a distant land for you and your trainer, but in some respects, it feels an awful lot like your home back in Kanto. The Pokémon by and large speak the same language. As do the humans. They even have human nurses and the Chansey that look about the same and work the same as they do in Kanto.
“All patched up and back to normal,” the Chansey tells you. “You should be good to go and ready to battle after a day’s rest.”
“Th-Thanks, I guess.”
And back in Kanto, you might have puffed yourself out to make yourself look stronger and tougher. Except… it was hard seeing much of a point of doing now. You didn’t want to think about that too much, and just go back into your Pokéball until your trainer was done traveling around Sinnoh and you could go home.
You shuffled off for the front as the events of the battle kept playing over and over for you. It was the first one since evolving where you’d been worried at the outset, but you were supposed to have left that behind as a Charizard.
You supposed that it wasn’t that uncommon for a Charmander to cry and try to hide when they were afraid like you had done on more occasions than you could remember. You supposed that throwing up out of fright and costing your trainer a Gym Challenge by fleeing the battlefield like you did the first time you faced down Brock’s Onix wasn’t common for Charmeleon, but it was at least understandable. Onix were gigantic compared to Charmeleon, and even if they often weren’t as tough as they looked, they looked downright terrifying when you were the size of a young human child and your fire struggled against them.
B-But Charizard were supposed to be big and strong! To face any challenge to the bitter end! So why when you found himself outmatched, why did you still find himself reacting like you had so often as a Charmander or Charmeleon when you felt overwhelmed?
You pass the front desk and spot your trainer. You stiffen up and wince a moment, before turning your head away with a low whine. There weren’t a whole lot of other ways that you could’ve embarrassed yourself worse than you had today. How could he not be disappointed that all this time later, you were still the same cowardly lizard at heart?
Except, you feel a pat at your neck and hear your trainer speak to you. You don’t follow all of the words in his tongue, but he sounds… apologetic? For forcing more than you were prepared for?
You don’t know what to make of that. Other than that your trainer clearly didn’t know enough about Charizard. Why else would he just be unbothered by a pathetic failure like the one you had earlier today.
Your trainer tugs at you and motions off at the hallway where the lodging in the Pokécenter is. You follow along past the door and stiffen up after seeing the Garchomp and her trainer walk in, the Dragon-type growling under her breath about how frigid things feel outside.
You hurry along with a quiet squeak and hurriedly shuffle your trainer along. The air from outside did feel a bit cold. Maybe you won’t go into your Pokéball just yet. After a day like today, the least you can do to try and make things up to your trainer is to try and keep the cold at bay.
The next day, you and your trainer wake up and leave your cramped room in the Pokécenter. Your trainer doesn’t say anything about feeling cold, which you find relieving. You don’t know how you’d feel if you managed to fail at that overnight.
The two of you make your steps back to the lobby, as you stretch and bat your wings in the hallway to get your blood flowing. You paw at your eyes, and you immediately notice something wrong. All along the windows outside, you can see frost and white flurries, as you realize that it’s…
“S-Snow?! B-But it’s supposed to be the first month of spring!”
You stand there with your mouth agape, as one of the Chansey that work here happens to pass by with her human nurse and turns to you with a click of her tongue.
“Not from around here, are you?” she asks. “Cold snaps in early spring are as Sinnohan as a Mild Poffin!”
… You will have to take her word for it, since you haven’t had any Poffins in this region yet. But the Normal-type seems to be onto something. Most of the trainers with Pokémon that aren’t common to this region seem to have gotten caught unawares by the sudden cold. As have a handful of trainers with Pokémon from this region.
“You’re kidding me. One night and this is what I wake up to?”
Including the Garchomp and her trainer. The Dragon-type stares out the window grimacing with visible dread, an expression that her trainer seems to mimic. You glance over briefly and stiffen up after the Garchomp notices you from the corner of her eye, and turns with a toothy frown.
“Oh, it’s you again. I see your trainer didn’t pack for this weather either.”
You cast a glance over at your trainer and see that he too is grimacing at the sight of the frost and the flurries outside. Right. He had been planning his trip around there being spring weather in Sinnoh. You could handle a little cold with your tail flame and the fire in your belly, but humans certainly didn’t have those.
You go up to the window and peer through it, your breath fogging up the glass. You rub it away, when amidst the snow and the flurries, you spot a small shop with icons in the shape of human clothing. You go over and tug at your trainer, who points it out to the Garchomp’s trainer. You let the pair talk things over with each other as you make your way to the door, and the Garchomp does a double-take at you.
“Wait, what are you doing?”
“Going over to help my trainer get proper clothes, what else?” you explain. “He’ll freeze if he tries to travel in this weather like this!”
The Garchomp cocks a brow, before turning her snout up with an unimpressed snort.
“Whatever, it’s your burial out there.”
For a moment, you waver at the Garchomp’s retort. She is the native. Does she know something about these snows that you don’t? Your trainer makes his way to the door, and calls for you.
You hesitate briefly, before shaking your head and making your way forward. No matter what those snows hold, you aren’t going to let your trainer face them alone. And you wouldn’t have to be a Charizard to conclude that.
And so you make your way to the doors, and feel the icy air blow in your face. You see your trainer visibly shiver and pull him to your side and under your wing and suck in a sharp breath.
“It’s just down the street. It’s just down the street.”
And so, you set off into the winter cold together. Your partner firmly at your side.
Fifteen minutes later, you have returned along with your trainer freshly garbed in winter wear, with a second set extra to boot. Your trainer passes it along to the Garchomp’s and the pair exchange money as you brush some water off your scales from melted snow. When you feel a pat at your shoulder and look down at your trainer.
… He’s thanking you. For looking out for him back there.
You stare at him for a moment as he goes off to the counter to check out and can’t help but feel a hint of pride, when it dawns on you.
All this time, you two have gotten as far as you had by looking out for each other when you were weak or stumbled. It was your trainer that calmed you down when you were scared, who helped you work up the bravery to eventually best Brock’s Onix in battle. And you were there to look out for him at times like these when he just needed a warm body to help stand and shield him.
“... How on earth can you just be okay with that awful weather?”
You turn to your right and see the Garchomp staring at you slack jawed. She… honestly still scares you, but you don’t flinch this time. Seeing the way she flinches from a little snow helps put things in perspective.
You suppose that in a way the Garchomp was right yesterday. You aren’t a dragon, or at least not in the same sense as her. But… for the things that really count, does it matter?
And with a shaky, flustered grin, you speak up and answer her.
“Because I’m not a dragon like you, and I don’t know if I ever will be. But I’m sure like one for my friends.”
Hey, here after some well-timed self-shilling! This is such a fun concept for an anthology. From Gen I, 'dragon' has always been a nebulous category (cough, Lance and his pseudo-dragons) and since then, the world of dragons has gotten even weirder and more wonderful. Though . . . I do believe you've omitted the most majestic dragon of them all . . . alolan exeggutor! Please let me know if you ever rectify this error.
1. A Guarding Dragon
Flapple with an apple hoard! It's a very cute thought and a fun twist on the traditional image of a dragon. I liked the sense that flapple have worked with this orchard for a long time. I was a little confused about whether the road-side stand is basically a shop that operates on the honor system, or has some kind of a charity element. The language about the owners having set aside apples to do this for centuries suggests the latter, but the fixed payment and sign suggest the former.
2. A Dragon's Ferocity
This one had a bit of a more humorous feel! I think you made a smart choice setting it from the hydreigon's POV. We get a lot of standard draconic arrogance and indignation that this ampharos dares challenge them . . . arrogance that shrivels up and dies pretty quickly once the battle commences. The ending lines in particular felt very chastened.
This oneshot seemed to carry on the theme of dragons as protectors, as well as the idea of dragons working in tandem with humans.
3. A Dragon's Lineage
Okay, so you've found my secret weakness and it is very good sneks. Particularly, the dratini line. I am a bit enamored with the image of awkward dragonair dad raising his baby ekans--it's a pity there's no art. This one explores the human-pokemon relationship in a new way, this time considering what freedoms living in human society might grant pokemon--inter-species relationships and the ability to raise their kids in new ways. I was intrigued by the differences in how arbok and the dragonite line raise their kids, and both Arbok and Dragonair's anxieties about what having a child would mean--being a good mom when your species normally yeets the moment the kid is born, being a good dad when your kid doesn't look like you--felt real. I expect their kid will eventually have some sort of dragon identity crisis--just normal teenage things! I wonder if having an ekans kid would influence whether the dragonair ever feels the urge to evolve one more time. That change takes on a whole new kind of significance when you'd be going from a nice serpentine form, perfect for snake cuddles, to be a big winged dragon. I really hadn't thought much before about all the issues an inter-species family might face, but there sure are plenty. This snake family is going to live rent free in my head from now on--I believe in them!
Turffield had always been a quiet, humble town, its rhythms dictated by the growth and harvests of the nurturing bowl formed by its many terraced farming fields.
This sentence tripped me up a bit--there's quite a lot of words piled on, but the point made is a pretty simple one. Perhaps, "Turffield had always been a quiet town, its rhythms dictated by the surrounding farms and their harvests."
Bit of a tense issue here--think added should be add. You might want to revise the double 'before.' You could easily cut the 'before he fled' clause--that additional context doesn't really add any information, since we know it from the word 'abandoned'.
Finding hunting grounds was a challenge for any dragon, especially one with an appetite as big as yours. Though that came with the territory of being a Pokémon of your kind: one the gods had given the strength to make the world tremble before their three heads, at the cost of them needing to be ever fed. As such, Hydreigon had to have a nose for finding grounds that would sate that hunger, even if it meant looking in unlikely places.
Maybe, "Finding hunting grounds was a challenge for any dragon, and especially so for hydreigon. Long ago, the gods gave your kind the power to make the world tremble, but that power had its price: three-heads, ever hungry. Luckily, the gods also gifted you a good nose for finding hunting grounds."
You look down at the ground at the silhouette of your wings over the treetops to make sure that you’re not dreaming: green, rolling plains just beyond the forest.
These fields were supposed to be tended to by humans, and it was said that as balance to the toll of tooth and claw the gods allowed Pokémon to take on humans that interfered in their affairs, that they saw it fit to allow humans to similarly punish Pokémon that interfered with theirs… and of those of the Pokémon that made cause with them.
This paragraph was a bit jumbled. I think the idea is that because pokemon can attack humans that interfere with them, which is called the 'toll of tooth and claw,' humans can do the same when pokemon interfere in their affairs. It might benefit from being written out a bit more, rather than compressed into one sentence. I am curious what the 'toll of tooth and claw' is and what it means to be allowed to punish anyone here.
They are said to quake in fear at the sight of your kind, even the ones who left the wild to den among them. Your kind by contrast, has stories in both your and their folklore of your kind’s mightier individuals laying waste to their villages.
I'm not sure how the second set on stories are in contrast to the first set--they seem to show the same idea, that hydreigon are scary to humans and dominate them.
When you finish them off, you will be rewarded with a fill of succulent and still-tender meat. The just reward the gods are said to give to hunters that do not revel not in the fear and pain of their prey and quickly finish them off.
You’re not going to tempt fate and you’re going to put a healthy distance between you and that accursed Ampharos. There was a lake you spotted north of here about fifteen minutes ago by flying: you’re going to go there, lick your wounds, and try your luck fishing for Basculin.
The hissing voice that reaches your ears and prompt you to give a quick turn of your head to your left, reveals an Arbok staring worriedly down at you, giving an unconscious waggle of her tail back and forth. She is your partner, the two of you both under the same human. And... she is also your mate.
Hello there! Checking these out because they're on the shorter end in terms of chapter length, and I've been meaning to get to the post-beta versions of these one shots anyway.
Dragons kind of have a weird place in Pokémon canon, in my opinion. We have dragon Dragon types (ex. Dragonite), dragon non-Dragon types (Charizard, barring Mega Charizard X), and non dragon Dragon-types (Altaria). It's sort of a meme at this point, and while Dragon type jokes are very funny, from a worldbuilding perspective... what does it mean to be a dragon? It's a question that's been on my mind recently because... well, there seem to be a lot of dragon clans across the Pokémon world. Surely there must be something within dragons that speaks to the people of that world.
Well, in my eyes, a dragon is, above all, noble. A dragon does what is right simply because it is right. A dragon lies in the spirit, not in one's outward appearance. And I've learned all of that from reading this collection, and more.
A dragon protects their treasure from the selfish. A dragon respects their prey and their enemy. A dragon loves their child no matter how different they may be. A dragon protects the weak with their strength. A dragon stays loyal to their friend. A dragon never gives up on their dreams. But most important of all, a dragon can be any species, height, color, or type.
I think my favourite story in this collection besides Steven Stone giving Grovyle a rock is A Dragon's Valor. I think it best encapsulates the themes of the collection as a whole. Charizard may not be Dragon type, but he embodies the traits of a dragon: loyal, noble, and dedicated to doing the right thing. Also, like, walking in the rain to get your Trainer warm clothes is so cute, oh my goodness.
But also yes, Steven Stone cameo good.
Yeah this is getting philosophical (and ridiculous as my typing autofill says), but hey, Dragon types trigger philosophicals for me. Like I said, they’re an interesting point of discussion in terms of worldbuilding. And I think reading these one shots has taught me a lot about dragons and how I want to write them. So… thanks. Thanks a lot.
I appreciate how you highlight all kinds of dragons throughout this collection: Dragon types, dragons who become dragons through Mega Evolution, underrated dragons, dragons who look like they would be Dragon types but aren't... it shows the diversity of the type and the vibe, and how really anyone can be a dragon. You just gotta believeeeeeeeeee
(oh side note: there’s a paragraph spacing issue in the first story, where some of the paragraphs—I think one or two—don't have spaces between them. But otherwise everything looks great formatting wise)
Also Steven Stone!!!!! He!!!!!!!! He is here!!!!!!!!! 100000/10 many ronk.
So yeah, all in all, I think this might be my favourite of your works. Epic work as always, Spiteful Murkrow, and thank you for sharing this collection.
Very cool. Lots of underutilized things going on, even before we get to the story. I like how the flapple notes that, yes, this is a small hoard. They don’t have angst over it. Is THEIR hoard, which makes it important. Important enough to have whole lineages devoted to defending the apples and coins throughout the centuries.
I love xeno priorities.
The initial / final reaction to the flapple reminds me a lot of another small-ish venom-spitting reptile in pop culture. Don’t think it’s intentional, but still funny.
I also like the tradition established here, that help is given to traveling trainers. Has a vibe of Sacred Hospitality that seems to underpin the whole setting but tends to be omitted from fic because it isn’t explicit.
*
A Dragon’s Ferocity
Oh, cool, double dragons. Never have been quite sure why ampharos are dragons. None of the other sheep are. Barely any mammals are. But they are all the same. Somehow.
You know I love my hydreigon and hate to read about one losing. Because even with dragon pulse and a stupid high special attack stat… actually, yeah, I can see that outcome happening if the first strike doesn’t kill. The hydreigon should have gone for the head.
The story does hint at a real problem for IRL apex predators: pastures have replaced the wild lands that used to house their prey. Probably goes double in a world where guard animals can go toe-to-toe with the predators and win. What I’m getting at is that the hydreigon should have been allowed some mareep as a treat. For justice. It does fit with a smaller theme here, though, about dragons having gone from village-razing threats to actual livestock or wild predators unable to even conquer a farm. Very sad. The humans should have their villages razed.
*
A Dragon’s Lineage
I’m going to be honest, when I read the colors and the wings in the protag’s description I thought they were a dunsparce. I was really disappointed when I figured out they were a dragonair.
But I suppose dragonair are fine. Better than their evolution, at least.
I like a lot of things going on here. The wild v. captive cultural tensions, the protagonist still having a lot of internalized issues they’re trying to work through, and interspecies conflicts in childrearing. Makes you wish there was a pokémon couples therapist. Honestly that could be a hilarious or poignant fic depending on what direction the author took it in. Maybe both.
I’m now imagining a male ariados or scyther who is furious that their mate refuses to eat them. It’s good for the baby, damn it!
Also cool to see a portrayal of nature that focuses on mothers who aren’t at all involved in their kid’s childhood. And how that would play in to being asked to actually *raise* their kid. Like an overly attached weirdo.
*
A Dragon’s Savior
Goomy!
I’m curious if seviper would actually eat them. Goomy’s main survival mechanism has always been ‘be disgusting / inedible to predators” in my head. But maybe the seviper is Kalosian and would happily slurp down some escargot. Let’s go with that. This isn’t really important and this paragraph is only here because review blitz is making me say words, even if I would ordinarily leave them out as superfluous.
There’s a sentence about the Goomy trying to rest that implies that is difficult because… they’ve almost fallen asleep. Isn’t that how rest works? A line about needing to stay vigilant would be nice here.
Is the Exeggutor fast enough to warrant the use of “barrels in?” I imagine they just took the pinsir by surprise.
But you need a shaded place to rest, and no bush on this island has carries sort of power your unexpected guardian just wielded.
I liked this. Not often you get to portray dragons as prey, so this was a cool change of pace. You use the word “rhythms” in a similar way that you did in the hydreigon / ampharos one. Is that just a word Pokémon use to describe their behavior? Or is it somehow religious for dragons.
*
A Dragon Someday
Now, your attention drifts back to the scene at the house where your mark is seated on patio furniture near an overlook of the sea: a man in white hair in a black suit…”
I think the description of Steven should read “a white-haired man in a black suit”
Steven is surprisingly chill here. And metagross are depicted as properly scary predators. That’s always cool to see, especially in a fic about all the other (non-tyranitar) pseudos. And I like how you acknowledge the “grovyle who lost their partner tries to steal important objects” parallel. And subtly enough that even if you haven’t played those games your understanding wouldn’t be entirely derailed.
I also liked how little everything in the human law enforcement world made sense from a xeno perspective. When traveling trainers beat up someone’s Pokémon and take their money, that’s fine. When his trainer does it, that’s robbery. Very arbitrary. Very unfair.
The discussion of alternatives to Pokémon jail was also cool. I feel like I’ve never really seen that explored before, beyond maybe a mention of putting dangerous Pokémon down.
*
A Flightless Dragon
Are the unfamiliar creatures the trainer has figures of digimon? I’m afraid I don’t know much about that franchise. Can’t think of what else it would be.
This was really sweet. I found myself grinning for the back half and am kind of sad the anthology is almost over. Certainly a great penultimate entry.
To start with, bagon jumping off of things has always been one of the funniest parts of the lore for me. It’s good to see it here, especially in the context of how much a trainer would have to work around it. Like having a two year old that seems to want to get hurt while exploring, except the two year old is also a dragon.
The little worldbuilding on Pokémon healthcare is also cool. In general I love how you weave in worldbuilding into these entries in ways that doesn’t feel forced, just a natural extension of the story. It’s making me come around on story based anthologies as a way of fleshing out a coherent world.
Also, far and away the most creative use I’ve ever seen for a held item. 10/10 job. This bagon flies better than Southwest.
*
A Dragon’s Valor
It took me several days to get back to this after the last entry. Maybe it was because I didn’t want it to be over.
Or maybe it’s because I was sick and exhausted. Who can say?
I am now imagining this match from the garchomp’s perspective. Get into a friendly bout, the opposing dragon practically pisses themself and hides behind a human. Is that when you realize that you’ve made it?
This was really cute, though. Always a sucker for The Power Of Friendship played straight, and the garchomp being a little unnerved by the charizard at the end is perfection. I imagine in the wild garchomp (and the other quad weak dragons) probably retreat into a cave and go into brumation.
And onix are very scary, charizard. Nothing to be ashamed of.
Oh? A flapple short? I love the concept of this collection already. Such an underused mon, yet there’s so much there to be expanded upon. A flapple as a guardian of an orchard?
I’ve seen you describe some of your stuff on discord and the forum before, but conceptually it’s all such a great idea. You’re really good at coming up with ideas like this that fascinate me.
I think those were Team Yell goofs, which fits with their “we’re insufferable idiots” vibe that the SwSh story gave me.
I love the parallels to traditional fairytale dragons that you featured in this short. Yes, it’s a cute little worm-dragon inhabiting an apple-like shell, but it’s still a goddamn dragon protecting its hoard. It’s also not explicitly bad, like most fairytale dragons.
I really really liked this! It’s short and sweet, you did a great job at setting the scene and delivering a complete story despite the small word count! If all the shorts are this good, I’m going to enjoy Like a Dragon very much.
A Dragon’s Ferocity
Ooo a hydreigon short next!
I love the clear superiority that hydreigon possesses. Yes, it knows that it probably shouldn’t fuck with the humans. But at the same time, it’s a hydreigon, what are they really gonna be able to do to it? And hydreigon, for its own part, knows this. Excellent job at displaying the mental processes of this pokemon and telling me exactly who it is in a single short blurb.
And DAMN, the actual attack on the mareep is appropriately brutal. Vicious and violent and everything hydreigon ought to be.
Oh? Is this… a stealth ampharos entry as well?
HELL YEAH AMPHY
I friggin love ampharos, to the point where I’ve included one across a few of the fics I’ve written. Best electric type imo. I’m only slightly disappointed that it didn’t mega evolve, but it still dragon pulse’d just fine.
Nice touch having hydreigon admit through the narrative that it’s both scared and ashamed of that fear. It’s not much, but it’s there when you mention it making the same sound as the mareep and mention twice that it would never admit to making noises like that.
I like the repetition of the opening reference to the verdant fields and the place where prey grow fat and happy. I especially like the change to the passage, reflecting that hydreigon is now afraid of those verdant fields and the ampharos that protects them.
I really liked how animalistic this one was. Very brutal, just like the mon whose POV we are in.
A Dragon's Lineage
Off the bat, I like the opening. It’s a good look at some of the things that a pokemon might find strange about humans.
I also like how quick and to the point it was. Three paragraphs and you give us the entire crux of the story.
It’s also a nice look at a concept that the games just kinda used as an obscure mechanic. Cross-species coupling is something that seems weird, but it does have a basis in reality. It’s presented as really sweet here, with the dragonair having chosen his own mate due to his past with other dragons.
Love the nod to how animals basically are born and ready to go the moment they’re out and about. Nice touch as well to have Arbok not feel capable of being a mother due to a distinct lack of motherly instincts.
I hadn’t really ever put much thought into how a father might feel about a child that isn’t even the same species as it. That would be very tough to deal with, being essentially different than your own offspring in ways that make you completely unable to relate to them.
I’m unsure about a pokemon’s growth curve, but having a literal newborn be able to speak seems… idk maybe I’m just equating humans to fantasy creatures that are based on animals who function with no parental guidance at all.
An adorably sweet ending! I love good fatherhood and that’s an amazing sweet example of it!
A Dragon's Savior
You threw me for a loop. I couldn’t figure out what mon it was until about halfway through the second paragraph.
This seems so… terrifying. Like, the goomy seems like it’s sure it’s going to die.
I like the POV in this one especially. The fear is pervasive throughout the narrative and it colours everything in that terrified light.
Then we get a shot of real terror. Goomy is absolutely useless, so it’s real and not forced. What the hell is a goomy supposed to do against anything, much less an angry pinsir.
I like the little quirks of biology that you’ve been making use of in these. Of course goomy can flatten itself into the ground almost completely, it’s basically a sentient dragon puddle.
The mental image of a sentient puddle flinging itself off a cliff while being chased by a murder-beetle is not embedded in my brain. It shouldn’t be funny (it’s actually terrifying because pinsir are), but the fact that it’s a puddle is.
I love the immediate shift once the exeggutor saves goomy. The prose and the narrative no longer have that terrified feel to it. Instead, it’s… relaxed in the presence of this “noble“ dragon. As well, I love the reverence that the prose displays towards the exeggutor. Its a great touch!
And the final scene, is a welcome shift from the fear that filled so much of the fic. It’s happy and comforted, and the prose itself seems to relax knowing that it’s safe. A great little one shot, I’m really enjoying these little peeks into the lives of random pokemon.
A Dragon Someday
Absolutely fantastic job setting this one up. Also, a thief‘s pokemon? Great concept here. Grovyle also fits perfectly as the somewhat immoral thief character.
Is… is he trying to rob Steven? Of a Mega Stone? Damn, going straight for the hardest choice. Grass V Steel definitely won’t end well, let alone a grovyle who seems to be missing his trainer?
Oh, the trainer was definitely arrested or something. So the grovyle is trying to steal a sceptilite to get him back or something. Very very interesting concept.
I wonder how nice of a trainer he actually was, given that he’s likely locked up or something. I wonder if it’s a sort of “rose coloured glasses” situation where the pokemon is looking back and remembering a situation fonder than it actually was.
Aaaaand that seems almost like it’s kinda what’s going on. The trainer was definitely a thief. But I don’t get the sense that grovyle understands at all what that entails. It seems almost like grovyle didn’t really look at it like stealing, or like it doesn’t understand what stealing as a concept is?
I almost get the sense that the trainer purposely didn’t train grovyle to understand what was going on. Like… the other pokemon after grovyle is captured seem to understand humans and understand what’s going on, but he doesn’t. He still loves his trainer, to the lengths that he’s willing to fight for him.
It does seem sincere though, once we end the flashback. Grovyle seems to really miss his trainer and actively want him back. Perhaps he didn’t mistreat his pokemon and was just… a thief. Without knowing too much about the trainer, I’ll actually reserve judgement on him.
We distinctly don’t know the background here, so all we’re left with is Grovyle’s biased narration. The trainer could be a good guy in a bad situatio, or coerced into the path he was on. Or he could have just been a decent enough trainer that didn’t care to extend his treatment of his pokemon to other people.
His parents are seemingly embarrassed of him though, and try to pretend he doesn’t exist anymore. I really sympathize with Grovyle here. That would be traumatic as hell, his only vestiges of his trainer essentially pretending that his only family didn’t exist. He brushes it off in his rush, but I’d bet this affects him greater than he lets on in the narrative.
Odd that Grovyle is gambling on these rocks quite so hard. It seems an excessive risk, but
I love that Grovyle is smart enough to know that he stands absolutely no chance against Steven and Metagross. He absolutely doesn’t and would last moments in a straight up fight. I like the little joke of Steven’s obsession with rocks slipped in.
Ah that’s definitely not sceptilite. Right as shits hitting the fan. I wonder how this will go, but I kinda doubt Steven is gonna be all that punishment happy about it. He doesn’t seem the type.
OH SHIT MAYBE METAGROSS IS THE TYPE TO PUNISH
“Grovyle the Thief” being a children’s story seems very appropriate for this setting.
Grovyle’s fear here that Metagross is going to literally eat him seems like it’s another example of his trainer not exactly teaching him about the world. It almost seems like he was purposely misleading Grovyle a bit, at least to solidify his own hold on the young pokemon.
I didn’t think Steven would go all murder happy on a little Grovyle. Good boy Steven, good boy.
I didnt think that was a sceptilite. He accidentally grabbed the metagrossite. Calling it here, he’s gonna trade it for his mega stone. Maybe his partner’s freedom, but I don’t think Steven would actually do that.
And then they trade and Grovyle gets to leave. It’s a sombre and yet determined ending. He can’t even use the sceptilite without a trainer, but he’s so determined to get his family back.
I really really like this one. Partly because Steven, but also because the perspective of a “bad guy” pokemon. Really really excellent work here.
A Flightless Dragon
If this isn’t a Bagon, I’ll eat my hat.
Lol. I love stubborn, flightless bagon. It’s such a fun trope, and seeing a story from that POV should be interesting.
I love the absolute determination in the prose. Bagon is so completely certain that it should be flying. It’s a funny attitude and definitely the kind of pride that a dragon as mighty as this should have!
Attaboy, Bagon! Jump out the damn window! You got thi—
Well shit. Did Marl roll down a hill or something? That seems damn unfortunate. Although, I seriously doubt that it’s going to stop this Bagon from attempting to fly again as soon as that leg is better.
Awwww I love how much Roy cares about Marl. He’s such a good big brother Wartortle.
Aaaaand they’re promptly going to just leave him alone? I get that he can’t really move, but… he’s gonna try to fly again, even with the broken leg.
Awwww no he just gets so sad instead. That’s sooooo sad I’m honestly so sad for poor Marl.
They got him a balloon!!!! Awwww yeah hell yeah Roy and Calvin coming through! He gets to fly!!!!
HELL YEAH MARL YOU GET TO FLY!!!
This is so wholesome and cute and I LOVE it. I love that it helps Marl feel better I love how happy and lightweight this one feels. This is a great little collection of stories in different tones and feels.
Damn, it’s much more introspective than I thought. And a nice contrast to the usual ”raging” charizard that you might see.
Not quite what I expected, but I do relate to the confidence issues.
Oh man, a good old shame spiral. Honestly its really understandable. A giant rock snake is terrifying, even if you are a goddamn flying fire breathing dragon.
Oh this is definitely going to play on Charizard being a fire type. The snowstorm? it’s gonna terrify that garchomp, but zard won’t be bothered.
Yup, and it’s played for a really wholesome ending. Charizard here might not be a “dragon”. But she certainly is “Like a Dragon” when it counts (and I love the use of the title in the story lol).
All in all, this is a fantastic collection of shorts and I can’t recommend this enough to anyone who likes dragons (no matter what they look like).
Hey, here after some well-timed self-shilling! This is such a fun concept for an anthology. From Gen I, 'dragon' has always been a nebulous category (cough, Lance and his pseudo-dragons) and since then, the world of dragons has gotten even weirder and more wonderful. Though . . . I do believe you've omitted the most majestic dragon of them all . . . alolan exeggutor! Please let me know if you ever rectify this error.
Guess you’ll just have to come back and read more of these one-shots, huh? Since there is indeed an Alolan Exeggutor in one of the one-shots you haven’t read yet.
1. A Guarding Dragon
Flapple with an apple hoard! It's a very cute thought and a fun twist on the traditional image of a dragon. I liked the sense that flapple have worked with this orchard for a long time. I was a little confused about whether the road-side stand is basically a shop that operates on the honor system, or has some kind of a charity element. The language about the owners having set aside apples to do this for centuries suggests the latter, but the fixed payment and sign suggest the former.
It’s meant to be a roadside stand run by “people before pennies” types. I added a couple small tweaks to make that a bit more obvious.
2. A Dragon's Ferocity
This one had a bit of a more humorous feel! I think you made a smart choice setting it from the hydreigon's POV. We get a lot of standard draconic arrogance and indignation that this ampharos dares challenge them . . . arrogance that shrivels up and dies pretty quickly once the battle commences. The ending lines in particular felt very chastened.
Yeah, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, not least of all 600 BST apex predators that probably aren’t used to taking Ls, let alone from creatures they thought might make a good meal.
This oneshot seemed to carry on the theme of dragons as protectors, as well as the idea of dragons working in tandem with humans.
It was actually built from a prompt of “Cute but Ferocious”, but I suppose a Pokémon can get pretty ferocious about looking out for their friends, so those actually work decently well as themes there. ^^
3. A Dragon's Lineage
Okay, so you've found my secret weakness and it is very good sneks. Particularly, the dratini line. I am a bit enamored with the image of awkward dragonair dad raising his baby ekans--it's a pity there's no art. This one explores the human-pokemon relationship in a new way, this time considering what freedoms living in human society might grant pokemon--inter-species relationships and the ability to raise their kids in new ways. I was intrigued by the differences in how arbok and the dragonite line raise their kids, and both Arbok and Dragonair's anxieties about what having a child would mean--being a good mom when your species normally yeets the moment the kid is born, being a good dad when your kid doesn't look like you--felt real. I expect their kid will eventually have some sort of dragon identity crisis--just normal teenage things! I wonder if having an ekans kid would influence whether the dragonair ever feels the urge to evolve one more time. That change takes on a whole new kind of significance when you'd be going from a nice serpentine form, perfect for snake cuddles, to be a big winged dragon. I really hadn't thought much before about all the issues an inter-species family might face, but there sure are plenty. This snake family is going to live rent free in my head from now on--I believe in them!
Well I’m glad that they managed to capture your heart so fast! This one-shot actually came about as a result of running dry on ideas for a standalone prompt about Ekans and one about “Draconic Lineage” that was once upon a time going to be about a Heliolisk taking on learned behaviors from Gible line Pokémon hoarding shinies that similarly had trouble coming up with a plot for that pitch, so I wound up taking a step back and smashing them together after the premise of “similar but different” parents and things just kinda kept going from there into the final product you read.
Might revisit that Heliolisk prompt one day if I ever write another batch of these and get a suitable flash of inspiration.
This sentence tripped me up a bit--there's quite a lot of words piled on, but the point made is a pretty simple one. Perhaps, "Turffield had always been a quiet town, its rhythms dictated by the surrounding farms and their harvests."
Bit of a tense issue here--think added should be add. You might want to revise the double 'before.' You could easily cut the 'before he fled' clause--that additional context doesn't really add any information, since we know it from the word 'abandoned'.
Maybe, "Finding hunting grounds was a challenge for any dragon, and especially so for hydreigon. Long ago, the gods gave your kind the power to make the world tremble, but that power had its price: three-heads, ever hungry. Luckily, the gods also gifted you a good nose for finding hunting grounds."
This paragraph was a bit jumbled. I think the idea is that because pokemon can attack humans that interfere with them, which is called the 'toll of tooth and claw,' humans can do the same when pokemon interfere in their affairs. It might benefit from being written out a bit more, rather than compressed into one sentence. I am curious what the 'toll of tooth and claw' is and what it means to be allowed to punish anyone here.
Basically “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” for humans that go off ganking Pokémon in the boonies and vice versa. I did a hotfix tweak of this, but might have to revisit it sometime to draw out the idea a bit more cleanly.
I'm not sure how the second set on stories are in contrast to the first set--they seem to show the same idea, that hydreigon are scary to humans and dominate them.
This is actually a thing in meat production and hunting IRL. I figured that among sapient apex predators, that there would be enough learned wisdom for them to put two and two together, even if their justifications for it might be a bit more on the superstitious side.
The delayed reveal here is odd to me. Why wouldn't Dragonair Dad POV just call his mate his mate?
I flipped the ordering around here to “mate” and then “partner” since that’s a bit of a fair point in terms of the more intimate topic being more likely to come to mind first.
Hello there! Checking these out because they're on the shorter end in terms of chapter length, and I've been meaning to get to the post-beta versions of these one shots anyway.
Well, I’m glad that they were enticing enough to encourage you to come back for a second gander. Since the feedback you gave for the pre-release versions of the one-shots you read helped a lot. ^^
Dragons kind of have a weird place in Pokémon canon, in my opinion. We have dragon Dragon types (ex. Dragonite), dragon non-Dragon types (Charizard, barring Mega Charizard X), and non dragon Dragon-types (Altaria). It's sort of a meme at this point, and while Dragon type jokes are very funny, from a worldbuilding perspective... what does it mean to be a dragon? It's a question that's been on my mind recently because... well, there seem to be a lot of dragon clans across the Pokémon world. Surely there must be something within dragons that speaks to the people of that world.
They’re big, strong, and brave-? Oh wait, most of the cast doesn’t fit that mold, huh? :V
Well, in my eyes, a dragon is, above all, noble. A dragon does what is right simply because it is right. A dragon lies in the spirit, not in one's outward appearance. And I've learned all of that from reading this collection, and more.
A dragon protects their treasure from the selfish. A dragon respects their prey and their enemy. A dragon loves their child no matter how different they may be. A dragon protects the weak with their strength. A dragon stays loyal to their friend. A dragon never gives up on their dreams. But most important of all, a dragon can be any species, height, color, or type.
I was about to bring up the Hydreigon as a counterpoint, but… well, I guess they respected Ampharos after their defeat in a way, even if it was more than a little grudging on their part.
I think my favourite story in this collection besides Steven Stone giving Grovyle a rock is A Dragon's Valor. I think it best encapsulates the themes of the collection as a whole. Charizard may not be Dragon type, but he embodies the traits of a dragon: loyal, noble, and dedicated to doing the right thing. Also, like, walking in the rain to get your Trainer warm clothes is so cute, oh my goodness.
Yeah, that was actually a major goal of this anthology from all the way back when it was a Drabble Bingo card, to focus on the “weird” dragons of Pokéworld where even if they don’t necessarily match up with what a dragon might be at first blush, they still are dragons in their own way at the end of the day.
I mean hey, I figured if he could give out Sceptilites to literal whos in the anime, he could do the same quite literally in his backyard.
Yeah this is getting philosophical (and ridiculous as my typing autofill says), but hey, Dragon types trigger philosophicals for me. Like I said, they’re an interesting point of discussion in terms of worldbuilding. And I think reading these one shots has taught me a lot about dragons and how I want to write them. So… thanks. Thanks a lot.
I appreciate how you highlight all kinds of dragons throughout this collection: Dragon types, dragons who become dragons through Mega Evolution, underrated dragons, dragons who look like they would be Dragon types but aren't... it shows the diversity of the type and the vibe, and how really anyone can be a dragon. You just gotta believeeeeeeeeee
Yeah, hilariously enough, even some parts of Pokémon franchise canon have come down in this school of thought:
I mean, sure part of that might be Lance coping about not having a full team of Dragon-types as a Dragon Master, but “anyone can be a dragon” does feel pretty true to the franchise sometimes considering how literally anything can rock a Dragon Hidden Power or Tera Type these days. o<o
(oh side note: there’s a paragraph spacing issue in the first story, where some of the paragraphs—I think one or two—don't have spaces between them. But otherwise everything looks great formatting wise)
So yeah, all in all, I think this might be my favourite of your works. Epic work as always, Spiteful Murkrow, and thank you for sharing this collection.
Very cool. Lots of underutilized things going on, even before we get to the story. I like how the flapple notes that, yes, this is a small hoard. They don’t have angst over it. Is THEIR hoard, which makes it important. Important enough to have whole lineages devoted to defending the apples and coins throughout the centuries.
Yeah, admittedly, I’m not sure that I pulled it off as well as I could’ve, but I tried to make a point of giving a framing of “you are the dragon” for readers and trying to get into their heads and the sensations and thoughts that would occur to them that wouldn’t necessarily occur in a human train of thought. Glad to see that it came through here.
The initial / final reaction to the flapple reminds me a lot of another small-ish venom-spitting reptile in pop culture. Don’t think it’s intentional, but still funny.
It wasn’t, but hey, at least things turned out better for those Team Yell flunkies than that guy. ^^;
I also like the tradition established here, that help is given to traveling trainers. Has a vibe of Sacred Hospitality that seems to underpin the whole setting but tends to be omitted from fic because it isn’t explicit.
Yeah, it felt like something that one would expect from a very storied orchard, and in a world where one can have a literal guardian dragon to help oversee the honor system, Flapple babysitting a bunch of apples just felt like too good a premise to pass up.
A Dragon’s Ferocity
Oh, cool, double dragons. Never have been quite sure why ampharos are dragons. None of the other sheep are. Barely any mammals are. But they are all the same. Somehow.
Basically, in Japan, Ampharos’ Japanese name, Denryu, is an incredibly lame pun to both “electric current” and “electric dragon”, which are both pronounced denryū with a longer ‘u’ sound. Thus Ampharos is a sheep that thunders and dragons.
You know I love my hydreigon and hate to read about one losing. Because even with dragon pulse and a stupid high special attack stat… actually, yeah, I can see that outcome happening if the first strike doesn’t kill. The hydreigon should have gone for the head.
Would’ve been worth a shot, even if it’s an open question as to if it would’ve been enough to tip the scales. After all, the Ampharos did give warning that he wasn’t a pushover.
The story does hint at a real problem for IRL apex predators: pastures have replaced the wild lands that used to house their prey. Probably goes double in a world where guard animals can go toe-to-toe with the predators and win. What I’m getting at is that the hydreigon should have been allowed some mareep as a treat. For justice. It does fit with a smaller theme here, though, about dragons having gone from village-razing threats to actual livestock or wild predators unable to even conquer a farm. Very sad. The humans should have their villages razed.
Cue one of those “critters posting on 4chan” macros, but with a Hydreigon. Did you outsource this part of the review to them? >:V
A Dragon’s Lineage
I’m going to be honest, when I read the colors and the wings in the protag’s description I thought they were a dunsparce. I was really disappointed when I figured out they were a dragonair.
But I suppose dragonair are fine. Better than their evolution, at least.
I like a lot of things going on here. The wild v. captive cultural tensions, the protagonist still having a lot of internalized issues they’re trying to work through, and interspecies conflicts in childrearing. Makes you wish there was a pokémon couples therapist. Honestly that could be a hilarious or poignant fic depending on what direction the author took it in. Maybe both.
Though yeah, I wouldn't be terribly shocked if culture clashes about parenthood happened among various Pokémon used to radically different lifestyles from each other.
Also cool to see a portrayal of nature that focuses on mothers who aren’t at all involved in their kid’s childhood. And how that would play in to being asked to actually *raise* their kid. Like an overly attached weirdo.
Yeah, that’s actually the norm for most species of snakes IRL… except pythons, which are the “overly attached weirdos” of snakes that actually care for their young past hatching.
A Dragon’s Savior
Goomy!
I’m curious if seviper would actually eat them. Goomy’s main survival mechanism has always been ‘be disgusting / inedible to predators” in my head. But maybe the seviper is Kalosian and would happily slurp down some escargot. Let’s go with that. This isn’t really important and this paragraph is only here because review blitz is making me say words, even if I would ordinarily leave them out as superfluous.
It was a Serperior, actually. Given that the implied backdrop of the story from the weather patterns and Pokémon is Exeggutor Island from Alola, I wouldn’t be terribly shocked if Serperior ate Goomy. Even if they didn’t, they’re big and threatening-looking with a stabby tail. Just what a meek little slug would need to meep out and stay in the bushes.
There’s a sentence about the Goomy trying to rest that implies that is difficult because… they’ve almost fallen asleep. Isn’t that how rest works? A line about needing to stay vigilant would be nice here.
It’s meant to talk more about seeing Exeggutor’s head moving in blurry-vision, I changed this to “swoop down” since that probably is more fitting for something coming down from above.
It’s the “has”, which shouldn’t be there. Went and snipped that.
I liked this. Not often you get to portray dragons as prey, so this was a cool change of pace. You use the word “rhythms” in a similar way that you did in the hydreigon / ampharos one. Is that just a word Pokémon use to describe their behavior? Or is it somehow religious for dragons.
“rhythms” is just a term that I was using to describe life routines and behaviors, especially cyclic ones that follow intervals of time or weather which would for an Exeggutor Island that plays things to the hilt would have regular intervals of rain and shine on a daily basis. I might play around with some alternatives to it.
I think the description of Steven should read “a white-haired man in a black suit”
Steven is surprisingly chill here. And metagross are depicted as properly scary predators. That’s always cool to see, especially in a fic about all the other (non-tyranitar) pseudos. And I like how you acknowledge the “grovyle who lost their partner tries to steal important objects” parallel. And subtly enough that even if you haven’t played those games your understanding wouldn’t be entirely derailed.
I’ll admit that I was leaning a bit on some of Anime!Steven’s antics in the XY seasons to inform his portrayal here. Though glad to hear that the parallels weren’t too on the nose to be jarring, since this was the one-shot that I outsourced to my inner derivative hack that likes to make shout outs, so it’s a bit relieving to hear that the work still stands on its own decently well.
I also liked how little everything in the human law enforcement world made sense from a xeno perspective. When traveling trainers beat up someone’s Pokémon and take their money, that’s fine. When his trainer does it, that’s robbery. Very arbitrary. Very unfair.
Yeah, I figured that “protagonist-centered morality” would be decently common among Pokémon, and when dealing with the Pokémon of a petty thief that is predatory by ‘dex lore… well, stealing money and belongings isn’t that far removed from that. Your prey just gets to live to fight another day, when they’ll ideally have more shinies to snatch off them.
The discussion of alternatives to Pokémon jail was also cool. I feel like I’ve never really seen that explored before, beyond maybe a mention of putting dangerous Pokémon down.
I mean, it felt like something that would naturally be on the table since introducing Pokémon into the wild is something that happens in franchise canon and it struck me as plausible that there’d be cases for Pokémon causing problems in human society where leaving them to sort themselves out without human interference would be the best option for everyone involved.
Probably happens a bit more often with the likes of Dick the TR Grunt’s Rattata that he caught in the past 6 months than with a veteran poacher’s pseudolegendary, though.
A Flightless Dragon
Are the unfamiliar creatures the trainer has figures of digimon? I’m afraid I don’t know much about that franchise. Can’t think of what else it would be.
BetaPokémon, actually! It’s a bit of a running trend of mine to cameo them as the “Pokémon as the cartoon animals / video game characters” of my mainline writings.
This was really sweet. I found myself grinning for the back half and am kind of sad the anthology is almost over. Certainly a great penultimate entry.
This story actually happens to be my personal favorite of the current batch of one-shots, so it’s heartening to hear that you enjoyed it so much.
To start with, bagon jumping off of things has always been one of the funniest parts of the lore for me. It’s good to see it here, especially in the context of how much a trainer would have to work around it. Like having a two year old that seems to want to get hurt while exploring, except the two year old is also a dragon.
Yeah, it’s one of those behaviors that even in canon is a handful to deal with. I always figured that Bagon would have problems if they misjudged their dives or else didn’t stick their landings, since their dex lore specifically talks about armored heads, which then beggared the question of the sort of things that would happen if they landed on some other part of their bodies.
The little worldbuilding on Pokémon healthcare is also cool. In general I love how you weave in worldbuilding into these entries in ways that doesn’t feel forced, just a natural extension of the story. It’s making me come around on story based anthologies as a way of fleshing out a coherent world.
I’ll admit, that was one of those things that I didn’t pre-plan and just kinda happened. Though I suppose that deliberately trying to aim for a spread of stories that felt distinct from one another would help for exploring different facets of a shared world.
Also, far and away the most creative use I’ve ever seen for a held item. 10/10 job. This bagon flies better than Southwest.
Glad to hear you liked the story, and that quip’s gonna stick in my mind for a while.
I am now imagining this match from the garchomp’s perspective. Get into a friendly bout, the opposing dragon practically pisses themself and hides behind a human. Is that when you realize that you’ve made it?
It was actually implied from the Garchomp’s dialogue that the Charizard was being a bit of an obnoxious tryhard before the match, though otherwise, that’d be a solid contender for knowing when you’ve made it as a dragon.
… Just don’t let it get to your head when getting into fights with Fairies or the like. :V
This was really cute, though. Always a sucker for The Power Of Friendship played straight, and the garchomp being a little unnerved by the charizard at the end is perfection. I imagine in the wild garchomp (and the other quad weak dragons) probably retreat into a cave and go into brumation.
That seems like a decently solid bet, actually. Though you’ve now got the scenario of a quad weak dragon being sent out on a snowy route, looking around the surroundings and then promptly “nope”-ing back into their Pokéball in my mind.
And onix are very scary, charizard. Nothing to be ashamed of.
Ironically enough, they’ve likely gotten scarier for Charizard since evolving since after adjusting for level scaling, those rocks don’t exactly hurt less than they did as a Charmeleon.
Though thanks a million for the review! It was a lot of fun to see your reactions to the different stories. ^^
Oh? A flapple short? I love the concept of this collection already. Such an underused mon, yet there’s so much there to be expanded upon. A flapple as a guardian of an orchard?
Technically of the orchard’s roadside stand, but yes. And it wouldn’t shock me if the Flapple or a few of their peers guarded the orchard more properly on other occasions.
I’ve seen you describe some of your stuff on discord and the forum before, but conceptually it’s all such a great idea. You’re really good at coming up with ideas like this that fascinate me.
I mean, I like to think of myself as the sort of writer that seeks out ideas that aren’t done very often. Glad to hear that they seem to strike a few chords for you.
I think those were Team Yell goofs, which fits with their “we’re insufferable idiots” vibe that the SwSh story gave me.
It’s not stated since the narration is done through the lens of what Flapple would know, but they’re Team Yell goofs, yes.
I love the parallels to traditional fairytale dragons that you featured in this short. Yes, it’s a cute little worm-dragon inhabiting an apple-like shell, but it’s still a goddamn dragon protecting its hoard. It’s also not explicitly bad, like most fairytale dragons.
I really really liked this! It’s short and sweet, you did a great job at setting the scene and delivering a complete story despite the small word count! If all the shorts are this good, I’m going to enjoy Like a Dragon very much.
Whelp, from the sheer length of this review, I think I have an idea of how much you wound up liking this story, but let’s go ahead and read along to get confirmation. :V
I love the clear superiority that hydreigon possesses. Yes, it knows that it probably shouldn’t fuck with the humans. But at the same time, it’s a hydreigon, what are they really gonna be able to do to it? And hydreigon, for its own part, knows this. Excellent job at displaying the mental processes of this pokemon and telling me exactly who it is in a single short blurb.
Ironically enough, I’d have expected a more seasoned Hydreigon to be a bit more muted in this sort of thought process, since they’ve been around the block enough to know their limits better in a way that the viewpoint character doesn’t. Or at least, not at the start anyways. o<o
And DAMN, the actual attack on the mareep is appropriately brutal. Vicious and violent and everything hydreigon ought to be.
I mean, the original drabble was built around ‘Cute but Ferocious’, and… while I suppose that Hydreigon are nothing to sneeze at on that front sometimes, it’s the Ampharos that delivered on that end for the original prompt.
HELL YEAH AMPHY
I friggin love ampharos, to the point where I’ve included one across a few of the fics I’ve written. Best electric type imo. I’m only slightly disappointed that it didn’t mega evolve, but it still dragon pulse’d just fine.
Though hey, never say never there. Since hey, if I ever asked for another Drabble Bingo card for this and got an ‘Ampharos’ one, Mega!Amphy would be a fast way to get into new territory.
Nice touch having hydreigon admit through the narrative that it’s both scared and ashamed of that fear. It’s not much, but it’s there when you mention it making the same sound as the mareep and mention twice that it would never admit to making noises like that.
Yeah, most pseudolegendaries don’t strike me as the type to be used to being in over their heads. Which makes it a fun thought exercise to imagine how they might come to terms with those times where in spite of their strength, they’re not in control or a good situation.
I like the repetition of the opening reference to the verdant fields and the place where prey grow fat and happy. I especially like the change to the passage, reflecting that hydreigon is now afraid of those verdant fields and the ampharos that protects them.
I really liked how animalistic this one was. Very brutal, just like the mon whose POV we are in.
Glad to hear that, really. Since something that I deliberately aimed for for these shorts in general was to try and give off the sorts of thoughts and vibes that the creature whose eyes the story is being told might have as a “you are the dragon” exercise.
Sounds like the POV delivered well on that front in this one-shot.
A Dragon's Lineage
Off the bat, I like the opening. It’s a good look at some of the things that a pokemon might find strange about humans.
I also like how quick and to the point it was. Three paragraphs and you give us the entire crux of the story.
Yeah, this one was a bit of a simpler story, but I figured that there was still some work needed to tee up the premise, which was as good an opportunity as any to show off how a Pokémon originating from a wild lifestyle might view the “quirks” of being trained.
It’s also a nice look at a concept that the games just kinda used as an obscure mechanic. Cross-species coupling is something that seems weird, but it does have a basis in reality. It’s presented as really sweet here, with the dragonair having chosen his own mate due to his past with other dragons.
Love the nod to how animals basically are born and ready to go the moment they’re out and about. Nice touch as well to have Arbok not feel capable of being a mother due to a distinct lack of motherly instincts.
I mean, it helps that you can canonically get downright weird with interspecies breeding in Pokémon such as the various improbable pairings you can do with a Wailord. This one actually originated from trying to do a one-shot about Ekans, realizing that in spite of being in the Dragon Egg Group, that it doesn’t learn any Dragon-type moves, and then merging it with a ‘Dragon’s Lineage’ prompt after wondering how a more stock dragon might parse having a child that’s very different from them.
I hadn’t really ever put much thought into how a father might feel about a child that isn’t even the same species as it. That would be very tough to deal with, being essentially different than your own offspring in ways that make you completely unable to relate to them.
Well fortunately for the father in this case, he at least has morphological similarity. But yeah, there are definitely some hurdles, which this one-shot tried to explore.
I’m unsure about a pokemon’s growth curve, but having a literal newborn be able to speak seems… idk maybe I’m just equating humans to fantasy creatures that are based on animals who function with no parental guidance at all.
It was more meant in the sense of ‘baby talk’ since my own assumptions about Pokémon sapience are such that they learn how to ‘talk’ coherently at a significantly earlier age than humans. Even if Ekans there is likely still a ways away from that.
An adorably sweet ending! I love good fatherhood and that’s an amazing sweet example of it!
Well Goomy is presented as a fairly weak Pokémon. I tried to play into that a bit in the course of this one-shot since… yeah, Goomy would take the L in a whole host of matchups.
Then we get a shot of real terror. Goomy is absolutely useless, so it’s real and not forced. What the hell is a goomy supposed to do against anything, much less an angry pinsir.
To be fair, I think a fairly large swath of Pokémon would be unable to do much more than
when confronted by an angry Pinsir. Even if they’d probably be able to flee a bit more effectively than a Goomy. :V
I like the little quirks of biology that you’ve been making use of in these. Of course goomy can flatten itself into the ground almost completely, it’s basically a sentient dragon puddle.
The anime does this and I’ve seen it done in a couple other fics, so I figured it was good enough as a way to keep Goomy from losing their head. Literally.
The mental image of a sentient puddle flinging itself off a cliff while being chased by a murder-beetle is not embedded in my brain. It shouldn’t be funny (it’s actually terrifying because pinsir are), but the fact that it’s a puddle is.
I love the immediate shift once the exeggutor saves goomy. The prose and the narrative no longer have that terrified feel to it. Instead, it’s… relaxed in the presence of this “noble“ dragon. As well, I love the reverence that the prose displays towards the exeggutor. Its a great touch!
And the final scene, is a welcome shift from the fear that filled so much of the fic. It’s happy and comforted, and the prose itself seems to relax knowing that it’s safe. A great little one shot, I’m really enjoying these little peeks into the lives of random pokemon.
You know, I hadn’t really thought too hard about how the mood perceptibly shifts when Goomy is no longer about to become bug chow, but I suppose that’s a benefit of writing from a perspective that’s more intimate to the character. Definitely wouldn’t have come through like that if I had written these one-shots in an omniscient perspective.
A Dragon Someday
Absolutely fantastic job setting this one up. Also, a thief‘s pokemon? Great concept here. Grovyle also fits perfectly as the somewhat immoral thief character.
I mean, they’re not exactly stealing Time Gears here, but yeah. Grovyle ‘works’ for a Pokémon in this role for a couple of reasons, really.
Is… is he trying to rob Steven? Of a Mega Stone? Damn, going straight for the hardest choice. Grass V Steel definitely won’t end well, let alone a grovyle who seems to be missing his trainer?
Oh, the trainer was definitely arrested or something. So the grovyle is trying to steal a sceptilite to get him back or something. Very very interesting concept.
Even if the protag isn’t knowledgeable enough about mega stones to ID a Sceptilite right away.
I wonder how nice of a trainer he actually was, given that he’s likely locked up or something. I wonder if it’s a sort of “rose coloured glasses” situation where the pokemon is looking back and remembering a situation fonder than it actually was.
Well, for Grovyle, their trainer was pretty swell, and I tried to play that up. Whether or not that bond/training was being put to ethical uses is another matter.
Aaaaand that seems almost like it’s kinda what’s going on. The trainer was definitely a thief. But I don’t get the sense that grovyle understands at all what that entails. It seems almost like grovyle didn’t really look at it like stealing, or like it doesn’t understand what stealing as a concept is?
I almost get the sense that the trainer purposely didn’t train grovyle to understand what was going on. Like… the other pokemon after grovyle is captured seem to understand humans and understand what’s going on, but he doesn’t. He still loves his trainer, to the lengths that he’s willing to fight for him.
Such is life with protagonist-centered morality. Much in the way that I’d expect Silver’s Pokémon from GS to likely have a fuzzier understanding of the morality of stealing for a good chunk of their tenure considering some of Silver’s antics.
It does seem sincere though, once we end the flashback. Grovyle seems to really miss his trainer and actively want him back. Perhaps he didn’t mistreat his pokemon and was just… a thief. Without knowing too much about the trainer, I’ll actually reserve judgement on him.
We distinctly don’t know the background here, so all we’re left with is Grovyle’s biased narration. The trainer could be a good guy in a bad situatio, or coerced into the path he was on. Or he could have just been a decent enough trainer that didn’t care to extend his treatment of his pokemon to other people.
It’s left up to the reader’s interpretation, though I personally imagined it as the last option of the ones that you floated there.
His parents are seemingly embarrassed of him though, and try to pretend he doesn’t exist anymore. I really sympathize with Grovyle here. That would be traumatic as hell, his only vestiges of his trainer essentially pretending that his only family didn’t exist. He brushes it off in his rush, but I’d bet this affects him greater than he lets on in the narrative.
As I would expect from watching your best friend get unpersoned by people that you thought loved him for reasons you don’t fully understand. It almost certainly affects Grovyle quite a bit.
Odd that Grovyle is gambling on these rocks quite so hard. It seems an excessive risk, but
I love that Grovyle is smart enough to know that he stands absolutely no chance against Steven and Metagross. He absolutely doesn’t and would last moments in a straight up fight. I like the little joke of Steven’s obsession with rocks slipped in.
I mean, they are a thief. Being able to snatch shinies out from under stronger opponents is a particularly valuable skill to hone as one.
Ah that’s definitely not sceptilite. Right as shits hitting the fan. I wonder how this will go, but I kinda doubt Steven is gonna be all that punishment happy about it. He doesn’t seem the type.
Yeah, I got the idea from some Humans of New York-style tumblr from ages ago whose name eludes me that cameoed the PMD games as an in-setting series of children’s books. I thought it was cute and it was a good enough excuse to have Steven bring up “Grovyle the Thief” verbatim, so something to that effect is also around in this setting.
Grovyle’s fear here that Metagross is going to literally eat him seems like it’s another example of his trainer not exactly teaching him about the world. It almost seems like he was purposely misleading Grovyle a bit, at least to solidify his own hold on the young pokemon.
Not that you aren’t correct, though to be fair on the protag, when you’re being telekinetically restrained by a Metagross making “chomp chomp” noises, one could be forgiven for being worried about whether or not it’s really just an intimidating display.
I didn’t think Steven would go all murder happy on a little Grovyle. Good boy Steven, good boy.
Well, it’d be a really short and abruptly-ending story if he was, so… ^^;
I didnt think that was a sceptilite. He accidentally grabbed the metagrossite. Calling it here, he’s gonna trade it for his mega stone. Maybe his partner’s freedom, but I don’t think Steven would actually do that.
Also would be a wee bit hard even if there wasn’t a language barrier since Steven almost certainly doesn’t have the power to arbitrarily release prisoners.
And then they trade and Grovyle gets to leave. It’s a sombre and yet determined ending. He can’t even use the sceptilite without a trainer, but he’s so determined to get his family back.
I really really like this one. Partly because Steven, but also because the perspective of a “bad guy” pokemon. Really really excellent work here.
Once upon a time, the original plot bunny behind this anthology prior to dusting it off for Drabble Bingo was meant to be a short story from the perspective of figures like Grovyle who were at once “weird dragons” and had underworld ties. Didn’t quite turn out that way in the end, but I might try and revisit the general premise under new scenarios and with new faces if this anthology ever gets added content.
Fortunately for your hat, it is indeed focused around a Bagon.
Lol. I love stubborn, flightless bagon. It’s such a fun trope, and seeing a story from that POV should be interesting.
I love the absolute determination in the prose. Bagon is so completely certain that it should be flying. It’s a funny attitude and definitely the kind of pride that a dragon as mighty as this should have!
Funnily enough, Marl is the only character from this anthology aside from the Dragonair to have a canonically-assigned gender at this point in time. If you’ve read through to Part 4 of Dragonspiral’s Children, this is that same Marl. Just younger and a bit closer to home.
Though that’s not terribly relevant for a readthrough here for the sake of preserving the second person perspective, though it is a bit interesting to see how interpretations fluctuate a bit between one reader and the next.
Well shit. Did Marl roll down a hill or something? That seems damn unfortunate. Although, I seriously doubt that it’s going to stop this Bagon from attempting to fly again as soon as that leg is better.
I might need to make it clearer, but Marl clipped the wall separating the property from the alleyway outside, then pinwheeled forward and fell on her leg with around three stories’ worth of downward momentum.
Awwww I love how much Roy cares about Marl. He’s such a good big brother Wartortle.
Aaaaand they’re promptly going to just leave him alone? I get that he can’t really move, but… he’s gonna try to fly again, even with the broken leg.
This is so wholesome and cute and I LOVE it. I love that it helps Marl feel better I love how happy and lightweight this one feels. This is a great little collection of stories in different tones and feels.
I see what you did there. Though glad to hear that you’re finding the anthology a nice mix thematically. They’re all a bit on the lighter side by design, but I tried to make sure that each one would be a different experience that would do something that the others didn’t.
Yeah, this Charizard is a +Spd / -Atk Charizard. A wee bit different from the stock assumption of what a Charizard might be in nature, but eh. I’ve gotten some mileage out of this character archetype before and figured that it was as good an excuse to revisit it when I got a prompt for “Charizard” thrown in my lap.
Oh man, a good old shame spiral. Honestly its really understandable. A giant rock snake is terrifying, even if you are a goddamn flying fire breathing dragon.
Yup, and it’s played for a really wholesome ending. Charizard here might not be a “dragon”. But she certainly is “Like a Dragon” when it counts (and I love the use of the title in the story lol).
And thanks for taking the time to review it! I’m really happy to hear that they were a fun ride for you. ^^
Thanks again for your reviews everybody. Can’t say for sure whether or not this will be it for LaD or if I’ll have more stories to throw out for it someday when inspiration strikes. But hey, this did spring to life from a Drabble Bingo card over the course of 72 hours, so who knows? Might have more of these to share at some point down the line. ^^
A Guarding Dragon
A Dragon's Ferocity
A Dragon's Lineage
A Dragon's Savior
A Dragon Someday
A Flightless Dragon
A Dragon’s Valor
