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Pokémon The Last Strike

Pen

the cat is mightier than the pen
Staff
Partners
  1. dratini
  2. dratini-pen
  3. dratini-pen2
The Last Strike

On the eve of the Galar League, a corviknight faces a choice between loyalty and honor.

zaz by kint.png
Illustration by @kintsugi


“And what if they don’t fight back?” Lachen demands.

There is no reasoning with Lachen when he gets like this. His eyes flash, his tongue lolls, and his bushy tail whips like an angry forest. Past and present run together in my mind, and I see only a battered zigzagoon, yipping and barking at our heels as we wind through the back-ways of Motostoke.

“They will fight,” I answer calmly.

Disgusted, Lachen puffs his tail and turns back to the others. “This isn’t about us. This is so, so much bigger than us. Tomorrow, the whole world will be watching. We’re the lucky ones—we can take a stand for the ones without a voice.”

The rest of the team observes us in troubled silence. Lachen is the better speaker, but I am the better thinker. When our opinions split, trouble follows.

“You are saying we should throw everything away for nothing,” I interject. “You think our opponents will risk throwing? You think they will put everything aside for a moment of meaningless protest, for a dream? You’re naive, Lachen. You overestimate the self-sacrifice of others.”

For a moment, it seems that I have rendered him speechless.

Then he says, “It’s you I’ve overestimated,” and the bitterness in his voice slaps me like cold water.

I try to gentle my tone. “It’s a pretty thought, but this is not the time. She is counting on us tomorrow. How can you even think of letting her down like that?”

“If she doesn’t support the strike, then she’s the one letting us down. If she’s worth my loyalty, she won’t need it.”

It is my turn to seek words and only find silence. I did not think, after five years, that loyalty could be thrown away so lightly.

I love Lachen the way one loves a nestmate. We have been cold and warm together; we have eaten from the same half-filled bowl. When a machoke broke my wing, he placed himself between us and growled in the most terrible voice until it backed away despite itself.

I love Lachen, but sometimes, I do not like him. He has always talked too fast and dreamed too big. After years of plenty, he still eats like at any moment his bowl will be taken away.

Before I find an answer, Velvet opens the door. There is a change to her in this crossing over. Outside she is Velvet Steel, rising star; here she is Kiki Smith and she does not need to stand as if the angle of her back holds up the world.

She pauses on the threshold, looking down at the red hotel carpet and the scuffed pamphlet Lachen has left for her there. She reads it carefully, one side and then the other. When she looks at us, the grooves under her eyes are dark.

“Meeting time,” she says, “yeah?”

We ring around her. It could be any evening, any meeting. We have passed so many nights like this, huddled around an old motel TV, watching battle playbacks and tossing strategies back and forth. But tonight the pamphlet curls in her hands as she speaks.

“It’s like this. I got an email earlier, from my sponsors. They said anyone who participates, we’re done. There’s a clause about strikes, you know? Apparently. Some little clause buried in that mountain of paperwork.” She takes a breath. “So we can’t do this. It’s not about what I want. You get that, right? It’s not about losing one battle tomorrow. It’s losing everything. Okay?”

Everything.

Only Lachen and I know the full weight of that. We watched the small girl who chatted loudly with her rookidee and zigzagoon, oblivious to every annoyed look, grow still and watchful. I remember perching on her lap in a room of endless mirrors the day they first took a hot brand to her hair and forced it to fall straight. I was there when a man with mandibuzz eyes settled his hand below her waist and did not move it—she did not move and I did not move, and afterward she stood in front of the bathroom sink and didn’t cry.

“Okay?” she says again, but Lachen snorts and slinks away into his pokeball, the red flash serving as his voiceless rejoinder. Kiki’s shoulders sag.

No, I do not like Lachen. In this moment, perhaps I even hate him.

When nobody else moves, Kiki lets out a small breath through her teeth. “Our opponent tomorrow is sponsorship junk too. Believe me, she’s not going to be a hero about this.”

I am named after a hero, but I don’t believe in them. I shuffle to her side and curve out my wing so that she can lean against it. I am the only one who can feel how she trembles.

Kiki is not like me—she has no metal armor. But I have watched her make her own. This armor is constructed from the hard tilt of her chin, the gold bangles in her ears, the silk wound around her neck.

They laughed at her, the first time she tried to enter a tournament.

“Who’s your sponsor?”

“No sponsor,” she said.

“No sponsor?” the receptionist repeated, mocking as a chatot. “Fine, how about you pay me, then? Fifty thousand dollars, how about that?” And she couldn’t contain herself: she howled.

Kiki said nothing, but she vibrated where she stood. Every curse, every angry exclamation, it was like she released them on the inside, where they rattled furiously, a trapped hurricane.

“Fifty thousand,” she told us afterwards, her hands balled into fists. “Fifty thousand and watch me.”

It became her mantra, everytime we were turned away, everytime the men and women in official uniforms slid their gazes past her and made their silent, uncontestable decision about who mattered and who did not.

“Thanks, Zaz,” Kiki murmurs, for only me to hear. When she opens her eyes, she’s strong again. “We should all get some rest for tomorrow.”



In the middle of the night I snap awake with the unsettled feeling of a half-formed thought. Outside the window, the clouds have relented, leaving the moon the full stage of the sky. A warm weight is wrapped around my ruff.

“Lachen?” I rumble drowsily. In answer, his wet nose butts against my cheek. When we were small, we slept together, my body cushioned against his thick fur. Even when my feathers turned to steel, he persisted in the arrangement; under all the metal, he said, I was still warm. “What are you doing?”

“She’s not going to send me out tomorrow.”

“Of course not. You’ve made it perfectly clear what you’ll do. What you won’t do.”

“Yes.” He shifts position on my neck. “Zaz . . . would you really do it? Fight someone who won’t fight back?”

It’s an honest question, stripped of any rhetoric or declaiming, so I answer him honestly. “I don’t know. But it won’t happen.”

“You’re so sure.” For the first time, I hear real despair in his voice. “Why are you so sure?”

. . . I think about my mother.

When I was two moons old, I noticed that she flew askew. That evening, I pulled back her beautiful steeled feathers until I found a patch of brutally mottled skin. With that discovery, other mysteries of life slotted into place; I understood why we flew only at night and why mother hunkered down when the taxis passed overhead.

“What was it like?” I asked.

She didn’t answer me, not then.

But the day I left the nest, she said, “It’s like a pebble caught inside your heart,” and I did not have to ask her what she meant.

Over the years, I have passed many taxi stations. Nobody ever greets me.

I never greet them.

But I have been silent for too long. Lachen’s light snore returns me from my thoughts. I listen for some time to his chuffing, whistling sleep, and remember that I do not hate him after all, not even a little, but there are some things he will never understand.



It is time.

I woke before the sun, feeling the anticipation spread through my pinions like a golden wave of light. I stood by Kiki’s side as she put on her armor, sparred with the reporters who dot the corridors outside the contestants’ quarters.

Now it is my turn to fight. The bursting light resolves into the clamor of the stadium, but I am too experienced to pay that any heed. I have eyes for nothing except my opponent: a lean ninetales.

I lose a moment cursing Lachen—he should be the one standing here, quick-footed and unafraid of fire, not me. Lasting the three minutes before at-will switches are permitted will not be easy work.

The ninetales returns my gaze steadily. As the referee counts down to the commencement of the match, she settles back on her haunches.

I freeze. The countdown expires; no fire flashes my way. The ninetales lowers her head until it rests on her paws—an unmoving target. I could end this match now with a single Brave Bird.

“Get up.” The roughness of my voice startles me. “What are you doing? Get up and fight.”

Her eyes are placid. “There’s a strike today. Did you not know?”

“Don’t be absurd. We have sponsors. We can’t afford to strike. Neither can you. Don’t you know your trainer has them too?”

I look at the ninetales’ trainer, but she has her arms crossed and she doesn’t look surprised.

“She told me it’s my choice. And I’m choosing to strike.”

Frustrated, I sharpen my talons against the rocky battlefield. “Why? What do you expect to achieve? Do you really think the world will change just because you sat still on the dirt for a few minutes?”

“I had a sister once,” the ninetails says. And it’s as if all the fire she didn’t release onto the battlefield has been reserved for her voice. An inferno crackles in it. “I cleaned her ears each morning. Then one morning I woke up and I didn’t have a sister anymore. No one asked us first. And there is nothing I can ever do that will hurt them in the way they hurt me, but at least I can do this. For a single day, the world will not run according to their plan.”

She closes her eyes, and for a moment, I too am lost in a memory. A few weeks before my feathers turned to steel, we fought a street battle and drew a small crowd. After our victory, one man lingered, his gaze fixed on me. He drew Kiki aside and began to speak with her in a low voice. I saw him flash his wallet. It couldn’t have been more than a minute, but that minute seemed to contain my entire life. Then Kiki was back by my side, hustling us down the street.

“What a creep,” she said later, as the three of us tore into a pasty. “He wanted—”

But she couldn’t say it. Maybe saying it would have meant acknowledging that she’d had the power to say yes as well as no.

That night, Lachen said, “I wonder what she’d have done if it had been fifty thousand.”

I wheeled around and struck him. My wing made a dull thwap as it connected with his skull; surprised hurt bloomed in his eyes. He didn’t understand. There are some things you cannot ask, cannot wonder. If you do, you will go mad.

There is only one story my mother ever told me.

Once, when the world was new, two proud heroes quarreled over the wind. Their battle transformed the land: gouged out valleys, erected mountains. In the end, the Crowned Sword gained the advantage. She pressed Zamazenta relentlessly, until she had no strength left to resist but could only await the final strike.

From the trees, a corvisquire watched them fight—the fearsome combat had frightened her into hiding. But she could not stay silent when she saw that the Crowned Sword intended to strike one who was helpless. She shot down from the branches and took the blow herself.

Her sacrifice brought the battle to an end. The Crowned Sword was humbled; she lay down her sword and departed the land, never to be seen again by earthly eyes. But Zamazenta touched her crown to the dying corvisquire and blessed her with these words.

“You shielded me. For this, you will forever be a shield.”

Kiki’s earrings jangle behind me as she shifts her weight.

“Zaz,” she says beneath her breath, “what are you doing?”

I first met her outside Motostoke Stadium as dusk was setting in. Her jacket was purple and shiny, and it wasn’t doing much against the evening wind. She threw the last of her sandwich to the birds and burst into laughter when I chased off a gaggle of plump pidove. When I was full, I nested in her hair, and she ran a gentle finger down my belly. That night, we made a promise, though I never put it into words until now: that she would ask and I would obey, but that she would not ask and would never ask for what I could not give.

“Zaz,” Kiki says again, except I don’t hear Kiki anymore. Now it’s Velvet speaking, a warning in her voice.

If I could, I would tell her that my name describes a shield. That I was born to freedom, but my mother was not free. I would tell her I understand, and I am sorry.

I tuck in my wings and bow my beak.

And when she speaks the command, I forgive her.
 

bluesidra

Mood
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. hoppip-bluesidra-reup
  2. hoppip-bluesidra-pink
  3. hoppip-bluesidra3
What is this? eoe, galar edition? Another one to unexpectedly make me feel feels on my quiet afternoon?

Oh boy, Galar, you are such a mess. Similar to nebby's work, I found myself startled at first to see galarian tournaments without the canon characters and then quickly realised that the story is a lot better for it. Also, in retrospect, yay for not specifying what bracket and what tournament this is. Makes it a lot more universal.

The idea of a strike is rather cool. Especially since it seems to come from the pokemon themselves. Which makes me wonder: How do they organise? Is there a group of ex-comp-pokemon acting as a union now? And how do pokemon and human communicate in this universe?

Anyway, love me some collective action representation in my reading. Sorry, head empty today, can't give better feedback than gud fic, pls moar. (No, really, I love this premise, it would be cool to see more of it if you feel like it)
 
  • Quag
Reactions: Pen

IFBench

Rescue Team Member
Location
Pokemon Paradise
Partners
  1. chikorita-saltriv
  2. bench-gen
  3. charmander
  4. snivy
  5. treecko
  6. tropius
  7. arctozolt
  8. wartortle
I'm sorry, but I just completely don't understand this fic. I just don't understand what's going in. I know that there's a Corvinknight and a Zigzaggoon and a trainer and a strike, but the pieces just aren't fitting.

I'm sure there's some grand tale in this story, something completely escaping me. But I just can't see it. I can't tell what's going on. Maybe my lingering sickness is affecting my reading comprehension, but I just don't get it. I'm sorry.

I do like the prose, and how it was written, but again, it doesn't hold any meaning to me that I can understand. It feels like a piece being taken out of a puzzle, its meaning impossible to understand without the context given by the other pieces. It feels like a shred of something greater, some bigger picture, but I just don't understand.

I don't understand the fifty thousand standing and watching. I don't understand the tale with Zamazenta. I don't understand the stuff about sponsors. I don't understand any of this, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry that I have to give you this review, but I just don't understand. I don't know what else to say. I just don't understand this at all.
 

Joshthewriter

Charizard Fan
Location
Toronto
Pronouns
He/him
Partners
  1. charizard
Alright! It’s delayed and long overdue, but your double destinies catnip is finally here!

I really do like the opening argument. It was a little tricky to figure out who was speaking and what they were, but once I did I found the character dynamics to be really solid (And I loved the inhuman perspective really shining through).

Again, I found it slightly difficult to get a read on the concepts you were working with. I think it was just a product of trying to present information through the inhuman perspective, because once I did get a hold of the whole “strike“ concept (which is an ingenious idea now that I think of it), I found that it made a ton more sense and the story seemed to click into place.

Then, as the story comes to a head… you masterfully brought it together. Every bit of backstory you gave Zaz, every single tangential story you cut away to, it all came back as you got to the ninetales participating in the strike. Zaz’s attitude and his reasonings all make since with the backstory littered throughout.

I’m very very interested in your Galar. Its kind of dystopia sounding and yet, bears some hope for the state of the world and the pokemon within it. You did a great job with the inhuman perspective in conveying worldbuilding details and made me want to know so much more about everything in here. While I had some trouble at first, once I adjusted it was a fun and emotional read.

Great job! Sorry again that it took so long!
 
Last edited:
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Reactions: Pen

Spiteful Murkrow

Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
Pronouns
He/Him/His
Partners
  1. nidoran-f
  2. druddigon
  3. swellow
  4. quilava-fobbie
  5. sneasel-kate
Heya, checking this story out since I’ve seen it pop up on Catnip a few times and heard anecdotally that it’s “like EoE, but a bottle episode in Galar”. Now, I don’t know that what will entail beyond a strong likelihood of a load of heartbreak based off what people have to say about EoE, but now’s the time to try out new things, and I figured that was a good enough reason to take the plunge:

“And what if they don’t fight back?” Lachen demands.

There is no reasoning with Lachen when he gets like this. His eyes flash, his tongue lolls, and his bushy tail whips like an angry forest. Past and present run together in my mind, and I see only a battered zigzagoon, yipping and barking at our heels as we wind through the back-ways of Motostoke.

Oh right, G-Zizagoon just has its tongue perpetually halfway out its mouth, for a second I thought we were dealing with a dogmon here, but given that this is Galar, I suppose I should’ve known better.

“They will fight,” I answer calmly.

Disgusted, Lachen puffs his tail and turns back to the others. “This isn’t about us. This is so, so much bigger than us. Tomorrow, the whole world will be watching. We’re the lucky ones—we can take a stand for the ones without a voice.”

Corviknight: “...”
:gardexhausted:

Lachen: “Look, we can, alright?! Don’t get this defeatist here!” >_>;

The rest of the team observes us in troubled silence. Lachen is the better speaker, but I am the better thinker. When our opinions split, trouble follows.

I mean, crows are supposed to be crafty animals. I suppose it’d only be logical that that’d carry over to an extent to crowmons as well.

“You are saying we should throw everything away for nothing,” I interject. “You think our opponents will risk throwing? You think they will put everything aside for a moment of meaningless protest, for a dream? You’re naive, Lachen. You overestimate the self-sacrifice of others.

Ah yes, the bugbear of many a labor movement to this day. Good old-fashioned prisoner’s dilemma.

For a moment, it seems that I have rendered him speechless.

Then he says, “It’s you I’ve overestimated,” and the bitterness in his voice slaps me like cold water.

Corviknight: “Lachen, you realize that you’re asking us to grenade our team’s prospects for something that for all we know, we’re the only team at the league this year who’s even thinking about doing something like this.”
:gardexhausted:


I try to gentle my tone. “It’s a pretty thought, but this is not the time. She is counting on us tomorrow. How can you even think of letting her down like that?”

“If she doesn’t support the strike, then she’s the one letting us down. If she’s worth my loyalty, she won’t need it.”

Lachen, you did talk this over with your trainer to some extent instead of just blindly assuming that she’ll pick up on your intentions through a potential language barrier, right? ^^;

It is my turn to seek words and only find silence. I did not think, after five years, that loyalty could be thrown away so lightly.

I love Lachen the way one loves a nestmate. We have been cold and warm together; we have eaten from the same half-filled bowl. When a machoke broke my wing, he placed himself between us and growled in the most terrible voice until it backed away despite itself.

… Wait, Lachen was able to do this as a Zigzagoon? Just how much of a sleeper is he in terms of strength? Since you’d think that normally Machoke would just laugh such an attempt at intimidation off.

… Unless Lachen is meant to be an Obstagoon at this moment though that admittedly isn’t exactly explicit from the text.

I love Lachen, but sometimes, I do not like him. He has always talked too fast and dreamed too big. After years of plenty, he still eats like at any moment his bowl will be taken away.

Lachen had a prior trainer who abused him, didn’t he? Since that behavior feels very much like the sort of food hoarding behaviors that people sometimes develop when having to go through a prolonged period of food insecurity.

Before I find an answer, Velvet opens the door. There is a change to her in this crossing over. Outside she is Velvet Steel, rising star; here she is Kiki Smith and she does not need to stand as if the angle of her back holds up the world.

Ah yes, their trainer.

She pauses on the threshold, looking down at the red hotel carpet and the scuffed pamphlet Lachen has left for her there. She reads it carefully, one side and then the other. When she looks at us, the grooves under her eyes are dark.

“Meeting time,” she says, “yeah?”

Wait, humans and Pokémon can just flatly understand each other in this setting? Wasn’t expecting that one, but noted then.

We ring around her. It could be any evening, any meeting. We have passed so many nights like this, huddled around an old motel TV, watching battle playbacks and tossing strategies back and forth. But tonight the pamphlet curls in her hands as she speaks.

“It’s like this. I got an email earlier, from my sponsors. They said anyone who participates, we’re done. There’s a clause about strikes, you know? Apparently. Some little clause buried in that mountain of paperwork.” She takes a breath. “So we can’t do this. It’s not about what I want. You get that, right? It’s not about losing one battle tomorrow. It’s losing everything. Okay?”

Everything.

This is one of those moments that feels like it has a depressing amount of resonance with the present day, since there are a lot of large companies out there who are all sunshine and rainbows in their public PR and personas, only to turn around and go full brass tacks once the topic of labor organization comes up.

Not sure if that inspired this at all, but it’s a bit of an eerie resonance.

Only Lachen and I know the full weight of that. We watched the small girl who chatted loudly with her rookidee and zigzagoon, oblivious to every annoyed look, grow still and watchful. I remember perching on her lap in a room of endless mirrors the day they first took a hot brand to her hair and forced it to fall straight. I was there when a man with mandibuzz eyes settled his hand below her waist and did not move it—she did not move and I did not move, and afterward she stood in front of the bathroom sink and didn’t cry.

Oh, so the training circuit in this Galar takes cues from some of the nastier sides of child acting as a profession. Wonderful.
:copyka2~1:


“Okay?” she says again, but Lachen snorts and slinks away into his pokeball, the red flash serving as his voiceless rejoinder. Kiki’s shoulders sag.

No, I do not like Lachen. In this moment, perhaps I even hate him.

Corviknight: “Lachen, are you serious right now?” >v>;

When nobody else moves, Kiki lets out a small breath through her teeth. “Our opponent tomorrow is sponsorship junk too. Believe me, she’s not going to be a hero about this.”

Lachen: “Fat lot that’ll mean since she’s not the one who’s actually on the field out there-”
Corviknight: “Aren’t you supposed to be in your ball right now?”
Lachen: “I’m allowed to pop out to make a point!”
:typhNOsion:


I am named after a hero, but I don’t believe in them. I shuffle to her side and curve out my wing so that she can lean against it. I am the only one who can feel how she trembles.

Kiki is not like me—she has no metal armor. But I have watched her make her own. This armor is constructed from the hard tilt of her chin, the gold bangles in her ears, the silk wound around her neck.

That actually makes me wonder how common more showboat-y getups are for League entrants. Since this gives off some “manufactured pop star” vibes right now.

They laughed at her, the first time she tried to enter a tournament.

“Who’s your sponsor?”

“No sponsor,” she said.

“No sponsor?” the receptionist repeated, mocking as a chatot. “Fine, how about you pay me, then? Fifty thousand dollars, how about that?” And she couldn’t contain herself: she howled.

And this is why entertainment industries are overrated if you’re not going in as an indie, kids. Tons of people who wanna get in with stars in their eyes, and no shortage of vultures ready to take advantage of them and discard them the moment they’re no longer useful.

Kiki said nothing, but she vibrated where she stood. Every curse, every angry exclamation, it was like she released them on the inside, where they rattled furiously, a trapped hurricane.

“Fifty thousand,” she told us afterwards, her hands balled into fists. “Fifty thousand and watch me.”

Oh, so this is why Kiki is entering as ‘Velvet Steel’, huh?

It became her mantra, everytime we were turned away, everytime the men and women in official uniforms slid their gazes past her and made their silent, uncontestable decision about who mattered and who did not.

“Thanks, Zaz,” Kiki murmurs, for only me to hear. When she opens her eyes, she’s strong again. “We should all get some rest for tomorrow.”

Lachen is going to just go ahead and grenade things anyways on the field, isn’t he?

In the middle of the night I snap awake with the unsettled feeling of a half-formed thought. Outside the window, the clouds have relented, leaving the moon the full stage of the sky. A warm weight is wrapped around my ruff.

“Lachen?” I rumble drowsily.

In answer, his wet nose butts against my cheek. When we were small, we slept together, my body cushioned against his thick fur. Even when my feathers turned to steel, he persisted in the arrangement; under all the metal, he said, I was still warm.

What are you doing?”

“She’s not going to send me out tomorrow.”

Zaz: “Oh my gods, Lachen, are you seriously going on about this strike again?” >v>;

“Of course not. You’ve made it perfectly clear what you’ll do. What you won’t do.”

“Yes.” He shifts position on my neck. “Zaz . . . would you really do it? Fight someone who won’t fight back?”

Zaz: “This is literally a moot question since my opponent’s almost certainly going to-!”
Lachen: “Don’t dodge the question, Zaz. Would you?”

It’s an honest question, stripped of any rhetoric or declaiming, so I answer him honestly. “I don’t know. But it won’t happen.”

“You’re so sure.” For the first time, I hear real despair in his voice. “Why are you so sure?”

Zaz: “Because we’re in a cutthroat tournament setting where literally everyone is incentivizes to break this strike since they almost certainly have the same contract that Kiki does?” -v-;

. . . I think about my mother.

When I was two moons old, I noticed that she flew askew. That evening, I pulled back her beautiful steeled feathers until I found a patch of brutally mottled skin. With that discovery, other mysteries of life slotted into place; I understood why we flew only at night and why mother hunkered down when the taxis passed overhead.

“What was it like?” I asked.

She didn’t answer me, not then.

:wtfuckle:


Yeesh, I see that abuse of air cabbie birds is decently common in this setting. Not that I would find it all that unbelievable that something like that either would’ve happened once or would still happen in the present day considering how abuse of urban horses used to be rampant enough that novels like Black Beauty were written about it.

But the day I left the nest, she said, “It’s like a pebble caught inside your heart,” and I did not have to ask her what she meant.

Over the years, I have passed many taxi stations. Nobody ever greets me.

I never greet them.

Oh, so mistreatment of cabbie Corviknight is still a problem to this day considering those reactions. Since when you notice that literally nobody in that line of work is ever cheerful towards you...
:fearfullaugh~1:


But I have been silent for too long. Lachen’s light snore returns me from my thoughts. I listen for some time to his chuffing, whistling sleep, and remember that I do not hate him after all, not even a little, but there are some things he will never understand.

Oh, so this is why Zaz is dragging her feet on getting involved in the strike Lachen wants to take part of. Since she knows that her life could easily be a lot worse right now, and could very easily become worse if Kiki’s career gets tanked.
It is time.

I woke before the sun, feeling the anticipation spread through my pinions like a golden wave of light. I stood by Kiki’s side as she put on her armor, sparred with the reporters who dot the corridors outside the contestants’ quarters.

Zaz: “... Boy do I hope that Lachen is overselling how big this ‘strike’ is going to be, since otherwise that’s gonna get awkward and uncomfortable fast.” ·v·

Now it is my turn to fight. The bursting light resolves into the clamor of the stadium, but I am too experienced to pay that any heed. I have eyes for nothing except my opponent: a lean ninetales.

Can’t tell if ‘lean’ is supposed to be a sign that the Ninetales is underfed or just a normal Ninetales. Given how Dickensian things are implied to be in some walks of life for Pokémon and trainers here in Galar, I wouldn’t be terribly shocked either way.

I lose a moment cursing Lachen—he should be the one standing here, quick-footed and unafraid of fire, not me. Lasting the three minutes before at-will switches are permitted will not be easy work.

The ninetales returns my gaze steadily. As the referee counts down to the commencement of the match, she settles back on her haunches.

Zaz: “Gee, thanks for leaving me to get toasted, Lachen.” >v<

I freeze. The countdown expires; no fire flashes my way. The ninetales lowers her head until it rests on her paws—an unmoving target. I could end this match now with a single Brave Bird.

“Get up.” The roughness of my voice startles me. “What are you doing? Get up and fight.”

Zaz: “Seriously, you’re the one with a type advantage here. Why are you just sitting like that?” >v>;

Her eyes are placid. “There’s a strike today. Did you not know?”

- Cue pindrop moment -
Zaz: “... I’m sorry, what?” ovo

“Don’t be absurd. We have sponsors. We can’t afford to strike. Neither can you. Don’t you know your trainer has them too?”

Zaz: “Oh gods, so Lachen wasn’t overblowing things. The officials aren’t seriously going to expect me to attack a sitting Ducklett, are they?”
:grohno~1:


I look at the ninetales’ trainer, but she has her arms crossed and she doesn’t look surprised.

“She told me it’s my choice. And I’m choosing to strike.”

This is all going to come crashing down from someone else on the opponent’s team acting as a scab, isn’t it?

Frustrated, I sharpen my talons against the rocky battlefield.

Why? What do you expect to achieve? Do you really think the world will change just because you sat still on the dirt for a few minutes?”

Considering how thoroughly labor actions in the modern world or any sort of activism that doesn’t have institutional backing to some extent usually gets buried, Zaz is unfortunately on the right track here. Or at least for our time. Which is probably a bad omen for the note that this one-shot is going to end on.

“I had a sister once,” the ninetails says. And it’s as if all the fire she didn’t release onto the battlefield has been reserved for her voice. An inferno crackles in it. “I cleaned her ears each morning. Then one morning I woke up and I didn’t have a sister anymore. No one asked us first. And there is nothing I can ever do that will hurt them in the way they hurt me, but at least I can do this. For a single day, the world will not run according to their plan.”

:uhhh:


Yeesh, Pokémon in this world’s Galar have it rough. Though I suppose that would only be expected for trainers that are that blase and thoughtless about trading away Pokémon without considering how it’d affect the others in their lives. Which I think is the implication here.

She closes her eyes, and for a moment, I too am lost in a memory. A few weeks before my feathers turned to steel, we fought a street battle and drew a small crowd. After our victory, one man lingered, his gaze fixed on me. He drew Kiki aside and began to speak with her in a low voice. I saw him flash his wallet. It couldn’t have been more than a minute, but that minute seemed to contain my entire life. Then Kiki was back by my side, hustling us down the street.

“What a creep,” she said later, as the three of us tore into a pasty. “He wanted—”

I’m honestly afraid to hear what the rest of the sentence is, since from the framing, I’m pretty sure it’s something that would put this story into a danger zone of having to bump its rating up a category were it dealt with openly. .-.

But she couldn’t say it. Maybe saying it would have meant acknowledging that she’d had the power to say yes as well as no.

That night, Lachen said, “I wonder what she’d have done if it had been fifty thousand.”

Wow, Lachen. Just wow.

I wheeled around and struck him. My wing made a dull thwap as it connected with his skull; surprised hurt bloomed in his eyes. He didn’t understand. There are some things you cannot ask, cannot wonder. If you do, you will go mad.

Zaz: “Also, I’m pretty sure the human asked for something that would be grounds for ‘vanning’, as I believe is the trendy term these days. So yeah, don’t bring that up, Lachen.” >v>;

There is only one story my mother ever told me.

Once, when the world was new, two proud heroes quarreled over the wind. Their battle transformed the land: gouged out valleys, erected mountains. In the end, the Crowned Sword gained the advantage. She pressed Zamazenta relentlessly, until she had no strength left to resist but could only await the final strike.

Wow, Zacian sounded like a proper dick back in the day.

From the trees, a corvisquire watched them fight—the fearsome combat had frightened her into hiding. But she could not stay silent when she saw that the Crowned Sword intended to strike one who was helpless. She shot down from the branches and took the blow herself.

Her sacrifice brought the battle to an end. The Crowned Sword was humbled; she lay down her sword and departed the land, never to be seen again by earthly eyes. But Zamazenta touched her crown to the dying corvisquire and blessed her with these words.

“You shielded me. For this, you will forever be a shield.”

Oh, so this is the internal mythology behind why Corviknight take on steely feathers post-evolution, huh? It reminds me a lot in vibe of the story the rabbits have in Watership Down about why they have white tails and legs made for sprinting fast.

Kiki’s earrings jangle behind me as she shifts her weight.

“Zaz,” she says beneath her breath, “what are you doing?”

Zaz: “Kiki, she’s just sitting there. You can’t seriously expect me to attack her like this, can you?” ·v·

I first met her outside Motostoke Stadium as dusk was setting in. Her jacket was purple and shiny, and it wasn’t doing much against the evening wind. She threw the last of her sandwich to the birds and burst into laughter when I chased off a gaggle of plump pidove. When I was full, I nested in her hair, and she ran a gentle finger down my belly. That night, we made a promise, though I never put it into words until now: that she would ask and I would obey, but that she would not ask and would never ask for what I could not give.

Whelp, time to see how long that promise holds true, since I’m not convinced that Kiki isn’t going to fold here given that she’s under threat of being blacklisted from the her present means of earning a living.

“Zaz,” Kiki says again, except I don’t hear Kiki anymore. Now it’s Velvet speaking, a warning in her voice.

If I could, I would tell her that my name describes a shield. That I was born to freedom, but my mother was not free. I would tell her I understand, and I am sorry.

I tuck in my wings and bow my beak.

And when she speaks the command, I forgive her.

I can’t tell whether or not Zaz ignored Kiki there or if she’s about to become the most hated ‘mon in the Galar League for becoming a scab that wrecked the strike. Though I suppose that we might be meant to decide for ourselves as readers what she ultimately decided to do. Though I suppose there will be plenty of time to get into things in a proper summary, but first:

:CryingCabot:


Since yeah, there is realistically no way that story is ending happily, regardless of what Zaz chooses at the end, and boy is it crushing to see Kiki at the very end choose her livelihood over her friendships and the promises she made in the past.

Though getting into the stuff I liked about this story, but I wonder how much you were inspired by stories of contemporary labor activism and athletes using games as a platform for protest, since a lot of the issues touched on regarding this League strike feel eerily reminiscent of stories from the news about such things over the past five years. It’s a nice touch if so, since while one can see the parallels, it still makes sense under the logic of this world and its issues.

I also thought that you did a good job at selling the sense of a world where there’s layers upon layers of dysfunction and systemic injustice, to the point where even others who are victimized and being ground down are incentivized to just stay in their lane and keep their heads down, since attempting to make a difference is daunting in how much there is to unravel and the stakes involved when becoming a statistic means the destruction of one’s life and any meager comforts one may have, to the point that even Kiki winds up reneging on a major part of her friendship with Zaz because of it.

I suppose that’s why you chose to end things on an ambiguous note, since the happy ending would be that Zaz and the Ninetales stuck to their guns moved the audience and there was a wave of reform and yada yada. Unfortunately as is the case in real life, much of the time, these stories don’t have a happy ending, whether from figures like Zaz cracking and taking the easy route to save themselves, or else their efforts ultimately just getting run over and forgotten, which while depressing would be an all too plausible outcome for things, with it left to the readers to decide how things shook out in the end.

As for weaknesses, I don’t have too much to complain about, but I did feel that some things could’ve been stated a bit more explicitly / with more clarity. Like I’m not sure what the story behind why the story doesn’t just come out and say that Lachen is an Obstagoon, but it’d have been a bit easier to wrap my mind around things had that happened

All-in-all, it’s nice, thought-provoking piece @Pen , if with an ending note that felt very “yeah, this is going to end in tears” to me at the end since for whatever reason, the cynic in me was out in force while reading this story. Probably because it reminds me of stories from reality that have a tendency to end in tears with depressing regularity. Though I wonder if we’ll be seeing any more from this continuity at some point in the future. Since as dystopian as its underbelly is, there was clearly a lot of imagination put in behind it, and hey. It’d be nice to see Zaz and Lachen again someday, if hopefully in happier circumstances.
 
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kintsugi

golden scars | pfp by sun
Location
the warmth of summer in the songs you write
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. silvally-grass
  2. lapras
  3. golurk
  4. booper-kintsugi
  5. meloetta-kint-muse
  6. meloetta-kint-dancer
  7. murkrow
  8. yveltal
ok, back to reviewing real things for real

I think the first five or so paragraphs are so good at establishing the conflict without solving it at all. I really like how you’re okay trickling in the information after the stakes–we know that Lachen believes that this is important for the world, we know Zaz believes this is going to divide the team; we know that this is causing a rift between them that neither of them really wants there. It takes a little longer to figure out why these emotions are shaping out this way, and I thought that was a neat way to structure an argument, especially one that’s so tightly framed around individual, opposing emotions.

I love how you get to the heart of these ugly dichotomies–the difference between like and love, the difference between loyalty and need, the difference between fighting and protecting, heroes and the rest–and by the end of the story there don’t seem to be that many differences at all, which somehow makes it all worse. I also love how you let Zaz sympathize and look at everyone’s perspective here. It’d be easy for her/the story to write things off as unreasonable or unloving, but she can’t do that, which is why there’s this conflict in the first place. I really love how Zaz’s first thoughts when someone snaps at her are to think about how much she’s seen them suffer–Lachen has been cold and hungry, Kiki’s got no armor and has to repress so much of herself to be a trainer. It speaks miles to her character but also makes the conflict feel real, and it hurts so bad when the last line is still about forgiveness, because we know she really means it. And the last person she thinks about is herself, even though arguably she faces the most to lose and is the only one of the three who is borderline quantifiably equivalent to a car (and even that revelation is framed more around how much it hurts her mother, poor thing).

I love a good myth framing but for me it really hits different here (I say this? every time you do this? so? oh well) because no one is expecting the heroism here, least of all me. Even Lachen seems to be braced to expect that they’ll be striking alone; all of his arguments are either phrased in the importance of their work or the “what if” of it all, and Kiki and Zaz both refuse to even consider it. Which, yeah, fair, I get that, I really do, but it’s so satisfying when the prisoner’s dilemma plays out the pacifist route. “She told me it’s my choice”, sobbing. I love how elegantly you cut to the heart of choice here, especially with the corvisquire purchasing bit: for it to matter, you must be allowed to say yes and no.

And the whole thing functions so well because, again, no one is expecting the heroism. And Lachen’s so, so bad at convincing anyone here for the exact opposite reason; Zaz is focused on what it means to the people close to her and Lachen keeps talking about both the glory and the consequences of it in the abstract, think of the Movement, don’t think of Kiki. Zaz even asks the same of the ninetails, “what do you expect to achieve”, but she chooses to speak about her sister. It’s fighting for people instead of fighting against Systems, and imo that’s largely why stories and meta-stories/myths end up working so well–they ground these abstract ideas into characters.

Wordchoice, idk, this story is good, I glaze over finding linequotes because i like the words, there are very good lines, in fact arguably all of them. I love all of your stories tbh so idk if it means much but I extra love this one lol.
 
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