canisaries
you should've known the price of evil
Hey there! The results of the 2024 Oneshot Contest, its theme "Magical but Mundane", are up, so posting the entries to the forum is fair game. This was my entry. I don't think it's among the better stuff I've written, but it seems that the judges liked it. I do also like it myself, just maybe not as much as some of my other work.
Find my interview about the story in this post, the judges' comments in this post, and the story itself below. This story is rated everyone with a content warning for mild language.
The name of Isle Silent was most likely given ironically. Only two miles across, the rushing of the sea’s waves was audible in any part of the island, complemented by the wind in the leaves of its sugar maples and yellow birches. At least the traffic of the mainland Unovan States didn’t reach this far; the hum of motors and tooting of horns was a thirty-minute ferry ride away.
Then, more noise came. Isle Silent was bought by Mr. Brendan Lawrence, one wealthy eccentric and lover of pokémon, who wanted to see a childhood dream of his come true - his own zoo. Construction began and was completed, employees were hired, pokémon were brought from around the world until the zoo was ready to open. Mr. Lawrence insisted on opening the gates to Lawrence Zoo himself, and the masses swarmed the ticket booth, thrilled to see the pokémon on display.
Eighty years passed with the zoo growing, obtaining more pokémon, gaining more visitors. Critics expressed that the enclosures were too small, the environments too unnatural, the pokémon uncomfortable and stressed. Lawrence and his heirs, who still liked money a bit more than pokémon welfare, grit their teeth and obliged the public. They had the enclosures expanded and their vegetation and climate control improved, which silenced some, but not all. There were still people who saw that it was wrong to contain pokémon for human entertainment to begin with. Lawrence’s estate considered this a demand that simply could not be accommodated…
…until Brendan Lawrence IV gained ownership of the zoo. Brendan IV shocked his family as he announced the closing of Lawrence Zoo. After eighty years of operation, it would no longer be known as a zoo but rather Lawrence Pokémon Sanctuary, financed by Brendan IV’s other operations and the public’s donations. Alongside it, the Lawrence Institute of Zoology would continue to operate and study the pokémon of the sanctuary, generating new knowledge to aid in pokémon medicine and conservation.
These choices went over poorly with his profit-oriented relatives and business associates, but appeased most of the remaining pokémon rights activists that still spoke of the zoo with vitriol. There were still some that would have preferred to see the pokémon released entirely, but the majority saw that the pokémon would no longer be able to survive in the wild or that the Institute’s research provided more benefit to the species in the long run. Lawrence Pokémon Sanctuary, then, enjoyed positive media attention and a not-too-shabby amount of donations for one year after another, all the way to current day.
And what is the current day like? Let’s see.
Right before daybreak, Isle Silent still sounded mostly like it used to. The sea and the wind were still there, rushing and rustling, but they were joined by the steady hum of the ice enclosure’s air conditioning and the occasional call of a dartrix or hoothoot or the xylophone-like clacking of kricketot’s antennae. The rest of the pokémon, however, were still either fast asleep or kept quiet as their instincts advised to avoid predators. Night shift caretakers kept a watchful, if tired, eye on these mon, waiting for their long workday to end.
The sun’s first rays were what brought the noise. As if by a clock, the birds awakened - chatot, trumbeak, squawkabilly - and loudly announced that they’d done so. Their calls spread through the enclosure, the nets covering them and the free air above the island, rousing the light sleepers from their slumber and encouraging them to start their days as well, adding their own calls and cries to the mix. It was quite something to have to stand next to and hear, but some caretakers sighed in relief - the coming of light meant an easier time observing the pokémon, and that only a couple of hours remained of their shift.
Those hours passed with more and more pokémon waking up. A ferry arrived from the mainland to bring in those working the first day shift. Humans with their trained pokémon entered the sanctuary premises, greeted the night shifters and relieved them of their duties. While those exhausted caretakers left and took that same ferry off the island, the others gathered in the main building’s briefing room as they always did and prepared for the clock to strike 9 AM.
Right on time, Janice, the general curator, arrived in the room. “Good morning, everyone,” the stocky black-haired woman said, and “good morning” the caretakers said in return. One of them, a short brunette at the very back of the room, stumbled over her words, but luckily no one seemed to notice but her.
“So, as some of you may have already noticed, we have a new face,” Janice said, then gestured to the short brunette, whose heart began pounding faster. “Would you like to introduce yourself?”
The woman took a quick breath and forced a smile despite her nerves. “Yes! Hi! I’m Amanda Lynn. I’m a new intern. N-nice to meet you all.” She was answered with smiles and nods, which already made her feel a bit more at ease.
“Hi, Amanda,” Janice said back. “I’m Janice, the general curator of Lawrence Pokémon Sanctuary, which you may have already known. You can get to know the rest of the crew once you get to work. You’re going to be following around and assisting a few different people today, learning about the different jobs there are to do around the place. The first of them will be Julio, over there -” she gestured to a tall man of slightly darker complexion, who waved to Amanda “- who will take you to feed the pokémon at the meadow section. Understood?”
“Yes, understood!” Amanda said.
“Good! Then on to regular matters…”
The meeting moved on to discuss the tour that would be given to a bunch of third graders today, then the pokémon that were pregnant or on medication, how the eggs in the incubators were doing, which enclosures required maintenance, and so on. Twenty minutes later, the caretakers exited the room and spread out to their assigned sections to start the first feeding round.
The caretakers of the sanctuary’s kadabra had five mouths to feed, but one of those five was eating for two. Mystique, the pale-furred female expecting an abra, was typically tended to by Brett, a young and lanky pale man, and today was no different.
While the other kadabra came jogging to the entrance of the enclosure whenever the food was brought out, Mystique remained sitting in her own nook at the root of an oak tree, usually grooming her fur. As she was far in her pregnancy, she preferred to move less than the others, and she knew that Brett would bring her her food anyway. Brett did so now as well, approaching her with a greeting and a bowl of fruit, berries and cubes of meat and setting it down in front of her.
But Mystique gave the food one look and turned her head away.
“What’s the matter?” Brett asked, still crouching. “Are you not hungry?”
“Kah,” Mystique vocalized. The tone seemed… passive-aggressive.
“You need to eat,” Brett said, “so that the baby gets to eat, too.” He picked up a cube of diced oran. “Don’t you want to eat this? It’s fresh and juicy. Yum!”
Mystique’s nose wrinkled. “Kah.”
Brett frowned. “No, really, what’s the matter? You can tell me. Give me a vision again. Come on.”
Mystique tilted her head back, keeping eye contact with Brett, then raised her hand.
Brett set down the oran cube. “Good! Okay, let’s see, then…”
Brett’s vision faded to white. He still remembered how he’d freaked out the first time it had happened, but by now, he was very much used to it.
The white faded into a forest, much like the one covering the island. Mystique stood there, cradling a little abra in her arms, a smile on her lips and love in her eyes. Then, her mate Illusio was there, a male kadabra with more typical yellow fur, and Mystique gingerly passed the baby into his arms. Then she turned around and walked away, disappearing deeper into the woods while the viewpoint stayed with Illusio and the baby. They stared after her, faces neutral, and stayed quiet.
Then Brett’s vision faded to white again before fading back to his real sight. Mystique was still looking at him with an expectant expression.
“Uh, okay,” were Brett’s initial words. His forehead wrinkled in thought. “You gave your baby to Illusio and went away. What does that mean?”
Mystique didn’t respond, only holding her stare.
“I don’t know what you mean by that. You have to give me another vision.”
Mystique frowned. “Kah!”
“Okay, ‘no,’ no second vision. You want me to figure this one out.” Brett brought his hand to his chin. “You were going somewhere. Where were you going? Why was it important? Why couldn’t you take your baby with you?”
Mystique blinked slowly.
“Were you going foraging? Did you just want a break? Do you… think it’s going to be tough being a mother?” Brett leaned in. “I mean, Mystique, I won’t lie. Being a mother can be tough. But you’ve got all of us here, okay? We’ll be there to help.”
Mystique crossed her arms. “Kah.” She sounded disappointed.
“Is that not it?” Brett asked. “Okay, let’s try again. Maybe… maybe you’re worried that something will happen to the baby when you’re away? You don’t need to worry about that. Illusio and the others will take good care of it, not to mention us caretakers. And the enclosures are secure. No predators from the other enclosures are going to come here --”
Mystique huffed. “Kah!” she exclaimed, annoyed.
“Not that either? Okay… uh… do you…” Brett gasped. “Do you not want the baby?”
“Kah-dah-brah!” Mystique snapped, jolting in place.
“Okay, not that,” Brett sighed, relieved. “Um…” He scratched his head, then threw up his arms. “I’m sorry, Mystique, I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me. Could you really not give me another vision?”
“Kah.” Her mind was made up.
“Fine, alright. How about… how about I get someone else? Maybe they’ll understand.”
“Kah,” she vocalized flatly, but didn’t seem to protest.
Brett got up with another sigh. He turned around to see Sasha, his coworker with dark skin and braids, watching him from the other end of the enclosure.
“Hey, Sasha!” Brett shouted, waving her to come over. “Can you come over here?”
“Coming,” Sasha said and crossed the distance between them. “What’s the matter?”
Brett turned to Mystique. “Come on, give her the vision.”
Mystique rolled her eyes, but did look to Sasha and raise her hand.
“Oh, okay,” Sasha said and went silent, her eyes losing focus. Some thirty seconds later, she snapped back to reality.
“Mystique showed me that vision when I asked her why she wasn’t eating,” Brett explained. “Do you know what it means?”
“Right,” Sasha said. She took a moment to think, looking at Mystique, and then looked back to Brett. “She wants mago berries.”
“What?” Brett quirked his brow. “How did you get that?”
“She’s doing what she’s done to me a few times before,” Sasha said. “It’s a pun. She shows herself, a mother, going away. ‘Ma go’. Mago.”
“There’s no way that’s it,” Brett muttered. “Why wouldn’t she just show me a vision of her eating mago berries if that’s what she wanted?”
“It wouldn’t be as fun.” Sasha smirked. “Now, are you gonna get the mago for her or not?”
“Oh, I’ll go get it,” Brett said, standing up, “just to prove you wrong.”
“Can’t wait.”
Brett walked out of the enclosure and made his way to the food preparation room, which luckily wasn’t very far. He took out two mago berries from the pantry, gave them a wash, placed them in a bowl and headed back. In the enclosure, Sasha and Mystique were still waiting in the same spot.
Brett was ready to see contempt in Mystique’s eyes when he presented the mago to her, but the kadabra wagged her tail instead. She brought the berries to herself with her telekinesis and began to munch on one of them.
“You little stinker,” Brett said, putting his hands on his hips. “Well, you enjoy those mago, now.”
Sasha huffed in amusement, smiling. “Well, all’s well that ends well. Let’s get to cleaning.”
Brett sighed, a smile rising to his face as well. “Let’s.”
After feeding time, health checks and some general observation, the previously announced class of third graders showed up for their tour. Their guide was Rook, an agender person whose fashion could be described as “casual goth”, and with Rook was Espelle, one of the sanctuary’s kadabra. She always wanted to come along to these tours, and given how kadabra could teleport, the caretakers weren’t really in a position to say no. Not that they’d want to, as Espelle was friendly and well-behaved, and any enrichment that didn’t put her or others in danger was desirable. She loved to show off her psychic powers to new people who hadn’t seen them a thousand times before - and she had already, with great showmanship, had the children watch as she distorted her spoon to a variety of shapes as if it was nothing but putty.
The tour had just pried the children away from the hitmon and machoke that had also been eager to present their prowess by flexing and punching and kicking and battling each other, and now they were entering the so-called “Haunted House”, the building that housed the ghost enclosures.
The building was painted in black and tones of gray and purple with ghostly figures and spiderweb patterns in the mix, a remnant of the times this place had sought to entertain more than educate. Inside, it was dim with only a few small lights to illuminate the way. Some of the children seemed a bit on edge, which was not helped by Rook warning them that the ghosts would likely try to scare them. They seemed to be proven right not even five seconds from Rook’s words as a gastly seemingly appeared from thin air right behind the enclosure’s glass, screaming with a grisly grin on its face, causing the children - and their teacher - to yelp in response.
“Yes, we get it, Poe,” Rook said with a smirk. They hadn’t even flinched.
“Th-they’re going to be on that side of the glass, right?” one frightened girl peeped.
“Don’t worry, they are,” Rook responded. “While it’s true that ghosts can pass through most walls, all of these enclosures have been built with special walls that ghosts can’t penetrate.”
“Then… why is that one out here?” the class’s teacher said, pointing past Rook with wide eyes.
Rook turned around. A shuppet floated a few feet ahead in the hallway, sticking out its tongue.
“Shelley!” Rook shouted. “How did you get out of your enclosure!?”
“Shuupp,” Shelley said. Then she phased through the ceiling.
Rook groaned and pulled out their handheld transceiver. “Rook here, just inside the Haunted House. One of the shuppet, Shelley, has gotten loose and just went up to the second floor. Can Jack and Samos take care of it? Over.”
It took a moment, but a response came. “Kate here. I’m with Jack and Samos. We’ll be there shortly. Over.”
Rook sighed, relaxing a bit, and turned back to the children. “Don’t worry. The situation is under control. Let’s continue, shall we?”
“Well, Samos, looks like your skills are in demand again,” said Jack as the trio headed for the Haunted House. Jack was a muscular man with ginger hair and a beard - very much unlike the person one would picture when told to imagine a klefki’s trainer.
“Ki!” chimed Samos, jingling his keys excitedly but keeping pace.
Kate, the lean woman with dirty blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, only stayed silent as they jogged briskly to their destination, which wasn’t that far. Shelley was easily spotted. Like a plastic bag caught in the wind, she flew up in the sky, doing loop-de-loops and looking quite chipper.
“How do we get her all the way up there?” Jack asked. “Samos can fly up there, sure, but if he Fairy Locks her there, we can’t catch her.”
“We need to get her to come down,” Kate said. “How, though…?”
“Bait her somehow?” asked Jack. ”With a fresh plant for her to drain?”
“I mean, there are trees all around… she’d surely go for those if she was hungry.” Kate took a moment to think. Then, her eyes lit up - and so did Jack’s.
“Did you have the same idea?” Kate asked.
“I think so. Let’s see.” He took out his transceiver. “Jack, Kate and Samos here. We’re at the Haunted House. We need Ikuko. Can she come here? Over.”
Brief silence, then… “Ikuko here. I’m on a coffee break. Over.”
“It’s important. Over.”
A sigh. “Fine, I’ll come. Over.”
The trio moved into the building to wait for Ikuko so that Shelley wouldn’t see them “conspire against” her. About six minutes later, Ikuko showed up. She was a Johtoan woman with a red streak dyed into her otherwise black hair and a permanent frown on her face.
“So what did you want?” Ikuko asked, arms crossed.
“One of the shuppet has gotten loose,” Kate said, “and we need you to lure her in so we can catch her off guard and get her.”
“Okay, how? And why me?”
Kate and Jack exchanged a glance.
“You’re the grumpiest person we know,” Jack said.
Ikuko’s brow lowered in offense. “What? Am not.”
“No, you are,” Kate said. “You’re constantly talking about who’s wronged you and what’s pissing you off. It’s obvious you have ‘dark emotions’ to spare, and Shuppet are drawn to that sort of stuff.”
Ikuko scoffed. “This is how you feel about me? And this is how you tell me? Unbelievable.”
“Oh, come on,” Jack said. “You have to have noticed it yourself. You’re not a positive person.”
“I guess that’s true,” Ikuko grumbled. “But is that even gonna work? I mean, do you even know where the shuppet is right now? What if she’s halfway across the island?”
“Wouldn’t matter,” Kate replied. “Shuppet’s emotion sense is of the same caliber as a beartic’s sense of smell. She’s sure to pick you up.”
“I would expect to have drawn her to me already if that was the case…” Ikuko mumbled. “Or I don’t know. I guess I was having a pretty good day before you called me, and this isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to me…”
“Yeah, so you get it,” Jack said. “You need to really lean into your grievances. You’ll be reeking to Shelley, and she’ll come to check you out. That’s when you’ll give us a subtle signal, like tapping your thigh, and we’ll strike.”
Ikuko sighed. “Alright. But you’ll owe me one for this, alright?”
“Of course. Let’s get going, then.” Jack turned to Samos, who was jingling his keys to himself in the corner, waiting for the humans to finish their boring talk. “Samos!”
“Ki!” vocalized Samos, his attention captured again.
The four of them made their way out of the Haunted House, keeping an eye on the sky. Shelley wasn’t there, and she continued to stay out of sight while the group sought out a good spot to set up the trap. It was next to a storage building, with Ikuko taking a spot in a small opening next to it and Jack, Kate and Samos hiding behind a corner, Ikuko’s back facing them.
“Alright, Ikuko, start ruminating,” Kate called out. “And when Shelley shows up, ignore her. She can’t get the idea that you’re connected to the people trying to catch her.”
“Yes, I get it,” Ikuko groaned. “Ugh. Okay, ruminating, ruminating. I guess if I talk out loud it’ll work better or something. Fine by me, since apparently I love to complain. Oh, I’m such a grump! I complain and complain and complain everyone’s ears off.”
“She’s a natural, alright,” Jack whispered to Kate.
“Well, I guess if I really had to maximize my bad vibes, I would think about my boyfriend and how that one friend of his, Heather, doesn’t seem to get the message that he’s taken…”
One minute passed as Ikuko sang her lament, then another. A third and a fourth and a fifth, too. Every now and then, Ikuko cast her gaze to the skies as she spoke, but she hadn’t given any signal yet. Until…
“...which then brings me to that time I was in fourth grade and the class was doing watercolors. I painted this lovely - or so I thought at the time, at least - image of black flowers, yes, very emo, I know, and that little twerp, Vera, copied me! The teacher told me that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I didn’t care, she was ripping me off! What kind of lesson was he teaching Vera by allowing this? Just steal other people’s ideas to succeed in life? That’s such --”
Ikuko quieted, her gaze catching something out of sight to Jack and co, then continued while tapping her thigh.
“That’s such crap! Who knows where she is now, that lesson still in her mind? Who else is she ripping off? And is she successful doing so? If she is, I’m going to be so mad…”
“Tapping her thigh,” Jack whispered. “Samos, get ready.”
“Ki,” Samos chimed quietly. It seemed that being unable to freely jingle his keys made him a bit antsy.
Ikuko continued her rant like a professional, restraining herself from looking in the direction she’d apparently spotted Shelley in. Jack, Kate and Samos hung tight, waiting for Shelley to appear, until she did. A little gray shade, she slowly floated up behind Ikuko, unaware of the ambush behind the corner.
“Samos, sneak in and catch her now,” Jack told his klefki partner.
Samos nodded and floated onward. He began to glow with a pink, shimmering aura. Jack and Kate waited with their hands on the green custom sanctuary pokéballs on their belts as the klefki grew nearer and nearer to the shuppet --
Shelley turned around and gasped! She shot upwards to escape --
Clack!
As the sound of an ethereal lock rang out, Samos’ aura transferred to Shelley and formed a sparkling bubble the shuppet was trapped inside. Jack and Kate burst into the open, each grasping a pokéball, and only a few fractions of a second decided that Jack was the one to throw. Too little space for Shelley to dodge, the ball collided with her and opened, catching her with a red bolt of energy and drawing her within. The ball fell to the ground, shaking for a moment until it clicked.
“Yes!” Jack shouted. “Good work, Samos!”
“Ki!” Samos chimed, jingling his keys hard enough to make up for all the minutes he couldn’t.
“And what about me?” Ikuko asked, having turned around to face them in the midst of the action.
“You did very well,” Kate said. “Thank you, Ikuko.”
Ikuko humphed. “‘Twas nothing,” she said, twiddling her hair.
Kate reached down to her belt to grab her transceiver. “Kate here,” she said. “Shelley has been secured. All is in order. Over.” She sighed, relieved. “Alright, you can get back to your break now, Ikuko.”
“‘Bout time,” Ikuko said. “See ya.”
As Ikuko departed, so did the remaining three, headed back to the Haunted House. Once there, they made their way to the shuppet enclosure and, with great care, released Shelley back into the large vivarium with dead trees for landscaping and wilting potted plants for sustenance. The shuppet seemed grumpy at first, sticking out her tongue with a sullen expression, but quickly joined the other shuppet and began babbling her mouth off, presumably about what she’d seen on her little excursion.
“Well, that takes care of that,” Jack said as the three of them began to leave the building. “Certainly something to talk about at home.”
“I’m sure Ikuko will talk even more about it,” Kate said with a smirk, “as she’s shown herself capable of doing.”
“I hope she knows how lucky she is to have such a great listener for a boyfriend,” Jack said. “She better make him know he’s appreciated, or she might find herself out a pair of ears.”
Kate snickered. “Yeah.”
Then, she froze, and the smile dropped off her face.
“Jack?” she began.
Jack blinked, unsettled. “Y-yeah?”
“We never checked out how Shelley got out of her enclosure.”
A silent second passed before the two of them ran back to the enclosure. It was empty.
Jack grabbed his head with both hands. “Son of a --”
In the rest of the sanctuary, time passed leisurely. Helioptile basked under lamps in their sandy vivaria, swanna paddled through their pond and preened their feathers, spheal chased each other by rolling in the arctic enclosure, and pyroar wandered through the netted tubes of their trail system. Caretakers each had their lunch breaks, and so did their pokémon. After that, the more playful and clever residents of the sanctuary were provided toys and puzzles as enrichment, some for the purpose of behavioral research by the Institute. Recreational battling was typically arranged at this time; however, the trainer they’d booked for that day had informed them not long prior that she would be late due to a minor emergency. As time passed with her still not showing up and second feeding time rolled around, the caretakers decided that the pokémon scheduled for battling would be only fed a little to keep them going until the trainer could arrive and the battling was over with. After all, one shouldn’t exercise right after a large meal.
As for Amanda, the intern, she had gotten to see many different mon in many different biomes as she’d been assigned a variety of tasks around the sanctuary. For the afternoon feed, she was brought to the scyther enclosure, a large indoor space filled to the brim with lush vegetation. The heat of the place could be felt through its transparent walls, but the humidity was kept inside.
“Alright, here we are,” said Erin, one of the senior caretakers, as they arrived at the back door to the enclosure. “Freddy should be here soon.”
Just as she said that, an older man with a prosthetic leg came in, carrying two blue buckets with slabs of red meat inside. He gave a crooked smile as he set down the buckets and went over to shake Amanda’s hand. “Hey! You’re the new girl, aint’cha?”
Amanda smiled and shook Freddy’s hand, making sure her posture was straight and her grip was firm and she kept eye contact. “Yes! Hi! Pleasure to meet you.”
“Well, you’re getting along swimmingly,” Erin said. “I can tell you can take it from here. Bye!”
“Bye!” Amanda said as the older woman left. She turned back to Freddy. “So, uh, I’m going to help you feed the scyther, right?”
“Oh, you’ll do better,” Freddy said. “You’ll do the feeding yourself.” He leaned in. “Nervous?”
“Well, a little,” Amanda admitted. “I’ve only fed cute little herbivores so far. But the scyther are used to people, right?”
“Ooh, ah…” Freddy put his hands on his hips. “Well, they’re used to us. They might not be used to you.”
“O-oh?” Amanda forced herself to keep smiling despite her growing nerves. “Is that gonna be a problem?”
“Well, I remember when I was in your position, feeding the scyther for the first time.” Freddy shook his head. “Reaper was in a nasty mood that day.”
“Uh… uh-huh?”
“In fact, you see this here?” Freddy bent down to tap his prosthetic. “That’s what he did to me.”
Amanda fell silent. Her smile wouldn’t stay on her face anymore. “Really?” she asked quietly.
Freddy’s eyes widened. “Oh, but don’t worry! I made one simple mistake that you can take care to avoid. Just don’t do it, and Reaper will play nice.”
“What’s… that?” Amanda’s heart beat faster.
“I blinked.”
“You blinked? I-I have to feed him without blinking?”
“That’s how it seems to work,” Freddy said. “Scyther are always looking for a moment to catch their prey off guard. It’s carried over to mon that aren’t its usual prey as well, and to humans. Yeah, the moment they see you close your eyes, something in their brain just goes…” Freddy brought his hands to his head and twitched them. “Click! And they have to attack.”
Amanda was shaking.
Freddy waved a hand. “It’s only for the first few times, though. Then they realize that if they killed you, they wouldn’t get fed.” He straightened his posture and gestured to the buckets. “So! Buckets are here. Just get in there and toss the meat out to them and get out. It’s easy.”
“Just, um --” Amanda swallowed. “Toss it and get out?”
“Well, you gotta go a bit further in. And you can’t run away. That’s another thing that makes them see you as prey. Instead, back away while holding eye contact until you’re out of sight.”
“R…right.”
Mouth dry, Amanda stared at the buckets.
She could do this, right? Well, she had to do this. She couldn’t refuse a task on the first day. She had to show them she was willing to tough it out. She’d wanted to work here all her life.
Surely, it would be fine. All she had to do was walk a few steps, toss the meat, and get out. The scyther probably wouldn’t even notice her. She’d be alright, and then she could get back to feeding all the cute little harmless pachirisu or what have you. Yes, it would be fine.
Stiffly, she shuffled over to the buckets, grabbed them, and brought them with her to the door to the enclosure. Freddy opened it for her.
“Good luck,” he said as she stepped through, then shut the door behind her.
The humidity of the enclosure was like being spritzed with a spray bottle. Large ferns and other undergrowth obscured her view, their foliage sliding out of the way as she advanced only to make space for new ones. Crickets chirped alongside other noises of the jungle, though it was only a recording being played through the speakers hidden out of sight. Still, the rainforest atmosphere was definitely there.
Thirty agonizing seconds later, Amanda saw the vegetation grow sparser ahead. That had to be a good enough spot to dump the meat. Feeling a little encouraged, she pushed on and finally arrived at the opening.
She looked around. No scyther. She breathed and gently set down the buckets. Okay. She grabbed one bucket and poured out the meat. They hit the ground with a few thumps. She stopped and looked around, listening for rustling. Nothing there. She set down that bucket and picked up the other. She poured out the meat, and it thumped down.
A rustling came from ahead. Amanda’s heart jumped to her throat, and she froze.
The rustling picked up again, coming closer. She could see the form of something man-sized and green emerging from the vegetation. It was almost there. Amanda realized that she was blinking and forced her eyes to stay open.
The scyther pushed through the last of the undergrowth, eyes fixed on Amanda’s.
Crap, she thought. Is that Reaper?
They stayed like that for a while. Long enough for Amanda’s eyes to dry, itch, itch so terribly… she couldn’t go much longer without blinking.
I’m going to blink, she thought. I’m going to blink, and it’s going to attack me, and then I will be dead.
A second passed, and another, and another, and the moment came closer and closer…
The scyther looked down at the meat. Something in Amanda’s instincts told her it was safe to blink, and she did it without time to question it. She only realized afterwards what horrible mistake she may have made, but she was already blinking again. Her eyes demanded moisture. But she would force them open again. Now!
Amanda’s eyes stayed open. She watched in silence as the scyther moved to the meat on the ground.
With a lunge, the mon drove its scythes into the ground and chomped down. The suddenness of it made Amanda blink again, but she swore that would be the last mistake she made.
The scyther chewed, seeming to ignore her completely. This was her chance. Very slowly, she inched up to the bucket still on the ground and picked it up. The scyther shot her one glance, freezing her, but then resumed eating. Amanda could back away, and back away she did, not once taking her eyes off the mon in front of her, even if it made her walking perilous. If she tripped on something, that’d surely set the scyther off and spell her demise. Nevertheless, she managed to withdraw past the vegetation, all the way until the leaves covered the scyther’s form again and she dared to blink. Nothing happened as she did. She continued walking backwards until her back met the door. A second later, she heard it open, and she took a chance - she turned around and slipped through as quickly as she could and locked the door behind her.
Freddy was standing right next to the door, but surprisingly, Erin was also there. The woman had a confused expression… while the man looked like he was holding back laughter.
Erin turned to Freddy, and her expression became one of anger.
“You told her the Reaper story, didn’t you?” she shouted.
Freddy let his laughter fly free. He doubled over, even. “Oh, the look on your face, rookie!”
Amanda didn’t understand. Then, she began to. And she began to feel rage of her own.
“That’s screwed up, Freddy. HR will know about this,” Erin stressed. She sighed, and she turned to Amanda. “I’m sorry. Freddy tricked you. He didn’t lose his leg to a scyther. He lost it in a farming accident. And Reaper isn’t even alive anymore.”
“S-so, then…” Amanda swallowed, finding her words. “I didn’t have to go without blinking?”
“You told her she had to go without blinking?” Erin shouted at Freddy. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Well, it’s her fault for being gullible,” Freddy said, his laughter dying down. “Come on. It was funny!”
“I’m pretty sure she doesn’t feel that way!” Erin said. She stepped past Amanda to the door, which she opened. “Come on, Amanda. Let me show you what the scyther are really like.”
“Wh-what? I have to go back in?” Amanda whimpered, but Erin grabbed her hand and dragged her into the enclosure.
“Don’t worry,” Erin said. “The scyther here are all used to humans. After this place started to treat them right, there hasn’t been a single attack.”
Amanda, stiff with terror but still not wanting to lose her job, followed as Erin took her back to where she’d dumped the meat. Several scyther had since gathered, each of them munching on their own lump of meat in their scythes. They gave the women a passing glance as they arrived, but quickly went back to what they were doing.
“Razor,” Erin called.
One of the scyther, which had stripes in a darker green running across its chitinous armor, looked up from their meal.
“Drop it and come here,” Erin ordered.
Razor did as asked, letting the piece of meat go and walking over. Erin held up a palm, and the scyther tapped it with its snout.
“Well done!” Erin reached into her pocket and took out an oran berry, which Razor gladly took and began chewing with a contented trill. The woman then turned to Amanda. “See? Well trained. They know not to harm any humans. And they’re certainly not the feral beasts I’m sure Freddy made you think they were.”
Amanda found her tense shoulders relaxing. “I… yeah,” she said. “I guess you’re right.”
Erin smiled. “Great! Let’s get back, then. I only came back here because I forgot something and I’m needed elsewhere. But I’ll get you some other task first. I wouldn’t make you spend the rest of the hour with Freddy after that nasty trick he pulled on you.”
“...Thanks,” Amanda said, and they headed back. “I appreciate it.”
She gave the scyther one last look before she left. They seemed a lot less scary now, at least.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, the reserved trainer had called to inform the waiting caretakers that she would be there in twenty minutes. It was, then, time to round up the battling mon and take them to the arena, as well as the mon who would get enrichment out of watching.
The kadabra enclosure had both. Mystique, Illusio, Espelle and the others were content to simply watch - which was a relief to Brett, as seeing Mystique fight would have given him a heart attack - but Illusio’s brother, the brown-furred kadabra named Rune, seemed quite eager to fight. Brett and the other kadabra caretakers couldn’t say they were surprised given that he’d specifically been practicing moves for the past few days, though they still didn’t know what had caused him to do that. Now, as he was walked out of the enclosure and to the arena, he held his head high.
The arena was originally built for spectacle, which was why it was quite large and able to seat far more people than were present. The field itself was a rounded rectangle fifty yards on its longer side, covered in coarse sand with smooth rocks strewn about and bordered with a tall, transparent wall to shield the audience from any stray projectiles. It had weathered quite a many hits in its heyday, but still it stood firm. There were two doors on either side to let the combatants in, or more so the trainers or keepers, which could get their larger pokémon through simply through the use of a pokéball.
The first thing Rune did upon arriving was to scan the stands for a certain someone. He saw those who had been there on the previous visits - caretakers and mon, largely fighting types - and then the one he was looking for.
A female braixen which the caretakers called Scarlet sat among the sparse crowd, conjuring little dancing flames with her wand to pass the time. Next to her sat three other braixen, one delphox and two fennekin, but those didn’t matter. It was all about Scarlet.
Rune wanted to approach her and greet her, but the thought of it made him weak in the knees. Scarlet was simply so beautiful and so graceful and had such an enchanting scent while he was just some dirty-brown bottom-ranking kadabra with uneven whiskers. No, he could not approach her yet. But soon he would earn that right.
Rune made his way straight to the edge of the field where one caretaker stood, holding a notepad. He knew that this female human was the one to go to if you wanted to fight. And no one else was there yet! He might get to be the first! His tail wagged as he grew nearer to the human, who noticed him and smiled, something the humans did when they were pleased or happy. Then she looked at something behind him in slight surprise. Come to think of it, there were footsteps. Accelerating ones. Rune turned around --
And a machoke zoomed past him, reaching the human before him. Hey!
“Ma-cho!” the machoke shouted enthusiastically, flexing his arms. Oh, he was proud of that one, too.
Rune’s fur bristled. While he felt a little scared, he expressed his discontent with a sharp “kah!” and briskly marched up to the human.
The human huffed, amused. “Don’t worry, little guy, I heard you,“ she said. “You’re name was Rune, wasn’t it?”
Rune nodded fervently, which was a gesture he knew to mean “yes” to the humans.
“Since you haven’t gotten to fight here before, I’ll let you take the first spot,” the human said, then turned to the machoke with a stern look. “And cutting in line is not nice, Arnold.”
“Ch-choke?!” the machoke vocalized, indignant.
The human crossed her arms. “Come on, you fight all the time. You can wait.”
The machoke crossed his arms in turn, but seemed to accept this. “Choke.”
The human wrote something in her notepad and told both mon that they would be called to the field once it was their time to fight. Rune went to rejoin his fellow kadabra and their caretakers and began to wait.
After a while, a new human entered the arena in a half-jog. This one had cyan hair in two big pigtails and clothing that was dark blue and orange. Rune knew her as a trainer that had come here many times before. He sat up a little straighter. The fight would soon begin.
The trainer went to speak with the caretaker with the notepad. What she said was lost to the distance and the chatter of the audience, but Rune could already guess that she was apologizing for being late. They continued talking for a short while after that until the trainer left to make her way to the other end of the field. Once she was there, the caretaker raised her hands.
“Everybody!” she shouted, and the crowd quieted down. “We’re all set to go. Would the first fighter, Rune the kadabra, come to the field?”
Rune practically leapt off his seat. “Kah-dah-brah!” he shouted, pumped up, and hopped down the seats in front to run to the caretaker that had called him.
The caretaker nodded to Rune, then turned to the audience again. “Rune is a first time fighter here at the arena. Let’s hope he has a good time battling so he’ll come back again next time!”
“Yeah!” shouted some voices from the audience.
The caretaker took a peek at her notepad. “Rune will be fighting Boreas the cryogonal. Chloe, would you release Boreas onto the field?”
The trainer on the other side of the field nodded, opened the door in the protective wall and took out one of those black-and-yellow pokéballs from the bag on her belt. She held it out and released the mon inside, who materialized onto the field from white light. It was a strange pokémon Rune hadn’t seen before - a large, floating snowflake-shaped creature of ice. That was what a cryogonal was, then. And its name was Boreas? Rune would remember that.
The caretaker opened the door on Rune’s side of the field and gestured for him to go through. Rune did as asked and walked in the same amount of distance as Boreas was from its end of the field. He stole another look at Scarlet, but was upset by the fact that she didn’t seem to be paying attention, only chatting with another braixen next to her.
Rune shook his head. She would surely begin to watch as the match proper began. And then she would see him win, and then she would know how strong he was, how desirable!
“Alright!” the caretaker shouted. “First fight of the afternoon! Rune versus Boreas! Get ready!”
Rune adopted a ready stance.
“Get set!”
Rune clenched his right fist around his spoon.
“Fight!”
Right away, a white sphere of light appeared in front of Boreas and shot a rainbow-colored beam towards Rune. The kadabra leapt to the right, avoiding the beam, but feeling the chill in the air it left behind. An ice-type move, as one would expect from a mon that was so clearly an ice-type itself.
Rune started running closer as he landed, knowing that he had just as poor a chance to hit his target if he stayed at that distance, if not poorer. He hadn’t exactly had much practice with moving targets. He’d tried to shoot his psychic beam at birds flying over the kadabra enclosure before, but had been quickly reprimanded by the caretakers. The cryogonal attempted a few more shots at the kadabra as he approached, but he weaved to the left and right to dodge them. When he was close enough, he raised his spoon, channeled psychic energy into it, and fired a pink beam of his own from it. It hit its target straight on. Yes!
Boreas recoiled back from the hit… but then charged up another rainbow beam and fired. Rune barely avoided this one, shivering from its chill. That was a little too close for comfort.
Rune retreated, running backwards diagonally and zig-zagging to dodge more beams before he felt he was a comfortable distance away. Right after another shot from Boreas, Rune glanced at Scarlet in the audience. She was watching, yes!
Rune returned his attention to the battle and charged up another beam, then fired. This one the cryogonal dodged. Damn! Had he retreated too far? Or maybe he simply fired at the wrong moment. He should fire right before an attack, when Boreas would be occupied with charging.
Rune charged his own beam but kept the energy to himself until he saw the air light up in front of Boreas again. The beam he fired hit its target again, and broke the cryogonal’s concentration, resulting in the forming beam dissipating! Two birds with one stone!
But Boreas did not seem to care much, already charging another beam. Rune huffed and began to move again. Boreas fired more shots that Rune dodged while he charged. Rune let his beam fly at the moment Boreas had started charging again, and it hit Boreas again, who shrugged it off again.
This repeated a few more times. Rune’s limbs began to tire, and his breath became short. He peeked at Scarlet, who seemed bored out of her mind. Damn it! Was this really how he was attempting to woo the vixen? This wasn’t working!
But why wasn’t it working? He was hitting the cryogonal over and over, which surely had to do some damage, but it showed little sign of tiring. Was Rune really that weak? Or… wait…
Rune recalled a moment a few days ago. Sasha and Brett had been discussing battling after having seen Rune practice. What had they said again?
”So basically, there are two types of defense,” Sasha said. “Physical defense and special defense. Physical defense is the ability to resist physical impacts, like a punch or having rocks thrown at you, for example. Special defense is the ability to resist elemental damage, like fire or electricity or psychic attacks. Of course, some attacks can be fiery or so and still do what we call physical damage, in which case the pokémon’s physical defense is what determines the bulk of the damage received, and some rock-throwing moves or so can do special damage. It’s not very well understood, but empirical research has determined which kind of damage each move predominantly makes blah blah blah blah…”
Of course! Boreas must have been a pokémon with very strong special defenses, which is why he could take so many psychic beams without seeming too bothered. But if Rune were to use a physical attack, the cryogonal just might take a lot more damage…
How could Rune perform a physical attack, though? He only knew how to shoot psychic beams - and maybe make some harmless lights appear. He couldn’t throw a punch to save his life. Just the thought of attempting it against that hard icy shell made him wince. But throwing rocks… throwing rocks. He could try that. There were rocks all around, and he knew his telekinesis was well strong enough to lift and hurl them. But was his aim really good enough? He’d have to get a lot closer. Or he’d have to get the rock closer. But Boreas couldn’t see it - the cryogonal would dodge it. Rune would have to be sneaky. And he would have to make the strike count as he surely wouldn’t be able to pull it off again.
Rune peered past Boreas, to the edge of the field. There, next to the door in the protective wall, sat a round stone the size of a kadabra’s torso. Rune could use that. But he would have to distract the snowflake.
Rune glanced at Scarlet again. She still seemed bored, but she was watching. Good.
An icy beam coming Rune’s way caught him by surprise. He jumped to the right, but the beam hit his left arm. “Kah!” he cried out, freezing cold numbing his bicep momentarily - but letting go as soon as new hot blood flowed into the muscle. Damn! He could not let his attention stray like that anymore…
But if he was lucky, he wouldn’t have to. And he’d find out real soon if he was lucky or not. Rune snarled and ran towards the cryogonal until the rock he’d chosen was in his telekinetic range. He planted his feet on the ground and raised his arms in a battle stance. He channeled a little energy to the spoon in his right hand while channeling a lot more to the left. He only let the right hand show the charging power, however, as he manifested it as a light - a white light this time. Then, he spread the light around him in a dome. It should have appeared very much like a protective barrier, something that wasn’t worth attacking while it was still active.
The cryogonal, while its face was not expressive, seemed to watch this intently. Perfect.
While Rune kept up the light show with his right hand, he used the power in the left to reach out telekinetically for the rock behind Boreas. His power met it, and he willed it to rise. It did, though at this distance and without the enhancing effects of the spoon, it was still like lifting something heavy with one’s weakest finger. Rune floated it closer to the cryogonal, his telekinetic grip strengthening, then higher up in the air. He positioned it above the icy mon, then lifted it higher again, trying not to let his strain show.
Boreas, while this was happening, had begun to charge up another beam. The cryogonal seemed to be putting a lot more energy into it and waiting for the moment that Rune dropped his supposed barrier to fire it. Rune forced his tail not to wag despite his instincts - he couldn’t give away that he had some kind of trick in mind.
Then the time came. The rock was quite high, but Rune had made sure not to take it so high that it was at risk of missing. Rune tried his best not to show any change in posture or expression as he let the rock go. It dropped, speeding up as it fell -- and then it slammed onto the cryogonal, driving it into the ground. A loud cracking noise rang through the arena, and the audience gasped.
Boreas let out an echoing chime of undecipherable meaning, the ice around its top marred by white cracks. It floated up from the ground for a while, wobbling, and then faceplanted back down.
“Uh… Boreas can no longer fight!” the caretaker announced, unsure if the mon was alright. “Rune is the winner!”
Rune raised his arms up high. “Kah-dah-brah!” he bellowed out, feeling invincible. Tail wagging incessantly, he turned to look at Scarlet, who seemed to be staring at the fallen cryogonal, eyes wide and jaw slack.
Rune took his own glance at Boreas and felt a bit rotten. That must have hurt. But the trainer wasn’t freaking out, nor had she done anything to warn it beforehand. So it had to be fine, right?
That trainer had entered the field and made her way to the cryogonal. She regarded it calmly, then produced a spray bottle from the bag on her belt and gave the cracked ice a spray. It began to heal right away.
The trainer turned to the audience with a smile on her face. “Don’t worry, folks!” she shouted. “They’re gonna be alright.”
The audience murmured for a moment, then began to clap. Rune, too, felt relieved.
“Nice strategy,” the trainer said to Rune. “But that won’t work everywhere. Better to try and learn some physical moves so you don’t have to rely on terrain.”
“K-kah,” Rune affirmed. Then, he ran back to his side of the field and exited through the door. He responded to the caretaker’s congratulations with a nod and then made his way straight to Scarlet in the audience. She was chatting with another braixen again, and only noticed Rune arriving at the last second.
Rune’s heart still beat anxiously in the presence of his crush, but the residual adrenaline from the fight was stronger than his fears.
“Kah,” he said in greeting. He then raised his hand and constructed a vision into Scarlet’s mind.
In the vision, they were still in the arena, standing how they were standing now, but from a higher viewpoint that showed both of them. Vision-Scarlet yipped excitedly, eyes sparkling, while Vision-Rune flexed his muscles. The illusory braixen went to take the kadabra’s hand, and they both exited the scene with their tails wagging.
Rune ended the vision and awaited the real Scarlet’s response with confidence.
But the braixen grimaced. Rune’s heart plummeted like the rock he’d dropped just minutes ago.
“Breh, breh,” the braixen vocalized, waving her paw dismissively. “Ee, xen, ee, brai-brai. Yip, yip, brai-xen.”
What? Rune blinked. What was she saying?
The braixen saw his trouble understanding and sighed. She raised her arm to flex it, pointed to Rune and shook her head. You are not strong.
“Kah?!” Rune exclaimed.
“Brai-brai,” said another braixen, a male one, pointing to Rune. “Xen, yip?” He extended out both hands, making fists with his paws, then moved the other some distance above the other. He made a wooshing noise as the upper fist dropped on top of the lower fist and blew a razz berry as the impact was made, then shook his head. “Ee, ee.”
Rune’s tail was not wagging - indeed, it was almost between his legs. His ears were pinned against his head.
They… they didn’t think that the trick he pulled was strong? Did they think it was… cheating?
“Breh,” Scarlet said, making a shooing motion with her paw. “Breh.”
Rune, it seemed, had nothing left to do. Scarlet had made up her mind. With a whimper, the kadabra left the group of braixen and made his way back to his fellow kadabra. There, Sasha and Brett and the other caretakers were waiting for him.
“Aw, I’m sorry, Rune,” Sasha said, petting Rune’s head. “Romance doesn’t always work out. But this heartbreak will heal in time, I’m sure.”
“Kah,” Rune mumbled. At least the petting felt nice.
“Just sit back and watch how the others manage in their fights,” Sasha said. “It’ll take your mind off things.”
“Mmm… kah.”
Rune sat down next to Sasha and looked out to the field. The next fighter, the machoke that had cut him off, was already marching up to the field. Rune hoped he would lose.
There wasn’t much time left in the shift once the battles had come and gone. The battlers were given their late meals, which they scarfed down before settling in their favorite nooks for a well-deserved rest. The caretakers expected no need to tend to them for the rest of the shift.
Elsewhere, Jack, Kate, Samos and Ikuko were at their wits’ end, having tried all manner of tricks to coax the runaway shuppet back to the Haunted House and failed every time. They dreaded what Janice, the general curator, would say once they reported the situation to her, and were just about to head towards her office when Samos jingled his keys to get everyone’s attention and then used them to point to the sky. Six shuppet, the exact amount they were missing, floated through the sky towards the Haunted House all on their own. The gang ran there and snuck inside undetected, witnessing the shuppet return to their enclosure through apparently the same means they’d gotten out - by deflating themselves and weaving through the cracks of the otherwise ghost-proofed ventilation grate.
“Didn’t even know they could do that,” Jack said.
“I don’t think they did either before today,” Kate remarked.
To prevent this from happening again, they taped over the grate in such a way that only holes too small for a wad of shuppet-cloth to fit through remained. It would hinder the circulation of air, but as ghosts required no oxygen, the only possible harm was to the already wilting plants. It was a temporary solution anyway; someone would surely come up with a better solution before long.
Once the next shift’s caretakers arrived at the sanctuary and the House, Jack and Kate explained the situation to them and were then finally free to leave for their homes. On the way, though, they noticed a certain short brunette talking to Brett and Sasha from the kadabra crew and decided to stop and inquire about the intern’s impressions.
“Hey!” Jack greeted the group, grabbing their attention. He pointed to the brunette. “Amanda, right? You were new?”
Amanda smiled and nodded. “Yeah!”
“Well, how was your first day?”
“They probably had a conversation going, Jack,” Kate pointed out. “You shouldn’t interrupt like that.”
“No, that’s okay, we were just about done,” Brett said. “Go ahead, Amanda.”
Amanda clasped her hands together behind her back. “Well, I was pretty nervous at first, and then very nervous in the middle when I had to feed the scyther, but overall I think I learned a lot. I got to meet a lot of different pokémon and interact with them in different ways… stuff that made me want to become a caretaker here to begin with. So I’m pretty glad with how today turned out!”
“That’s great to hear!” Jack said, grinning.
“Remember to rest when you get home,” Kate said. “You’ve earned it.”
Amanda nodded. “Will do!”
Brett spoke up next. “So, Jack, Kate - Samos too - we heard a shuppet got loose and you guys were the ones to come to the rescue?”
“Oh, boy,” Jack said, stretching. “Now that’s a story. Listen up…”
As Jack, with some input from Kate and Samos, recounted the misadventures of the shuppet, Amanda listened intently. It was important to pay attention to one’s coworkers, and Amanda wanted to do things right all the way until the end of the workday, though it was hardly difficult with Jack being such an engaging storyteller. The others laughed when Jack described the way they’d utilized Ikuko’s ill temper to lure the first shuppet, and Amanda laughed with them, already feeling that sense of camaraderie that she hoped to foster in the many coming days.
And so, after their time of chatting, the caretakers exited the sanctuary and took their ferry back to the mainland. Isle Silent was left in the hands of those in the second shift, and it continued to mock its name with the calls and cries of the cheerful pokémon that lived within.
Find my interview about the story in this post, the judges' comments in this post, and the story itself below. This story is rated everyone with a content warning for mild language.
---
A DAY AT LAWRENCE POKÉMON SANCTUARY
Synopsis:
Situated on an island off the east coast of the Unovan States, Lawrence Pokémon Sanctuary is home to pokémon of all kinds. Each day, its caretakers have their hands full with its inhabitants - mischievous shuppet, lovelorn kadabra, you name it! Follow the Sanctuary staff and pokémon as they make it through one busy day.
Genre:
Comedy
Status:
Complete oneshot.
Submitted to contest privately on 26 June 2022.
First uploaded publicly on 15 Sep 2022.
Length:
10 000~ words
---
A DAY AT LAWRENCE POKÉMON SANCTUARY
Synopsis:
Situated on an island off the east coast of the Unovan States, Lawrence Pokémon Sanctuary is home to pokémon of all kinds. Each day, its caretakers have their hands full with its inhabitants - mischievous shuppet, lovelorn kadabra, you name it! Follow the Sanctuary staff and pokémon as they make it through one busy day.
Genre:
Comedy
Status:
Complete oneshot.
Submitted to contest privately on 26 June 2022.
First uploaded publicly on 15 Sep 2022.
Length:
10 000~ words
---
The name of Isle Silent was most likely given ironically. Only two miles across, the rushing of the sea’s waves was audible in any part of the island, complemented by the wind in the leaves of its sugar maples and yellow birches. At least the traffic of the mainland Unovan States didn’t reach this far; the hum of motors and tooting of horns was a thirty-minute ferry ride away.
Then, more noise came. Isle Silent was bought by Mr. Brendan Lawrence, one wealthy eccentric and lover of pokémon, who wanted to see a childhood dream of his come true - his own zoo. Construction began and was completed, employees were hired, pokémon were brought from around the world until the zoo was ready to open. Mr. Lawrence insisted on opening the gates to Lawrence Zoo himself, and the masses swarmed the ticket booth, thrilled to see the pokémon on display.
Eighty years passed with the zoo growing, obtaining more pokémon, gaining more visitors. Critics expressed that the enclosures were too small, the environments too unnatural, the pokémon uncomfortable and stressed. Lawrence and his heirs, who still liked money a bit more than pokémon welfare, grit their teeth and obliged the public. They had the enclosures expanded and their vegetation and climate control improved, which silenced some, but not all. There were still people who saw that it was wrong to contain pokémon for human entertainment to begin with. Lawrence’s estate considered this a demand that simply could not be accommodated…
…until Brendan Lawrence IV gained ownership of the zoo. Brendan IV shocked his family as he announced the closing of Lawrence Zoo. After eighty years of operation, it would no longer be known as a zoo but rather Lawrence Pokémon Sanctuary, financed by Brendan IV’s other operations and the public’s donations. Alongside it, the Lawrence Institute of Zoology would continue to operate and study the pokémon of the sanctuary, generating new knowledge to aid in pokémon medicine and conservation.
These choices went over poorly with his profit-oriented relatives and business associates, but appeased most of the remaining pokémon rights activists that still spoke of the zoo with vitriol. There were still some that would have preferred to see the pokémon released entirely, but the majority saw that the pokémon would no longer be able to survive in the wild or that the Institute’s research provided more benefit to the species in the long run. Lawrence Pokémon Sanctuary, then, enjoyed positive media attention and a not-too-shabby amount of donations for one year after another, all the way to current day.
And what is the current day like? Let’s see.
---
Right before daybreak, Isle Silent still sounded mostly like it used to. The sea and the wind were still there, rushing and rustling, but they were joined by the steady hum of the ice enclosure’s air conditioning and the occasional call of a dartrix or hoothoot or the xylophone-like clacking of kricketot’s antennae. The rest of the pokémon, however, were still either fast asleep or kept quiet as their instincts advised to avoid predators. Night shift caretakers kept a watchful, if tired, eye on these mon, waiting for their long workday to end.
The sun’s first rays were what brought the noise. As if by a clock, the birds awakened - chatot, trumbeak, squawkabilly - and loudly announced that they’d done so. Their calls spread through the enclosure, the nets covering them and the free air above the island, rousing the light sleepers from their slumber and encouraging them to start their days as well, adding their own calls and cries to the mix. It was quite something to have to stand next to and hear, but some caretakers sighed in relief - the coming of light meant an easier time observing the pokémon, and that only a couple of hours remained of their shift.
Those hours passed with more and more pokémon waking up. A ferry arrived from the mainland to bring in those working the first day shift. Humans with their trained pokémon entered the sanctuary premises, greeted the night shifters and relieved them of their duties. While those exhausted caretakers left and took that same ferry off the island, the others gathered in the main building’s briefing room as they always did and prepared for the clock to strike 9 AM.
Right on time, Janice, the general curator, arrived in the room. “Good morning, everyone,” the stocky black-haired woman said, and “good morning” the caretakers said in return. One of them, a short brunette at the very back of the room, stumbled over her words, but luckily no one seemed to notice but her.
“So, as some of you may have already noticed, we have a new face,” Janice said, then gestured to the short brunette, whose heart began pounding faster. “Would you like to introduce yourself?”
The woman took a quick breath and forced a smile despite her nerves. “Yes! Hi! I’m Amanda Lynn. I’m a new intern. N-nice to meet you all.” She was answered with smiles and nods, which already made her feel a bit more at ease.
“Hi, Amanda,” Janice said back. “I’m Janice, the general curator of Lawrence Pokémon Sanctuary, which you may have already known. You can get to know the rest of the crew once you get to work. You’re going to be following around and assisting a few different people today, learning about the different jobs there are to do around the place. The first of them will be Julio, over there -” she gestured to a tall man of slightly darker complexion, who waved to Amanda “- who will take you to feed the pokémon at the meadow section. Understood?”
“Yes, understood!” Amanda said.
“Good! Then on to regular matters…”
The meeting moved on to discuss the tour that would be given to a bunch of third graders today, then the pokémon that were pregnant or on medication, how the eggs in the incubators were doing, which enclosures required maintenance, and so on. Twenty minutes later, the caretakers exited the room and spread out to their assigned sections to start the first feeding round.
The caretakers of the sanctuary’s kadabra had five mouths to feed, but one of those five was eating for two. Mystique, the pale-furred female expecting an abra, was typically tended to by Brett, a young and lanky pale man, and today was no different.
While the other kadabra came jogging to the entrance of the enclosure whenever the food was brought out, Mystique remained sitting in her own nook at the root of an oak tree, usually grooming her fur. As she was far in her pregnancy, she preferred to move less than the others, and she knew that Brett would bring her her food anyway. Brett did so now as well, approaching her with a greeting and a bowl of fruit, berries and cubes of meat and setting it down in front of her.
But Mystique gave the food one look and turned her head away.
“What’s the matter?” Brett asked, still crouching. “Are you not hungry?”
“Kah,” Mystique vocalized. The tone seemed… passive-aggressive.
“You need to eat,” Brett said, “so that the baby gets to eat, too.” He picked up a cube of diced oran. “Don’t you want to eat this? It’s fresh and juicy. Yum!”
Mystique’s nose wrinkled. “Kah.”
Brett frowned. “No, really, what’s the matter? You can tell me. Give me a vision again. Come on.”
Mystique tilted her head back, keeping eye contact with Brett, then raised her hand.
Brett set down the oran cube. “Good! Okay, let’s see, then…”
Brett’s vision faded to white. He still remembered how he’d freaked out the first time it had happened, but by now, he was very much used to it.
The white faded into a forest, much like the one covering the island. Mystique stood there, cradling a little abra in her arms, a smile on her lips and love in her eyes. Then, her mate Illusio was there, a male kadabra with more typical yellow fur, and Mystique gingerly passed the baby into his arms. Then she turned around and walked away, disappearing deeper into the woods while the viewpoint stayed with Illusio and the baby. They stared after her, faces neutral, and stayed quiet.
Then Brett’s vision faded to white again before fading back to his real sight. Mystique was still looking at him with an expectant expression.
“Uh, okay,” were Brett’s initial words. His forehead wrinkled in thought. “You gave your baby to Illusio and went away. What does that mean?”
Mystique didn’t respond, only holding her stare.
“I don’t know what you mean by that. You have to give me another vision.”
Mystique frowned. “Kah!”
“Okay, ‘no,’ no second vision. You want me to figure this one out.” Brett brought his hand to his chin. “You were going somewhere. Where were you going? Why was it important? Why couldn’t you take your baby with you?”
Mystique blinked slowly.
“Were you going foraging? Did you just want a break? Do you… think it’s going to be tough being a mother?” Brett leaned in. “I mean, Mystique, I won’t lie. Being a mother can be tough. But you’ve got all of us here, okay? We’ll be there to help.”
Mystique crossed her arms. “Kah.” She sounded disappointed.
“Is that not it?” Brett asked. “Okay, let’s try again. Maybe… maybe you’re worried that something will happen to the baby when you’re away? You don’t need to worry about that. Illusio and the others will take good care of it, not to mention us caretakers. And the enclosures are secure. No predators from the other enclosures are going to come here --”
Mystique huffed. “Kah!” she exclaimed, annoyed.
“Not that either? Okay… uh… do you…” Brett gasped. “Do you not want the baby?”
“Kah-dah-brah!” Mystique snapped, jolting in place.
“Okay, not that,” Brett sighed, relieved. “Um…” He scratched his head, then threw up his arms. “I’m sorry, Mystique, I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me. Could you really not give me another vision?”
“Kah.” Her mind was made up.
“Fine, alright. How about… how about I get someone else? Maybe they’ll understand.”
“Kah,” she vocalized flatly, but didn’t seem to protest.
Brett got up with another sigh. He turned around to see Sasha, his coworker with dark skin and braids, watching him from the other end of the enclosure.
“Hey, Sasha!” Brett shouted, waving her to come over. “Can you come over here?”
“Coming,” Sasha said and crossed the distance between them. “What’s the matter?”
Brett turned to Mystique. “Come on, give her the vision.”
Mystique rolled her eyes, but did look to Sasha and raise her hand.
“Oh, okay,” Sasha said and went silent, her eyes losing focus. Some thirty seconds later, she snapped back to reality.
“Mystique showed me that vision when I asked her why she wasn’t eating,” Brett explained. “Do you know what it means?”
“Right,” Sasha said. She took a moment to think, looking at Mystique, and then looked back to Brett. “She wants mago berries.”
“What?” Brett quirked his brow. “How did you get that?”
“She’s doing what she’s done to me a few times before,” Sasha said. “It’s a pun. She shows herself, a mother, going away. ‘Ma go’. Mago.”
“There’s no way that’s it,” Brett muttered. “Why wouldn’t she just show me a vision of her eating mago berries if that’s what she wanted?”
“It wouldn’t be as fun.” Sasha smirked. “Now, are you gonna get the mago for her or not?”
“Oh, I’ll go get it,” Brett said, standing up, “just to prove you wrong.”
“Can’t wait.”
Brett walked out of the enclosure and made his way to the food preparation room, which luckily wasn’t very far. He took out two mago berries from the pantry, gave them a wash, placed them in a bowl and headed back. In the enclosure, Sasha and Mystique were still waiting in the same spot.
Brett was ready to see contempt in Mystique’s eyes when he presented the mago to her, but the kadabra wagged her tail instead. She brought the berries to herself with her telekinesis and began to munch on one of them.
“You little stinker,” Brett said, putting his hands on his hips. “Well, you enjoy those mago, now.”
Sasha huffed in amusement, smiling. “Well, all’s well that ends well. Let’s get to cleaning.”
Brett sighed, a smile rising to his face as well. “Let’s.”
---
After feeding time, health checks and some general observation, the previously announced class of third graders showed up for their tour. Their guide was Rook, an agender person whose fashion could be described as “casual goth”, and with Rook was Espelle, one of the sanctuary’s kadabra. She always wanted to come along to these tours, and given how kadabra could teleport, the caretakers weren’t really in a position to say no. Not that they’d want to, as Espelle was friendly and well-behaved, and any enrichment that didn’t put her or others in danger was desirable. She loved to show off her psychic powers to new people who hadn’t seen them a thousand times before - and she had already, with great showmanship, had the children watch as she distorted her spoon to a variety of shapes as if it was nothing but putty.
The tour had just pried the children away from the hitmon and machoke that had also been eager to present their prowess by flexing and punching and kicking and battling each other, and now they were entering the so-called “Haunted House”, the building that housed the ghost enclosures.
The building was painted in black and tones of gray and purple with ghostly figures and spiderweb patterns in the mix, a remnant of the times this place had sought to entertain more than educate. Inside, it was dim with only a few small lights to illuminate the way. Some of the children seemed a bit on edge, which was not helped by Rook warning them that the ghosts would likely try to scare them. They seemed to be proven right not even five seconds from Rook’s words as a gastly seemingly appeared from thin air right behind the enclosure’s glass, screaming with a grisly grin on its face, causing the children - and their teacher - to yelp in response.
“Yes, we get it, Poe,” Rook said with a smirk. They hadn’t even flinched.
“Th-they’re going to be on that side of the glass, right?” one frightened girl peeped.
“Don’t worry, they are,” Rook responded. “While it’s true that ghosts can pass through most walls, all of these enclosures have been built with special walls that ghosts can’t penetrate.”
“Then… why is that one out here?” the class’s teacher said, pointing past Rook with wide eyes.
Rook turned around. A shuppet floated a few feet ahead in the hallway, sticking out its tongue.
“Shelley!” Rook shouted. “How did you get out of your enclosure!?”
“Shuupp,” Shelley said. Then she phased through the ceiling.
Rook groaned and pulled out their handheld transceiver. “Rook here, just inside the Haunted House. One of the shuppet, Shelley, has gotten loose and just went up to the second floor. Can Jack and Samos take care of it? Over.”
It took a moment, but a response came. “Kate here. I’m with Jack and Samos. We’ll be there shortly. Over.”
Rook sighed, relaxing a bit, and turned back to the children. “Don’t worry. The situation is under control. Let’s continue, shall we?”
---
“Well, Samos, looks like your skills are in demand again,” said Jack as the trio headed for the Haunted House. Jack was a muscular man with ginger hair and a beard - very much unlike the person one would picture when told to imagine a klefki’s trainer.
“Ki!” chimed Samos, jingling his keys excitedly but keeping pace.
Kate, the lean woman with dirty blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, only stayed silent as they jogged briskly to their destination, which wasn’t that far. Shelley was easily spotted. Like a plastic bag caught in the wind, she flew up in the sky, doing loop-de-loops and looking quite chipper.
“How do we get her all the way up there?” Jack asked. “Samos can fly up there, sure, but if he Fairy Locks her there, we can’t catch her.”
“We need to get her to come down,” Kate said. “How, though…?”
“Bait her somehow?” asked Jack. ”With a fresh plant for her to drain?”
“I mean, there are trees all around… she’d surely go for those if she was hungry.” Kate took a moment to think. Then, her eyes lit up - and so did Jack’s.
“Did you have the same idea?” Kate asked.
“I think so. Let’s see.” He took out his transceiver. “Jack, Kate and Samos here. We’re at the Haunted House. We need Ikuko. Can she come here? Over.”
Brief silence, then… “Ikuko here. I’m on a coffee break. Over.”
“It’s important. Over.”
A sigh. “Fine, I’ll come. Over.”
---
The trio moved into the building to wait for Ikuko so that Shelley wouldn’t see them “conspire against” her. About six minutes later, Ikuko showed up. She was a Johtoan woman with a red streak dyed into her otherwise black hair and a permanent frown on her face.
“So what did you want?” Ikuko asked, arms crossed.
“One of the shuppet has gotten loose,” Kate said, “and we need you to lure her in so we can catch her off guard and get her.”
“Okay, how? And why me?”
Kate and Jack exchanged a glance.
“You’re the grumpiest person we know,” Jack said.
Ikuko’s brow lowered in offense. “What? Am not.”
“No, you are,” Kate said. “You’re constantly talking about who’s wronged you and what’s pissing you off. It’s obvious you have ‘dark emotions’ to spare, and Shuppet are drawn to that sort of stuff.”
Ikuko scoffed. “This is how you feel about me? And this is how you tell me? Unbelievable.”
“Oh, come on,” Jack said. “You have to have noticed it yourself. You’re not a positive person.”
“I guess that’s true,” Ikuko grumbled. “But is that even gonna work? I mean, do you even know where the shuppet is right now? What if she’s halfway across the island?”
“Wouldn’t matter,” Kate replied. “Shuppet’s emotion sense is of the same caliber as a beartic’s sense of smell. She’s sure to pick you up.”
“I would expect to have drawn her to me already if that was the case…” Ikuko mumbled. “Or I don’t know. I guess I was having a pretty good day before you called me, and this isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to me…”
“Yeah, so you get it,” Jack said. “You need to really lean into your grievances. You’ll be reeking to Shelley, and she’ll come to check you out. That’s when you’ll give us a subtle signal, like tapping your thigh, and we’ll strike.”
Ikuko sighed. “Alright. But you’ll owe me one for this, alright?”
“Of course. Let’s get going, then.” Jack turned to Samos, who was jingling his keys to himself in the corner, waiting for the humans to finish their boring talk. “Samos!”
“Ki!” vocalized Samos, his attention captured again.
The four of them made their way out of the Haunted House, keeping an eye on the sky. Shelley wasn’t there, and she continued to stay out of sight while the group sought out a good spot to set up the trap. It was next to a storage building, with Ikuko taking a spot in a small opening next to it and Jack, Kate and Samos hiding behind a corner, Ikuko’s back facing them.
“Alright, Ikuko, start ruminating,” Kate called out. “And when Shelley shows up, ignore her. She can’t get the idea that you’re connected to the people trying to catch her.”
“Yes, I get it,” Ikuko groaned. “Ugh. Okay, ruminating, ruminating. I guess if I talk out loud it’ll work better or something. Fine by me, since apparently I love to complain. Oh, I’m such a grump! I complain and complain and complain everyone’s ears off.”
“She’s a natural, alright,” Jack whispered to Kate.
“Well, I guess if I really had to maximize my bad vibes, I would think about my boyfriend and how that one friend of his, Heather, doesn’t seem to get the message that he’s taken…”
One minute passed as Ikuko sang her lament, then another. A third and a fourth and a fifth, too. Every now and then, Ikuko cast her gaze to the skies as she spoke, but she hadn’t given any signal yet. Until…
“...which then brings me to that time I was in fourth grade and the class was doing watercolors. I painted this lovely - or so I thought at the time, at least - image of black flowers, yes, very emo, I know, and that little twerp, Vera, copied me! The teacher told me that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I didn’t care, she was ripping me off! What kind of lesson was he teaching Vera by allowing this? Just steal other people’s ideas to succeed in life? That’s such --”
Ikuko quieted, her gaze catching something out of sight to Jack and co, then continued while tapping her thigh.
“That’s such crap! Who knows where she is now, that lesson still in her mind? Who else is she ripping off? And is she successful doing so? If she is, I’m going to be so mad…”
“Tapping her thigh,” Jack whispered. “Samos, get ready.”
“Ki,” Samos chimed quietly. It seemed that being unable to freely jingle his keys made him a bit antsy.
Ikuko continued her rant like a professional, restraining herself from looking in the direction she’d apparently spotted Shelley in. Jack, Kate and Samos hung tight, waiting for Shelley to appear, until she did. A little gray shade, she slowly floated up behind Ikuko, unaware of the ambush behind the corner.
“Samos, sneak in and catch her now,” Jack told his klefki partner.
Samos nodded and floated onward. He began to glow with a pink, shimmering aura. Jack and Kate waited with their hands on the green custom sanctuary pokéballs on their belts as the klefki grew nearer and nearer to the shuppet --
Shelley turned around and gasped! She shot upwards to escape --
Clack!
As the sound of an ethereal lock rang out, Samos’ aura transferred to Shelley and formed a sparkling bubble the shuppet was trapped inside. Jack and Kate burst into the open, each grasping a pokéball, and only a few fractions of a second decided that Jack was the one to throw. Too little space for Shelley to dodge, the ball collided with her and opened, catching her with a red bolt of energy and drawing her within. The ball fell to the ground, shaking for a moment until it clicked.
“Yes!” Jack shouted. “Good work, Samos!”
“Ki!” Samos chimed, jingling his keys hard enough to make up for all the minutes he couldn’t.
“And what about me?” Ikuko asked, having turned around to face them in the midst of the action.
“You did very well,” Kate said. “Thank you, Ikuko.”
Ikuko humphed. “‘Twas nothing,” she said, twiddling her hair.
Kate reached down to her belt to grab her transceiver. “Kate here,” she said. “Shelley has been secured. All is in order. Over.” She sighed, relieved. “Alright, you can get back to your break now, Ikuko.”
“‘Bout time,” Ikuko said. “See ya.”
As Ikuko departed, so did the remaining three, headed back to the Haunted House. Once there, they made their way to the shuppet enclosure and, with great care, released Shelley back into the large vivarium with dead trees for landscaping and wilting potted plants for sustenance. The shuppet seemed grumpy at first, sticking out her tongue with a sullen expression, but quickly joined the other shuppet and began babbling her mouth off, presumably about what she’d seen on her little excursion.
“Well, that takes care of that,” Jack said as the three of them began to leave the building. “Certainly something to talk about at home.”
“I’m sure Ikuko will talk even more about it,” Kate said with a smirk, “as she’s shown herself capable of doing.”
“I hope she knows how lucky she is to have such a great listener for a boyfriend,” Jack said. “She better make him know he’s appreciated, or she might find herself out a pair of ears.”
Kate snickered. “Yeah.”
Then, she froze, and the smile dropped off her face.
“Jack?” she began.
Jack blinked, unsettled. “Y-yeah?”
“We never checked out how Shelley got out of her enclosure.”
A silent second passed before the two of them ran back to the enclosure. It was empty.
Jack grabbed his head with both hands. “Son of a --”
---
In the rest of the sanctuary, time passed leisurely. Helioptile basked under lamps in their sandy vivaria, swanna paddled through their pond and preened their feathers, spheal chased each other by rolling in the arctic enclosure, and pyroar wandered through the netted tubes of their trail system. Caretakers each had their lunch breaks, and so did their pokémon. After that, the more playful and clever residents of the sanctuary were provided toys and puzzles as enrichment, some for the purpose of behavioral research by the Institute. Recreational battling was typically arranged at this time; however, the trainer they’d booked for that day had informed them not long prior that she would be late due to a minor emergency. As time passed with her still not showing up and second feeding time rolled around, the caretakers decided that the pokémon scheduled for battling would be only fed a little to keep them going until the trainer could arrive and the battling was over with. After all, one shouldn’t exercise right after a large meal.
As for Amanda, the intern, she had gotten to see many different mon in many different biomes as she’d been assigned a variety of tasks around the sanctuary. For the afternoon feed, she was brought to the scyther enclosure, a large indoor space filled to the brim with lush vegetation. The heat of the place could be felt through its transparent walls, but the humidity was kept inside.
“Alright, here we are,” said Erin, one of the senior caretakers, as they arrived at the back door to the enclosure. “Freddy should be here soon.”
Just as she said that, an older man with a prosthetic leg came in, carrying two blue buckets with slabs of red meat inside. He gave a crooked smile as he set down the buckets and went over to shake Amanda’s hand. “Hey! You’re the new girl, aint’cha?”
Amanda smiled and shook Freddy’s hand, making sure her posture was straight and her grip was firm and she kept eye contact. “Yes! Hi! Pleasure to meet you.”
“Well, you’re getting along swimmingly,” Erin said. “I can tell you can take it from here. Bye!”
“Bye!” Amanda said as the older woman left. She turned back to Freddy. “So, uh, I’m going to help you feed the scyther, right?”
“Oh, you’ll do better,” Freddy said. “You’ll do the feeding yourself.” He leaned in. “Nervous?”
“Well, a little,” Amanda admitted. “I’ve only fed cute little herbivores so far. But the scyther are used to people, right?”
“Ooh, ah…” Freddy put his hands on his hips. “Well, they’re used to us. They might not be used to you.”
“O-oh?” Amanda forced herself to keep smiling despite her growing nerves. “Is that gonna be a problem?”
“Well, I remember when I was in your position, feeding the scyther for the first time.” Freddy shook his head. “Reaper was in a nasty mood that day.”
“Uh… uh-huh?”
“In fact, you see this here?” Freddy bent down to tap his prosthetic. “That’s what he did to me.”
Amanda fell silent. Her smile wouldn’t stay on her face anymore. “Really?” she asked quietly.
Freddy’s eyes widened. “Oh, but don’t worry! I made one simple mistake that you can take care to avoid. Just don’t do it, and Reaper will play nice.”
“What’s… that?” Amanda’s heart beat faster.
“I blinked.”
“You blinked? I-I have to feed him without blinking?”
“That’s how it seems to work,” Freddy said. “Scyther are always looking for a moment to catch their prey off guard. It’s carried over to mon that aren’t its usual prey as well, and to humans. Yeah, the moment they see you close your eyes, something in their brain just goes…” Freddy brought his hands to his head and twitched them. “Click! And they have to attack.”
Amanda was shaking.
Freddy waved a hand. “It’s only for the first few times, though. Then they realize that if they killed you, they wouldn’t get fed.” He straightened his posture and gestured to the buckets. “So! Buckets are here. Just get in there and toss the meat out to them and get out. It’s easy.”
“Just, um --” Amanda swallowed. “Toss it and get out?”
“Well, you gotta go a bit further in. And you can’t run away. That’s another thing that makes them see you as prey. Instead, back away while holding eye contact until you’re out of sight.”
“R…right.”
Mouth dry, Amanda stared at the buckets.
She could do this, right? Well, she had to do this. She couldn’t refuse a task on the first day. She had to show them she was willing to tough it out. She’d wanted to work here all her life.
Surely, it would be fine. All she had to do was walk a few steps, toss the meat, and get out. The scyther probably wouldn’t even notice her. She’d be alright, and then she could get back to feeding all the cute little harmless pachirisu or what have you. Yes, it would be fine.
Stiffly, she shuffled over to the buckets, grabbed them, and brought them with her to the door to the enclosure. Freddy opened it for her.
“Good luck,” he said as she stepped through, then shut the door behind her.
The humidity of the enclosure was like being spritzed with a spray bottle. Large ferns and other undergrowth obscured her view, their foliage sliding out of the way as she advanced only to make space for new ones. Crickets chirped alongside other noises of the jungle, though it was only a recording being played through the speakers hidden out of sight. Still, the rainforest atmosphere was definitely there.
Thirty agonizing seconds later, Amanda saw the vegetation grow sparser ahead. That had to be a good enough spot to dump the meat. Feeling a little encouraged, she pushed on and finally arrived at the opening.
She looked around. No scyther. She breathed and gently set down the buckets. Okay. She grabbed one bucket and poured out the meat. They hit the ground with a few thumps. She stopped and looked around, listening for rustling. Nothing there. She set down that bucket and picked up the other. She poured out the meat, and it thumped down.
A rustling came from ahead. Amanda’s heart jumped to her throat, and she froze.
The rustling picked up again, coming closer. She could see the form of something man-sized and green emerging from the vegetation. It was almost there. Amanda realized that she was blinking and forced her eyes to stay open.
The scyther pushed through the last of the undergrowth, eyes fixed on Amanda’s.
Crap, she thought. Is that Reaper?
They stayed like that for a while. Long enough for Amanda’s eyes to dry, itch, itch so terribly… she couldn’t go much longer without blinking.
I’m going to blink, she thought. I’m going to blink, and it’s going to attack me, and then I will be dead.
A second passed, and another, and another, and the moment came closer and closer…
The scyther looked down at the meat. Something in Amanda’s instincts told her it was safe to blink, and she did it without time to question it. She only realized afterwards what horrible mistake she may have made, but she was already blinking again. Her eyes demanded moisture. But she would force them open again. Now!
Amanda’s eyes stayed open. She watched in silence as the scyther moved to the meat on the ground.
With a lunge, the mon drove its scythes into the ground and chomped down. The suddenness of it made Amanda blink again, but she swore that would be the last mistake she made.
The scyther chewed, seeming to ignore her completely. This was her chance. Very slowly, she inched up to the bucket still on the ground and picked it up. The scyther shot her one glance, freezing her, but then resumed eating. Amanda could back away, and back away she did, not once taking her eyes off the mon in front of her, even if it made her walking perilous. If she tripped on something, that’d surely set the scyther off and spell her demise. Nevertheless, she managed to withdraw past the vegetation, all the way until the leaves covered the scyther’s form again and she dared to blink. Nothing happened as she did. She continued walking backwards until her back met the door. A second later, she heard it open, and she took a chance - she turned around and slipped through as quickly as she could and locked the door behind her.
Freddy was standing right next to the door, but surprisingly, Erin was also there. The woman had a confused expression… while the man looked like he was holding back laughter.
Erin turned to Freddy, and her expression became one of anger.
“You told her the Reaper story, didn’t you?” she shouted.
Freddy let his laughter fly free. He doubled over, even. “Oh, the look on your face, rookie!”
Amanda didn’t understand. Then, she began to. And she began to feel rage of her own.
“That’s screwed up, Freddy. HR will know about this,” Erin stressed. She sighed, and she turned to Amanda. “I’m sorry. Freddy tricked you. He didn’t lose his leg to a scyther. He lost it in a farming accident. And Reaper isn’t even alive anymore.”
“S-so, then…” Amanda swallowed, finding her words. “I didn’t have to go without blinking?”
“You told her she had to go without blinking?” Erin shouted at Freddy. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Well, it’s her fault for being gullible,” Freddy said, his laughter dying down. “Come on. It was funny!”
“I’m pretty sure she doesn’t feel that way!” Erin said. She stepped past Amanda to the door, which she opened. “Come on, Amanda. Let me show you what the scyther are really like.”
“Wh-what? I have to go back in?” Amanda whimpered, but Erin grabbed her hand and dragged her into the enclosure.
“Don’t worry,” Erin said. “The scyther here are all used to humans. After this place started to treat them right, there hasn’t been a single attack.”
Amanda, stiff with terror but still not wanting to lose her job, followed as Erin took her back to where she’d dumped the meat. Several scyther had since gathered, each of them munching on their own lump of meat in their scythes. They gave the women a passing glance as they arrived, but quickly went back to what they were doing.
“Razor,” Erin called.
One of the scyther, which had stripes in a darker green running across its chitinous armor, looked up from their meal.
“Drop it and come here,” Erin ordered.
Razor did as asked, letting the piece of meat go and walking over. Erin held up a palm, and the scyther tapped it with its snout.
“Well done!” Erin reached into her pocket and took out an oran berry, which Razor gladly took and began chewing with a contented trill. The woman then turned to Amanda. “See? Well trained. They know not to harm any humans. And they’re certainly not the feral beasts I’m sure Freddy made you think they were.”
Amanda found her tense shoulders relaxing. “I… yeah,” she said. “I guess you’re right.”
Erin smiled. “Great! Let’s get back, then. I only came back here because I forgot something and I’m needed elsewhere. But I’ll get you some other task first. I wouldn’t make you spend the rest of the hour with Freddy after that nasty trick he pulled on you.”
“...Thanks,” Amanda said, and they headed back. “I appreciate it.”
She gave the scyther one last look before she left. They seemed a lot less scary now, at least.
---
Meanwhile, elsewhere, the reserved trainer had called to inform the waiting caretakers that she would be there in twenty minutes. It was, then, time to round up the battling mon and take them to the arena, as well as the mon who would get enrichment out of watching.
The kadabra enclosure had both. Mystique, Illusio, Espelle and the others were content to simply watch - which was a relief to Brett, as seeing Mystique fight would have given him a heart attack - but Illusio’s brother, the brown-furred kadabra named Rune, seemed quite eager to fight. Brett and the other kadabra caretakers couldn’t say they were surprised given that he’d specifically been practicing moves for the past few days, though they still didn’t know what had caused him to do that. Now, as he was walked out of the enclosure and to the arena, he held his head high.
The arena was originally built for spectacle, which was why it was quite large and able to seat far more people than were present. The field itself was a rounded rectangle fifty yards on its longer side, covered in coarse sand with smooth rocks strewn about and bordered with a tall, transparent wall to shield the audience from any stray projectiles. It had weathered quite a many hits in its heyday, but still it stood firm. There were two doors on either side to let the combatants in, or more so the trainers or keepers, which could get their larger pokémon through simply through the use of a pokéball.
The first thing Rune did upon arriving was to scan the stands for a certain someone. He saw those who had been there on the previous visits - caretakers and mon, largely fighting types - and then the one he was looking for.
A female braixen which the caretakers called Scarlet sat among the sparse crowd, conjuring little dancing flames with her wand to pass the time. Next to her sat three other braixen, one delphox and two fennekin, but those didn’t matter. It was all about Scarlet.
Rune wanted to approach her and greet her, but the thought of it made him weak in the knees. Scarlet was simply so beautiful and so graceful and had such an enchanting scent while he was just some dirty-brown bottom-ranking kadabra with uneven whiskers. No, he could not approach her yet. But soon he would earn that right.
Rune made his way straight to the edge of the field where one caretaker stood, holding a notepad. He knew that this female human was the one to go to if you wanted to fight. And no one else was there yet! He might get to be the first! His tail wagged as he grew nearer to the human, who noticed him and smiled, something the humans did when they were pleased or happy. Then she looked at something behind him in slight surprise. Come to think of it, there were footsteps. Accelerating ones. Rune turned around --
And a machoke zoomed past him, reaching the human before him. Hey!
“Ma-cho!” the machoke shouted enthusiastically, flexing his arms. Oh, he was proud of that one, too.
Rune’s fur bristled. While he felt a little scared, he expressed his discontent with a sharp “kah!” and briskly marched up to the human.
The human huffed, amused. “Don’t worry, little guy, I heard you,“ she said. “You’re name was Rune, wasn’t it?”
Rune nodded fervently, which was a gesture he knew to mean “yes” to the humans.
“Since you haven’t gotten to fight here before, I’ll let you take the first spot,” the human said, then turned to the machoke with a stern look. “And cutting in line is not nice, Arnold.”
“Ch-choke?!” the machoke vocalized, indignant.
The human crossed her arms. “Come on, you fight all the time. You can wait.”
The machoke crossed his arms in turn, but seemed to accept this. “Choke.”
The human wrote something in her notepad and told both mon that they would be called to the field once it was their time to fight. Rune went to rejoin his fellow kadabra and their caretakers and began to wait.
After a while, a new human entered the arena in a half-jog. This one had cyan hair in two big pigtails and clothing that was dark blue and orange. Rune knew her as a trainer that had come here many times before. He sat up a little straighter. The fight would soon begin.
The trainer went to speak with the caretaker with the notepad. What she said was lost to the distance and the chatter of the audience, but Rune could already guess that she was apologizing for being late. They continued talking for a short while after that until the trainer left to make her way to the other end of the field. Once she was there, the caretaker raised her hands.
“Everybody!” she shouted, and the crowd quieted down. “We’re all set to go. Would the first fighter, Rune the kadabra, come to the field?”
Rune practically leapt off his seat. “Kah-dah-brah!” he shouted, pumped up, and hopped down the seats in front to run to the caretaker that had called him.
The caretaker nodded to Rune, then turned to the audience again. “Rune is a first time fighter here at the arena. Let’s hope he has a good time battling so he’ll come back again next time!”
“Yeah!” shouted some voices from the audience.
The caretaker took a peek at her notepad. “Rune will be fighting Boreas the cryogonal. Chloe, would you release Boreas onto the field?”
The trainer on the other side of the field nodded, opened the door in the protective wall and took out one of those black-and-yellow pokéballs from the bag on her belt. She held it out and released the mon inside, who materialized onto the field from white light. It was a strange pokémon Rune hadn’t seen before - a large, floating snowflake-shaped creature of ice. That was what a cryogonal was, then. And its name was Boreas? Rune would remember that.
The caretaker opened the door on Rune’s side of the field and gestured for him to go through. Rune did as asked and walked in the same amount of distance as Boreas was from its end of the field. He stole another look at Scarlet, but was upset by the fact that she didn’t seem to be paying attention, only chatting with another braixen next to her.
Rune shook his head. She would surely begin to watch as the match proper began. And then she would see him win, and then she would know how strong he was, how desirable!
“Alright!” the caretaker shouted. “First fight of the afternoon! Rune versus Boreas! Get ready!”
Rune adopted a ready stance.
“Get set!”
Rune clenched his right fist around his spoon.
“Fight!”
Right away, a white sphere of light appeared in front of Boreas and shot a rainbow-colored beam towards Rune. The kadabra leapt to the right, avoiding the beam, but feeling the chill in the air it left behind. An ice-type move, as one would expect from a mon that was so clearly an ice-type itself.
Rune started running closer as he landed, knowing that he had just as poor a chance to hit his target if he stayed at that distance, if not poorer. He hadn’t exactly had much practice with moving targets. He’d tried to shoot his psychic beam at birds flying over the kadabra enclosure before, but had been quickly reprimanded by the caretakers. The cryogonal attempted a few more shots at the kadabra as he approached, but he weaved to the left and right to dodge them. When he was close enough, he raised his spoon, channeled psychic energy into it, and fired a pink beam of his own from it. It hit its target straight on. Yes!
Boreas recoiled back from the hit… but then charged up another rainbow beam and fired. Rune barely avoided this one, shivering from its chill. That was a little too close for comfort.
Rune retreated, running backwards diagonally and zig-zagging to dodge more beams before he felt he was a comfortable distance away. Right after another shot from Boreas, Rune glanced at Scarlet in the audience. She was watching, yes!
Rune returned his attention to the battle and charged up another beam, then fired. This one the cryogonal dodged. Damn! Had he retreated too far? Or maybe he simply fired at the wrong moment. He should fire right before an attack, when Boreas would be occupied with charging.
Rune charged his own beam but kept the energy to himself until he saw the air light up in front of Boreas again. The beam he fired hit its target again, and broke the cryogonal’s concentration, resulting in the forming beam dissipating! Two birds with one stone!
But Boreas did not seem to care much, already charging another beam. Rune huffed and began to move again. Boreas fired more shots that Rune dodged while he charged. Rune let his beam fly at the moment Boreas had started charging again, and it hit Boreas again, who shrugged it off again.
This repeated a few more times. Rune’s limbs began to tire, and his breath became short. He peeked at Scarlet, who seemed bored out of her mind. Damn it! Was this really how he was attempting to woo the vixen? This wasn’t working!
But why wasn’t it working? He was hitting the cryogonal over and over, which surely had to do some damage, but it showed little sign of tiring. Was Rune really that weak? Or… wait…
Rune recalled a moment a few days ago. Sasha and Brett had been discussing battling after having seen Rune practice. What had they said again?
”So basically, there are two types of defense,” Sasha said. “Physical defense and special defense. Physical defense is the ability to resist physical impacts, like a punch or having rocks thrown at you, for example. Special defense is the ability to resist elemental damage, like fire or electricity or psychic attacks. Of course, some attacks can be fiery or so and still do what we call physical damage, in which case the pokémon’s physical defense is what determines the bulk of the damage received, and some rock-throwing moves or so can do special damage. It’s not very well understood, but empirical research has determined which kind of damage each move predominantly makes blah blah blah blah…”
Of course! Boreas must have been a pokémon with very strong special defenses, which is why he could take so many psychic beams without seeming too bothered. But if Rune were to use a physical attack, the cryogonal just might take a lot more damage…
How could Rune perform a physical attack, though? He only knew how to shoot psychic beams - and maybe make some harmless lights appear. He couldn’t throw a punch to save his life. Just the thought of attempting it against that hard icy shell made him wince. But throwing rocks… throwing rocks. He could try that. There were rocks all around, and he knew his telekinesis was well strong enough to lift and hurl them. But was his aim really good enough? He’d have to get a lot closer. Or he’d have to get the rock closer. But Boreas couldn’t see it - the cryogonal would dodge it. Rune would have to be sneaky. And he would have to make the strike count as he surely wouldn’t be able to pull it off again.
Rune peered past Boreas, to the edge of the field. There, next to the door in the protective wall, sat a round stone the size of a kadabra’s torso. Rune could use that. But he would have to distract the snowflake.
Rune glanced at Scarlet again. She still seemed bored, but she was watching. Good.
An icy beam coming Rune’s way caught him by surprise. He jumped to the right, but the beam hit his left arm. “Kah!” he cried out, freezing cold numbing his bicep momentarily - but letting go as soon as new hot blood flowed into the muscle. Damn! He could not let his attention stray like that anymore…
But if he was lucky, he wouldn’t have to. And he’d find out real soon if he was lucky or not. Rune snarled and ran towards the cryogonal until the rock he’d chosen was in his telekinetic range. He planted his feet on the ground and raised his arms in a battle stance. He channeled a little energy to the spoon in his right hand while channeling a lot more to the left. He only let the right hand show the charging power, however, as he manifested it as a light - a white light this time. Then, he spread the light around him in a dome. It should have appeared very much like a protective barrier, something that wasn’t worth attacking while it was still active.
The cryogonal, while its face was not expressive, seemed to watch this intently. Perfect.
While Rune kept up the light show with his right hand, he used the power in the left to reach out telekinetically for the rock behind Boreas. His power met it, and he willed it to rise. It did, though at this distance and without the enhancing effects of the spoon, it was still like lifting something heavy with one’s weakest finger. Rune floated it closer to the cryogonal, his telekinetic grip strengthening, then higher up in the air. He positioned it above the icy mon, then lifted it higher again, trying not to let his strain show.
Boreas, while this was happening, had begun to charge up another beam. The cryogonal seemed to be putting a lot more energy into it and waiting for the moment that Rune dropped his supposed barrier to fire it. Rune forced his tail not to wag despite his instincts - he couldn’t give away that he had some kind of trick in mind.
Then the time came. The rock was quite high, but Rune had made sure not to take it so high that it was at risk of missing. Rune tried his best not to show any change in posture or expression as he let the rock go. It dropped, speeding up as it fell -- and then it slammed onto the cryogonal, driving it into the ground. A loud cracking noise rang through the arena, and the audience gasped.
Boreas let out an echoing chime of undecipherable meaning, the ice around its top marred by white cracks. It floated up from the ground for a while, wobbling, and then faceplanted back down.
“Uh… Boreas can no longer fight!” the caretaker announced, unsure if the mon was alright. “Rune is the winner!”
Rune raised his arms up high. “Kah-dah-brah!” he bellowed out, feeling invincible. Tail wagging incessantly, he turned to look at Scarlet, who seemed to be staring at the fallen cryogonal, eyes wide and jaw slack.
Rune took his own glance at Boreas and felt a bit rotten. That must have hurt. But the trainer wasn’t freaking out, nor had she done anything to warn it beforehand. So it had to be fine, right?
That trainer had entered the field and made her way to the cryogonal. She regarded it calmly, then produced a spray bottle from the bag on her belt and gave the cracked ice a spray. It began to heal right away.
The trainer turned to the audience with a smile on her face. “Don’t worry, folks!” she shouted. “They’re gonna be alright.”
The audience murmured for a moment, then began to clap. Rune, too, felt relieved.
“Nice strategy,” the trainer said to Rune. “But that won’t work everywhere. Better to try and learn some physical moves so you don’t have to rely on terrain.”
“K-kah,” Rune affirmed. Then, he ran back to his side of the field and exited through the door. He responded to the caretaker’s congratulations with a nod and then made his way straight to Scarlet in the audience. She was chatting with another braixen again, and only noticed Rune arriving at the last second.
Rune’s heart still beat anxiously in the presence of his crush, but the residual adrenaline from the fight was stronger than his fears.
“Kah,” he said in greeting. He then raised his hand and constructed a vision into Scarlet’s mind.
In the vision, they were still in the arena, standing how they were standing now, but from a higher viewpoint that showed both of them. Vision-Scarlet yipped excitedly, eyes sparkling, while Vision-Rune flexed his muscles. The illusory braixen went to take the kadabra’s hand, and they both exited the scene with their tails wagging.
Rune ended the vision and awaited the real Scarlet’s response with confidence.
But the braixen grimaced. Rune’s heart plummeted like the rock he’d dropped just minutes ago.
“Breh, breh,” the braixen vocalized, waving her paw dismissively. “Ee, xen, ee, brai-brai. Yip, yip, brai-xen.”
What? Rune blinked. What was she saying?
The braixen saw his trouble understanding and sighed. She raised her arm to flex it, pointed to Rune and shook her head. You are not strong.
“Kah?!” Rune exclaimed.
“Brai-brai,” said another braixen, a male one, pointing to Rune. “Xen, yip?” He extended out both hands, making fists with his paws, then moved the other some distance above the other. He made a wooshing noise as the upper fist dropped on top of the lower fist and blew a razz berry as the impact was made, then shook his head. “Ee, ee.”
Rune’s tail was not wagging - indeed, it was almost between his legs. His ears were pinned against his head.
They… they didn’t think that the trick he pulled was strong? Did they think it was… cheating?
“Breh,” Scarlet said, making a shooing motion with her paw. “Breh.”
Rune, it seemed, had nothing left to do. Scarlet had made up her mind. With a whimper, the kadabra left the group of braixen and made his way back to his fellow kadabra. There, Sasha and Brett and the other caretakers were waiting for him.
“Aw, I’m sorry, Rune,” Sasha said, petting Rune’s head. “Romance doesn’t always work out. But this heartbreak will heal in time, I’m sure.”
“Kah,” Rune mumbled. At least the petting felt nice.
“Just sit back and watch how the others manage in their fights,” Sasha said. “It’ll take your mind off things.”
“Mmm… kah.”
Rune sat down next to Sasha and looked out to the field. The next fighter, the machoke that had cut him off, was already marching up to the field. Rune hoped he would lose.
---
There wasn’t much time left in the shift once the battles had come and gone. The battlers were given their late meals, which they scarfed down before settling in their favorite nooks for a well-deserved rest. The caretakers expected no need to tend to them for the rest of the shift.
Elsewhere, Jack, Kate, Samos and Ikuko were at their wits’ end, having tried all manner of tricks to coax the runaway shuppet back to the Haunted House and failed every time. They dreaded what Janice, the general curator, would say once they reported the situation to her, and were just about to head towards her office when Samos jingled his keys to get everyone’s attention and then used them to point to the sky. Six shuppet, the exact amount they were missing, floated through the sky towards the Haunted House all on their own. The gang ran there and snuck inside undetected, witnessing the shuppet return to their enclosure through apparently the same means they’d gotten out - by deflating themselves and weaving through the cracks of the otherwise ghost-proofed ventilation grate.
“Didn’t even know they could do that,” Jack said.
“I don’t think they did either before today,” Kate remarked.
To prevent this from happening again, they taped over the grate in such a way that only holes too small for a wad of shuppet-cloth to fit through remained. It would hinder the circulation of air, but as ghosts required no oxygen, the only possible harm was to the already wilting plants. It was a temporary solution anyway; someone would surely come up with a better solution before long.
Once the next shift’s caretakers arrived at the sanctuary and the House, Jack and Kate explained the situation to them and were then finally free to leave for their homes. On the way, though, they noticed a certain short brunette talking to Brett and Sasha from the kadabra crew and decided to stop and inquire about the intern’s impressions.
“Hey!” Jack greeted the group, grabbing their attention. He pointed to the brunette. “Amanda, right? You were new?”
Amanda smiled and nodded. “Yeah!”
“Well, how was your first day?”
“They probably had a conversation going, Jack,” Kate pointed out. “You shouldn’t interrupt like that.”
“No, that’s okay, we were just about done,” Brett said. “Go ahead, Amanda.”
Amanda clasped her hands together behind her back. “Well, I was pretty nervous at first, and then very nervous in the middle when I had to feed the scyther, but overall I think I learned a lot. I got to meet a lot of different pokémon and interact with them in different ways… stuff that made me want to become a caretaker here to begin with. So I’m pretty glad with how today turned out!”
“That’s great to hear!” Jack said, grinning.
“Remember to rest when you get home,” Kate said. “You’ve earned it.”
Amanda nodded. “Will do!”
Brett spoke up next. “So, Jack, Kate - Samos too - we heard a shuppet got loose and you guys were the ones to come to the rescue?”
“Oh, boy,” Jack said, stretching. “Now that’s a story. Listen up…”
As Jack, with some input from Kate and Samos, recounted the misadventures of the shuppet, Amanda listened intently. It was important to pay attention to one’s coworkers, and Amanda wanted to do things right all the way until the end of the workday, though it was hardly difficult with Jack being such an engaging storyteller. The others laughed when Jack described the way they’d utilized Ikuko’s ill temper to lure the first shuppet, and Amanda laughed with them, already feeling that sense of camaraderie that she hoped to foster in the many coming days.
And so, after their time of chatting, the caretakers exited the sanctuary and took their ferry back to the mainland. Isle Silent was left in the hands of those in the second shift, and it continued to mock its name with the calls and cries of the cheerful pokémon that lived within.
---
THE END
THE END
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