Pokémon Storms' Wake (one-shot)

[Phoenixsong]

This is the way the circle turns: lightning strikes, fire devours, the rain weeps it all away. The old burns to make way for the new. Raikou does what must be done.​

Spoiler: Author's Notes, Feedback Preferences, Content Warnings

Hello! This started out as a submission to the Gen 2 round of the PokéPod Project. It's been revised a little bit from the original entry, just some post-deadline spitshining, but it's largely the same if you've already read it on AO3. I will say that if you do happen to enjoy this, I also heartily suggest listening to the podfic (read aloud) version by quandrix_quizard and silksnep! They did a fantastic job with it. The reading is based on the original submission and does not reflect the edits in this version, but again, it's plenty close enough to enjoy!

Feedback Preferences: I'm not really looking to go any harder on the polish with this. It was really mostly just vibes! Feel free to say whatever comes to mind, of course; just be aware that any suggestions for extensive revisions are very unlikely to be implemented, 'cause I'm content enough with this one as-is. Already feels weird enough just to have made changes after the podfic was published, heh.

Content Warnings: Wildfires and mentions of pokémon death.

Storms' Wake​

Raikou races through the old wood, and death comes roaring in behind her. She tears between the trees, bounding from trunk to stump to log to trunk, and no sooner do her claws leave the bark than lightning slams down, cutting through the timber like fangs through flesh.

The wild pokémon flee, of course. Pidgey and spearow burst from their nests, their panicked shrieks drowned out by the thunder that scatters them. An aipom leaps just before a strike splits its tree, hoping only that the branches it scrambles toward will hold long enough for it to leap away again. Bellsprout flail onto the paths in droves, beating the sparks away with their leaves. The dying forest is alive with countless little scurrying things, desperate to escape before their scurryings are forever cut short. (And countless others that will not scurry away in time.)

A rattata pauses mid-flight to stare at the smoking charcoal hulk that was once the stump it had made its burrow under. Raikou sprints by, far too quick to read the meaning on its face, but she doesn't need to. Nothing she hasn't seen before. Fear. Anger. Uncomprehending confusion. Loss piled on top of loss until the mass of it all is too great and tangled to mean anything anymore. Why.

It doesn't understand. But it doesn't need to. The circle turns with its permission or without; what must be done must be done. And so she does, racing through the old wood with lightning scything along in her wake.

Thunder tolls the forest's death knell. Smoke rolls toward the sky, coalescing into its own grim storm-cloud. Graying wood chars to black. Sparks leap through the clotted underbrush and weave a winding trail of flames; her sister will soon be along to walk it.

This is the way the circle turns: Raikou's lightning tears through the forests, cutting the path for her siblings. Entei's fire burns it all down, until only ash remains. Suicune's rain drowns the flames, and her wind blows the ash away. Three storms scour the land, destroying that which is crumbling and choking, and in the storms' wake the way is cleared for life to grow and change. New trees rise up, free of the cold shadows of the old. Young survivors return and build stronger, healthier nests. One turning ends, and a new beginning turns into its place.

In its daze, the rattata does not notice until it is too late. Lightning bites, ancient wood groans, and a tree's blazing crown collapses on top of it. Raikou stops her second pass to watch as the tiny creature tries and fails to scramble through the burning branches that pin it to the ash-strewn earth.

It would not be the first. It will not be the last. How many other little things die along with the forest, swept up in the turning of the circle, the firelight shining in their frightened eyes until it all goes out? Some things must burn so the ash can fertilize the new. If a greener forest is to rise, then what must be done must be done...

(The memories flash by her, quick as thunderbolts: she is running, running, running, until she can't run any more. There is nothing she can do but hope the humans do not see her as she crawls pitifully into their brazen shrine, a shelter from the storm that will soon be no shelter at all. An unearthly song of sorrow and fury that she does not understand howls above and below and all around. Fangs of lightning bite into the tower. There is light and there is heat and there is terror and there is ice-cold nothing—

—and then there is something again. Something to run to. Something to run for. Warm wings spread wide and reach toward her, inviting her to take her place in the great turning: start and end and start again, all terrible and all beautiful to behold. To think that one as low as she was given the second chance to see the circle's full span...)

She cannot restore life that has been taken. Her charge is only to cut down the old; she is not the one who opens the way for the new. But perhaps, just this once, she can cut a path for something else.

Raikou descends on the trapped rat in a flash, striking before it can so much as scream. Her glowing fangs scythe down, cutting through wood like flesh. Splinters and embers fly as the branches scatter, tearing a gap through the burning cage.

She lets the rattata scurry away, fleeing the forest just before her sister arrives, so this one, at least, will have a chance to understand: this is how the circle turns. The lightning strikes, bites, kills. Then the fire devours, and the rain weeps it all away. But the dark gray of smoke and night turns to day even so, and when the sun looks down it takes pity on the ashes left behind. Life will reach up toward it again, in time. It always does.

(She did.)