Wandering
The Foolish Oddish
Warnings: None
Feedback Preferences: I love all feedback, and I adore constructive criticism!
Author's Notes: Welcome to "The Foolish Oddish," a one-shot that got a bit overgrown and which is presented here as a short chapterfic instead. This story came about because I almost never see PMD fic that gives much attention to "feral" pokémon that live in dungeons; in a lot of stories they're little more than obstacles for the heroes to overcome, or in some cases even lunch! I thought it would be fun to explore the idea of what life might be like inside a mystery dungeon. I hope you enjoy what I came up with!
Part One: Wandering
The first thing my parents taught me was leaving. In words, yes, in stories, but in point of fact as well. Forty sleeps we were together, my siblings and I, rooted beside a stream while our parents told us all the tales any oddish needs to know. They were long sleeps, my parents taking turns, speaking until they grew hoarse. There was much to tell, and who knew how much time to tell it in.
Their most important lesson was: all life is letting go. In a world like ours, you can make peace with endings, or they will end you in turn.
One sibling fell into a trap and vanished; another fled before an angry shieldon, down a staircase and into another life. My mother was caught in a confuse ray and staggered off to vanish, no matter how we called for her. And then I was the one to go, separated from the rest by a dungeon shift. I didn't even realize what had happened until I looked up from drinking to find no one on the bank above me. A low tangle of brush had slid in when I wasn't looking, and my family was as likely to be on the opposite side of the floor as anywhere. I was on my own, and maybe I would see the others again, or maybe I would not.
I was ready. My parents had taught me well, and I knew how to let go. It was time to find my own stories. And soon enough, no more than a hundred sleeps, perhaps, one found me.
"Helloooo down there!" The voice was small and far-off, almost too high-pitched to hear. I stopped and looked. There was a zubat swooping overhead. It wasn't uncommon to meet a zubat, for they tended to fly at the same time that a weed might wander.
The zubat arced down to rest on an overhanging branch. "Hello, hello," he said again. "Tell me a story!"
What else would he be wanting? Uninjured, apparently not hungry or thirsty--food spoils, water sours, and what good is treasure you can't carry? The only thing worth trading is what lives in your head, which even the dungeon can never take from you. Stories are what all pokémon gather, the true wealth of a life lived wandering. And oddish know all the best stories, of course, for who wanders farther than the wandering weed?
"You first," I said imperiously. I wasn't some story-dispenser to be hallooed by just anyone. If the bat wanted what I knew, he'd better be prepared to offer something good.
The zubat let out a hiss of air, maybe an exclamation above my hearing. Bats conversed amongst themselves sometimes, speech too high-pitched for a weed to hear even if she was standing right there. I suspected they kept their best stories for themselves. "I'll tell you half of one," the bat decided. "And after I hear yours, if it's good, I'll tell the rest. Deal?"
I rocked back and forth, considering. My feet were beginning to itch with thirst, but I could put off finding water for now. "Deal," I finally agreed.
The zubat's mouth gaped soundlessly, what I imagined was a pleased noise beyond my comprehension. "That's easy, then. This dungeon doesn't go on forever. Down at the bottom there's a cave."
"What's a cave?"
The zubat rustled his wings in annoyance. "That's the other half."
Disappointing. All of my stories were good, of course, and I didn't want to trade one just for that, but neither did I want to be left with the sour note of that poor part-story. I hoped the second half was better.
In trade I told one of my least favorites, the story of the foolish oddish. The zubat's wide ears tilted as he listened.
Once there was an oddish who found a treasure, a hunk of rock that shone like the sun itself. He kept it with him always, carried it in his mouth, set it gently aside to speak, picked it up again right after. And he found as little cause as possible to speak. The foolish oddish kept his treasure with him floor after floor, through one fight after the next, for there were many pokémon who wanted to fight him, to steal his precious stone. But he prevailed, and he kept his stone, and all was well enough.
Until he found another stone. Green and mossy, velvet to the touch like a new-sprouted leaf. He coveted it immediately, but had no way to carry it beside his beloved golden stone. Yet he could not bear to leave it. Even less could he choose between them, the most beautiful treasures the dungeon had ever offered. So instead he sat with both, gazing first at one, then the other, unable to decide. He sat until his leaves wilted and his skin shriveled, until finally thirst took him and he perished, a dried husk with neither treasure to his name.
The zubat listened intently until I reached the end, then let out a small squeak of appreciation. "Foolish oddish indeed! How terrible it must be for you, needing stones to make your changes."
"The dungeon provides," I said stiffly. At least we could change, not like the klefki or the seviper, cursed forever with the form to which they were born. "The rest of your story, now."
The zubat chirped, delighted. "Of course! At the bottom of this dungeon is a cave. A cave is a dark place. It's like you've crawled underground. Because you have! You can't see the sun at all! But that's not the best part. In the cave..." He swept out his wings, letting the silence stretch dramatically. "In the cave, there's a portal to the outside world!"
After a second, when it seemed that would be all, I said, "That's not a story."
"What do you mean? Of course it's a story!"
"There weren't any people in it. And nothing happened! If nothing happens, it's not a story, it's just a fact!"
"Fine. If you think it's a fact, then it's still the best fact," the zubat said haughtily. "That's more than a good enough trade."
Not good enough for me. "I'm going to find some water," I announced.
The zubat followed me, high overhead. He swooped down to snatch an oran berry off the ground; he grabbed a wand and entertained himself for a few minutes, letting off bursts of swirling sparks. I ignored him, because after all he wouldn't be able to follow forever. I knew where the nearest staircase was; if I wanted, I could leave. Or I could bury myself and go to sleep, and then the bat would get bored and leave on his own.
Three turns to find a pond, and nothing much to bother me on the way. The dungeon's upper floors were mostly young pokémon and the kind of people who craved company. If you didn't care for other people, if you wanted room to yourself, that's when you'd go down deep. Or so my parents said. I'd ventured a few floors down, daring it like children do, determined to prove I wasn't scared, but I'd made no serious attempt to chance the depths. Wasn't meeting people the entire point?
The pond was as clear and refreshing as every other. I stood and drank, submerged almost up to my eyes, while the zubat clung upside-down to a branch grown over the water. "Fine," he said. "If that wasn't enough of a story for you, I'll tell you another. Will that make you happy?"
I saw no point in answering. I wasn't pleased at having been cheated out of a story, but it wasn't like another pointless fact was going to do anything for me, either.
The zubat started anyway. "Once, a long time ago, there was only one zubat. And he was huge! His wings blocked out the moon, and no one could challenge him for rulership of the sky. He was so great and so powerful that the other creatures of the night grew jealous, and at last they set upon, all at once, and tore him into pieces. Each piece became a new zubat, but much smaller than before, and weaker, too. That's how the first colony came to be! But even though each individual zubat was weak, together they had the same amount of power as the first bat himself! They ganged up on those jealous pokémon and drove them all away. So that's why you need to stay with the colony. A zubat alone is weak, but together, we're strong. We protect each other!"
"You're not with the colony now," I pointed out.
"No," the zubat said. Then it was quiet, for such a long time that even I was uncomfortable.
I waded back to shore, shaking droplets from my leaves. A story of the moon. My parents told me that the world outside knew a "night" when the sun hid its face and we would emerge from the earth, refreshed from soaking up the day's light and prepared to go exploring.
Hard even to imagine the sky without a sun. Was it dark? Oh, very dark, my parents answered. Darker even than the shade of a full, dense tree. So dark that the bats lost their eyes, for there was nothing to be seen with them.
"If you knew actually good stories, why didn't you start with one of those?" I asked. If anything, it only felt more like the zubat had been wasting my time.
The zubat's jaw hung slack, and I imagined another high-pitched cry emitting from it. "But that one is good! The best! It's a way out of this dungeon. What could be better than that?"
"Why would you want to leave the dungeon?"
The zubat folded his wings around his body. A strange gesture. It might have made more sense if I had wings myself, or even arms. "Aren't you an oddish? The wandering weed?" he asked. "I thought you would want to find new places. Experience new things. There's a whole world outside the dungeon. Don't you want to explore it?"
"The oddish came here long ago. They knew they'd be giving up the world outside to do it. Moonlight and all our green cousins, the plants with leaves like us instead of all the red and orange ones around here."
"What's green?" the zubat asked, but I hurried on with my answer.
"They knew what they would give up, and they chose to come here anyway. I don't think they were probably right, and the dungeon is big enough for me. I could never live long enough to see all of it, or hear all its stories."
The zubat made a dismayed peep. And that was it. It seemed he intended to stay there in that tree, looking mopey. "I don't know," I said at last. "I haven't heard much about life outside the dungeon. But you must have. Tell me?"
The zubat didn't smile, precisely. What can't see doesn't know how to smile. But he shuffled his wings and squeaked to himself in what had to be delight. "You drive a hard bargain," he said. "I'm Elkesiss, by the way."
"Ragweed," I replied. And for some time after that we stayed there on the bank of the stream, trading stories, until there was no more stream and no more zubat, and it was time for me to move on again.
--
The world changes, my parents always said, and I would change, too. But an oddish only gets two changes, at most, to insure her against life's turmoil. Use them wisely, my parents said. Time them well.
Oddish is the wandering weed, the one all hope to meet, the one who finds the best stories. But no one can wander forever. Even an oddish who wants to stay as they are, small and vulnerable and beset by wanderlust, can't put off their change forever. Better to choose when you change, my parents always told me. Better to choose than to resist until it takes you whenever, wherever, despite your unwillingness.
I could feel my first change coming. I'd ranged up and down the dungeon's floors, met many other travelers, strangers and friends alike. Now and again I encountered one of my siblings and passed a pleasant time with them. Once, even, my mother and I found each other again, and we spent many happy sleeps in storytelling before the dungeon shifted and separated us once more.
I tricked ghosts and stole keys; I outran shieldon and laughed along with igglybuff; and I stayed up far, far past when sleep tried to take me to visit prinplup down at the water's edge. I learned story on story, and made a few of my own as well. I did as my parents taught me and saw all there was to see, and as the pressure to change grew ever stronger, I held out, waiting for my moment. Waiting, trusting that I would know the right time when it came, though the itch of banked power made my leaves curl and my feet prickle with ungrown roots. I started fights and kicked stones and stalked furiously up and down floors, seeking my moment. I didn't learn much in that time, in retrospect--perhaps I should have made my change earlier. What a different life I'd have if I did!
It doesn't matter. I did hold my change, and one day I did find a togepi, an incorrigible berry-hog, who ran off wailing when I dusted his precious treats with toxic spores. I was enjoying my newfound stash when a togekiss descended, howling about how dare I harm her baby. Who wasn't even harmed, I thought indignantly at the time, only watching smugly from the corridor, satisfied of his revenge.
My change burned in me, lending acid to my mood, but none yet to my attacks. I had little recourse but to run, but not before releasing a cloud of powder that would leave the togekiss nauseous and shivering for hours.
And so when I heard wings I was thinking first of the togekiss and whether she was really so spiteful as to follow me, even poisoned, even if it meant leaving her precious son behind. But they were too soft, the wingbeats, and with them came a squeaking. Zubat. I relaxed as much as I ever could before an unknown pokémon, one who might as easily be foe as friend.
I was not reassured when the zubat dove for me, screeching. But he pulled up well above my head, chirping delightedly. "It's you! Hi hi! Do you remember me?"
"I've met a lot of zubat," I hazarded.
"But it's me! Elkesiss!"
Zubat names flee the mind as easily as water slides off a leaf.
"I told you about the outside! Remember, remember?"
Ah. Now that was better. A story's much easier to recall than a name. "I do," I said, and the zubat rolled and looped-the-loop, squealing all the while. "I'm surprised you're still here. Did you find out your 'cave' wasn't real?"
"I don't know!" Elkesiss alighted on a tall, rust-leafed bush. "I haven't been able to make it all the way down there. The dungeon's deep! It goes down and down!"
"People say the dungeon goes on forever," I said.
"Well, they're wrong," Elkesiss said with absolute conviction.
"What makes you so sure?"
The zubat whined and scratched at his chin with a claw. "It makes sense, doesn't it? There's a world outside of this one. Everybody says that, don't they?"
"Yes, of course. I don't see how that means there has to be a way out of here, though." My parents had told me, at least, everything our dungeon had that the world beyond it didn't: eternal sunlight, golden and slanted. Leaves poised to fall but never falling, carpeting the ground without having dropped. Cool shadows and cooler streams, air ever balanced on the edge of chill. Other pokémon had their own tales, often strange but consistent enough that I had to believe them, like those of the "moon" in Elkesiss' story. Some were surely fancy, though, like those about water so cold it turned solid.
"Well, people had to get here somehow!" Elkesiss said. "We all came from somewhere else, didn't we? We didn't come from the dungeon itself." I rustled a few leaves. That was probably right enough. "Then there must be a door somewhere! A way in is also a way out!"
"Maybe it's gone now. Everything changes. Or are you really expecting a door to stay in the same place forever?"
Elkesiss could muster nothing more than a plaintive hiss. "Even if the stairs move around, they're still there."
A fair enough point. I rustled my leaves again, releasing a few spores. I didn't have time to speculate about a non-story that probably wasn't even true. "It was good to see you again," I lied. "But I'm in a hurry."
Elkesiss followed behind, not to my surprise. "I've been looking for the way out," he said, "but I haven't been able to go more than twenty, maybe twenty-five floors!"
Much deeper than I'd ever been. "I thought you were supposed to stay with your colony. Did the whole colony go down that far?"
"No! There's a colony on every floor. That's what makes it a good system! You might not get to stay with anyone very long, but there's always someone there for you."
How strange zubat were. I had no quarrel with other oddish, but I didn't mind being alone, either.
Elkesiss followed overhead as I trotted along the bank of a stream carrying red-gold leaves deeper into the dungeon. Warm light dazzled from clear, racing water. "Almost every floor," the bat amended quietly. "The deeper you go, the fewer people there are. On some floors there weren't any other bats at all! Or only one or two, and no zubat like me." His mouth hung open in a silent scream. "It was scary."
"I guess you're never going to find your 'cave,' then."
"I could go deeper," Elkesiss said, "if I had somebody to go with me."
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize what he meant. "You want me to go with you," I said, turning so fast that golden spores puffed into the air around me.
Elkesiss alighted on a branch with just one crinkled leaf still clinging to it. He tucked and untucked his wings, rubbed nervously at an ear. "Well, yes!" he said. "Just think about it! You'd go farther than you ever have! You'd meet all kinds of new people! And learn all kinds of new things. Plus--you'd get to see the outside!"
I didn't think there was much chance of that, but I entertained the idea. At least for one daydreamy minute. "I know a lot of stories already," I mused aloud.
"I'll bet you do! And you could find even more if you went down to the bottom of the dungeon. Just think about it! Not a lot of people up here talk to the pokémon down there. I bet they've got stories we couldn't even think of! You probably know all the good ones that people tell around here already."
"New stories happen every day. I'm never going to run out." All the same, Elkesiss' offer was like something out of a story itself. When else would I be asked to do something so crazy? I barely knew Elkesiss, wasn't sure I liked him much, but there was an excitement just in hearing someone spout such crazy plans.
I'd paused to think, but the itching of my change was building, urging me as ever to start walking, to leave, to move anywhere, anything. I pursed my lips and tried to concentrate. "I don't know. Do you--"
Elkesiss cut me off. "Something's coming," he said, big ears swivelling.
It took a couple seconds, but then I could hear it, too, a steady thwoomp-thwoomp of wings.
That crazy togekiss. She'd really followed me all the way here? "Go!" I growled, my change building to a steady burning beneath my skin. "That's a togekiss, and I bet she doesn't care who gets in her way!" I took off as fast as I could, making a bid for the stairs. No good trying to hide; my glossy green leaves would always give me away.
"Wait! Don't go!" Elkesiss cried, but his squeaks were drowned out by a shout of, "There you are!"
I ran as fast as my feet would take me, which wasn't very fast at all, even back then. Scything wind knocked me down and shredded a leaf, but I was up and going again a second later, sap dripping into my eyes.
"Leave her alone!" Elkesiss dropped down from above, toothy mouth clamping the tip of the togekiss' wing.
I stopped running then. Stupid, but I was transfixed. I couldn't believe that a zubat of all people would come to my aid.
The togekiss screeched, flapped twice, hard, and knocked Elkesiss tumbling free. She rounded on him and slammed him into the ground with bursts of air and glittering light.
It was hard for me to think at all just then, but what I felt was that there was no way--no way Elkesiss could escape from a pokémon like that. I couldn't, either, if I didn't leave while she was distracted. The stairs weren't far, if they were where I'd left them, and going just one floor down would put me beyond the togekiss' reach.
But I couldn't be that cowardly, I couldn't, not when Elkesiss had tried to save me. Even if it had been stupid. I yelled and ran forward before I could think twice, leaping for the togekiss and letting the change take me at the same time. It was all over in a burst of light and heat--one second an oddish, throwing herself hopelessly into battle. The next a togekiss reeling away, dripping spores and acid, yelling about revenge.
Elkesiss was left lying like a crumpled leaf, exotic blue amidst the reds and yellows and browns. There was an oran berry not far up the corridor, and I brought it back for him with my arms. Arms! I flexed them in front of my face, reached up to feel my new flower. It was so strange to pick something up without tasting it.
"Thank you," Elkesiss said weakly. Berry or not he was rumpled, fur mussed by wind and blood.
"You shouldn't have attacked that Togekiss. What were you thinking?"
"I couldn't just do nothing," Elkesiss said with a whistling breath like a whine. "And you--you were amazing! You changed!" He beat his wings in excitement, though he didn't lift off from the ground. "We should go! We should look for the way out of the dungeon! You're strong enough to fight anybody we could find down there."
I'd used my first change to save this stupid zubat, and all he could think about was his nonsense plan. "I'm a gloom now. Gloom don't travel as well as oddish. We need to spend more time rooted so we can get everything we need to make our poisons. If you'd wanted me to go with you, you shouldn't have made me have to fight. Oddish are the ones who love to wander, not gloom."
Elkesiss raised his crumpled wings. "More time rooted isn't no time walking! And you're stronger now. That's a good trade-off. You can still come with me, don't worry."
Acid churned in my stomach, belched out in toxic spores. "Go back to your colony," I said. "I'm not babysitting you."
I left Elkesiss on the ground, healed but in no mood for flight. The stairs hadn't gone far, and I took two floors down, just in case. The dungeon shifted behind me, and there was no chance a togekiss could follow. Or a zubat, for that matter. The dungeon had taken them away. The dungeon was good for that. Always changing. Always taking things away, the good and the bad both.
--
As an oddish I couldn't imagine that I'd ever want to stop wandering. I told myself I'd remain the same, no matter how my body changed. But wandering was tiring. It was nice, sometimes, to stay rooted in place, enjoy the sun and the water for as long as the dungeon would let you before it warped and left you sitting in the middle of a gang of irritable gastly.
I wandered less. I lingered on floors. And I began to get to know, just a little, the pokémon around me. The dungeon would separate us, yes, again and again, but rarely immediately. There was no need to be hasty, barter stories and move on. I played chess with pawniard and fetched with snubbull, danced with clefairy and meditated with nosepass, completely still while the world changed around me. I learned more than their stories; I learned how they lived, what they wondered about, what they thought their lives would be in this ever-changing world.
I even spoke with bats now and again, though it was rare for them to leave their colony. At first I thought nothing of it when a golbat dropped out of the sky. I simply stayed where I was, photosynthesizing and waiting to see what the stranger wanted.
Then, "it's you!" the stranger cried in what was somehow a bass screech, and I knew him all too well.
"Elkesiss."
"I changed!" he said, spreading his wings as though I might somehow have missed it. "I can see! That's why it took so long to find you. It's confusing. Everything sounds different, and seeing at the same time is so distracting."
"Wonderful." The dungeon certainly had a sense of humor. It would steal your dearest from you forever and keep bringing you back to the people you least wanted to see. "I suppose you're here to ask me about leaving the dungeon? Now that you're stronger?"
"That's right!" Even with eyes, Elkesiss still got facial expressions wrong. His smile was all in his voice.
"I'm going to stay where I am. Stop bothering me."
"I thought you would probably say that," Elkesiss said, and now his tone was wistful. "So I brought something else. A story. A long story. It will take more than one sleep to tell. A lot more. You'll have to come with me if you want to hear all of it."
"Where did you ever find a story like that?"
Elkesiss' laugh was low enough for me to hear now, a series of rollicking, piercing squeals. "The colony trades stories all the time. We collect all the best ones. And I've visited more colonies than most."
If there was one downside to staying put, it was that before long you heard the same stories over and over. Oh, there were minor differences, whether from forgetfulness or invention, but it had been some time since I'd heard something truly new, a story that gripped me.
Not that I would ever, under any circumstances, consider taking on some insane plan to leave the dungeon when all I needed was to move a couple floors down to find new tales. I'd left that nonsense behind with my younger form.
What reckless pokémon zubat were. Imagine telling stories that took multiple sleeps to finish. What if the dungeon separated tale-teller and listener before all could be told through? It happened often enough. Where would the listener be then, stuck with their ever-unfinished tale?
"Forgive me if I'm skeptical that your story's as good as you claim," I said.
Elkesiss squeaked. "I wouldn't expect you to believe me without hearing it for yourself. How about this--I'll tell you the first part now, and if you want to hear more, you can follow me to the next floor. You can follow me for as long as you want to hear more."
"Okay," I said after a long moment of contemplation. "Go ahead."
There was no story good enough to convince me to leave the dungeon, but I was intrigued despite myself. Just what did Elkesiss have that he thought was so amazing? I'd listen to the first part, then tell him to get lost.
Elkesiss let out a flurry of excited squeaks and chatters and then, at last, he began. His was a story of gods, pokémon so powerful they could reshape the world around them. They could make the dungeon shift however they chose, or even make it stop shifting, if they wanted. Like all pokémon, they fought, and their battles were so terrible that hundreds of pokémon perished in them, drowned or burned or frozen from the clashing of their energies. There once was an araquanid whose precious children were killed in the midst of the gods' battles, every single one of them.
"Araquanid?"
Elkesiss made a long, whining hiss. "Like a dustox with no wings and longer legs and their head stuck in a bubble all the time."
The araquanid looked down on the bodies of her slain children and cursed the gods. She would see to it that no other would live to see this, their family slain in the idle squabbles of creatures with no care for those below them.
But she would need power to challenge the gods, power earned, borrowed, or stolen. And so this araquanid began to plan.
"Stupid," I announced. "The world takes your children from you. That's just how it goes."
"Not in the world outside," Elkesiss said with quiet conviction.
I scoffed. Gods, too. We didn't have those in the dungeon. Some pokémon far more powerful than others, yes, ancient bastiodon and terrifying gengar, but none so powerful that they could alter the world itself. We were all of us subject to the dungeon's fickle changes. It was hard to imagine someone who could make stairs appear wherever they wished, who might even be able to yank back the shifting dungeon, keep someone with them, always. But gods were one thing the stories seemed to agree existed in the world outside.
"What was this araquanid's plan, then?"
A long, whistling breath from Elkesiss. "I think that part needs to wait until after a sleep, don't you?"
It was true I was thirsty, roots itching for the touch of cool water. Tired, too.
Elkesiss was watching me, ears perked, making intermittent small peeps. So sure he'd caught my interest. It wasn't that good a story. Nothing that would make me follow someone to dungeon's end.
I got to my feet. I'd find water, then sleep. And then... Well, I had been feeling bored. There was no harm in traveling a couple floors down and listening to as much of Elkesiss' story as that would get me.
"Very well," I said. I tried to ignore Elkesiss' delighted squeaks. "When we wake."
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