The Friendly Battle & Other Pokemon One-Shots

Dawning

"Oh no..." Gololyod groaned. "How could something so terrible happen?"

It was the most miserable time of the year, one she preferred to spend inside as much as possible, but this morning Gololyod had found the weather was unusually cozy when she ventured outside. Hail had cuddled up against her as soon as she ventured into open air, and the sky was a cheery flat grey. She resolved to take advantage of such a nice day and set out to visit Neve, who she hadn't seen since before the new moon.

Neve lived by herself on a sun-bitten peak at the southern edge of the mountains. There was no helping it. Neve grew nucleation crystals, and that was simply the best place in the whole mountain range for it, but the gulf between there and the rest of the mountain range could be brutally searing even on a nice day. As slippery a trip as it could be for Gololyod, she was one of the biggest and toughest in their whole community, able to endure the worst extremes, while Neve was slim and frail even for a froslass and struggled to traverse the valley in spring and fall. In the dead of summer, Neve was practically trapped. And Neve was an adult, same as Gololyod, and maybe she shouldn't fuss so much, but Neve never ate many greens even when they were nicely frozen for her, and it'd be months before that was true again.

Unfortunately, Gololyod had misjudged the weather. The first part of her journey went perfectly, over old, icy snow chunks. In good cheer, she gathered herself to try to speed through the lower forest while it was still pleasant, only for the fair weather of the morning to evaporate right after she reached the tree line. Even un-seen, the sun's heat struck her like getting hit by the full force of a river.

Gololyod reacted the only reasonable way one can to the sun suddenly coming out from behind the clouds: she gave up, collapsed face-first into the ground, and bewailed her fate. The soil prickled moistly against her skin. She heaved an even bigger sigh and got up again, bracing herself against the stinging, ever more humid air. Trees were just gross, nothing like the clean, fresh shade cast by stone. Even the risk of an ice overhang turning suddenly from shade to traitorous lens was better than any kind of shade that involved being slowly coated in the slimy, sugary sweat of the white pine around her.

She sank so deep into self-pity that she even sped right by the human without noticing it. Luckily, the human brayed loudly enough to shake her from her thoughts, and she was so excited to see one up close that for a moment, all thoughts of her discomfort disappeared. It must've been startled by her, because the poor thing started to run the other way, but as good a job as it could do on those lengthy, springy limbs, it couldn't hope to match her speed and she was easily able to zoom in front of it. This time it toppled backward and lay on the ground for a moment.

Oh, it was just so neat. Gololyod had seen many humans in her life, and not one human had looked boring. Like the others, it was covered by all the things it had found and carried on its body, like it was trying for camouflage but didn't quite understand you had to pick one thing you were pretending to be like at a time and not a medley. It made her think of the aftermath of a rolling avalanche, where all the rocks and snow and ice and branches were jumbled together. And then there were its eyes! This one had eyes that were such a lovely blue, practically the color of a nucleation crystal already.

It was so strange to see one so far into the mountains. In her experience you had to travel quite far to where they lived, and it wasn't normally possible except at the height of winter. Maybe it'd gotten lost?

It rolled over and started to scuttle away on its four limbs, and Gololyod quickly grabbed it between her teeth and lifted into the air. It caterwauled and wiggled, but a few puffs of her breath stilled it. She had to be very careful. She didn't want to freeze it.

"And think," she said to herself as she continued, "I thought today was an unlucky day for me. But maybe this nasty weather is what got you out of your human lodge, hm? You like that big star up there, don't you, silly little thing?"

It yipped.

"Wonder what you think of all this," she added. "You're such curious creatures, aren't you?"

Maybe that curiosity occupied it for much of the trip through the valley, because it didn't start struggling in earnest until she was nearly up through the trees again. By the time she'd chilled it enough to get it calm in her jaws, there were ice crystals forming over its body. She wasn't worried, though. It was still quite warm at its core, and she'd brought humans much further without accidentally killing them. Still, she sped up. It was much easier to travel now that she was back amid hard, rough ice and stone.

"Neve," she called as she approached the mouth of her house. "I meant to bring you a nice salad, but I think you'll - oh, hi!" There was a gallade just inside, holding a small bag.

"This is Parhélie," Neve said, gesturing to the gallade. "Parhélie, this is my friend Gololyod." She glided toward the human.

"Parhélie! Nice to meet you!" She put the human on the ground and dipped in a slight bow. "You must be here to get, uh, " - the ralts had such frosty, grand terms for things - "'jewels of a new dawn'?"

He chuckled. "Delivering some too. Neve's crystals are getting so pure our own refining went by much faster than usual." He pulled a completed nucleation crystal from the bag and held it up so Gololyod could get a look at the blue-green stone that even in the cave's shade sparkled like a blinking eye. "We can awaken the jewels so quickly without any cracks. The spirits -"

He was cut off by the human letting out a deafening howl. Gololyod turned to it just in time to see it writhing, its legs holding in position but its upper body twisting like the wind. It struck Neve dead in the face and knocked her down.

"Neve! Are you okay!"

"I'm fine, I'm fine..." Neve said, rubbing her nose. "Ow... Mean little guy, aren't you..."

Parhélie hurried over as well, grabbing the human's limbs where it scrabbled at the ice. Neve reached out to Gololyod to pull herself back up. "Thanks. Yes, hold it like..." She sent another careful wave of cold through it, finishing the freeze.

Like all of Neve's statues, the artistry of the finished product was clear. The freeze of the outer skin was gentle enough to hardly damage the creature's muscle as it was locked in place, and there was another layer of fine ice over the surface to protect it from desiccation. All the energy still thrummed within, as Neve hadn't needed to use any harmful methods like a draining kiss beforehand, and Gololyod knew most of the internals had been chilled only to the very edge of crystallizing and now would be slowly overtaken in a precise sequence, culminating in the brain and leaving only the two eyes liquid. The eventual freezing of those would only happen when Neve judged them finally lulled to sleep by the chill and ready to be added to one of the growing nucleation crystals, without any risk of the human's spirit floating free during the transfer.

The gallade shivered.

"Oh, goodness," Neve said. "I'm so sorry, I've been keeping you here and you must be so uncomfortable!"

"No, no. Quite worth it, really. I'm honored I had a chance to see you at work."

"I'll get the ones that are ready to be woken and then you must be on your way before you get overchilled. Please, wait by the doorway in the sun. Gololyod, would you mind escorting him part of the way, just to be safe?"

"Of course." She'd feel just terrible if anything happened to anyone visiting the mountains. "And I can pick up some salad for you after all." Neve groaned. "Don't be like that, it's healthy to eat something other than meat and bone sometimes!"