The Friendly Battle & Other Pokemon One-Shots

The Friendly Battle

Finished posting another year of fic! To mark the boundary, another thing written in the present day.

PokemonWritingLeague, ImberLapis, "Halloween Writing Tag"

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Magnifying Glass Lightning is already posing as she forms. First impressions are supremely important and popping out of a pokeball radiating confidence before you've even seen what you'll be up against is a great way of wrongfooting opponents right from the start.

Then she sees what she's up against and almost trips over her own feet recoiling.

The body of the sandshrew is bloated enough that the normally interlocked scales are raised and bits of puffy soft flesh can be glimpsed in the edges. It's been dead two days by the smell of it and yet it's holding itself upright and the rotten tail is rotated back and forth at the base in a stiff metronome.

And behind it is...what is that? It almost looks like a human but the light of it is wrong for an instant and then there's a tiny flicker and faint shift in color, and the grass, it isn't bending the grass it stands on.

It doesn't smell dead. It smells like ozone and horrible choking power like she's never encountered before, not in the grandest championship.

She pulls her eyes off the things in front of her to throw a look back at the girl holding her pokeball, expecting to see terror, but she's met only with a sneer. "Come on, you can handle a sandshrew." Glass never expected much from her owners but she thought they would know danger when they saw it. She thought she could trust them not to get her killed.

What is this? The humans have talked of ghosts and hauntings but Glass has fought ghosts and they go down like any other pokemon. They don't feel like the weight of a mountain pressing you down and they don't travel with dead things that keep moving.

The crushing sensation shifts a little, like a crackle of lightning that only brushed by on its way past, and then the girl says, "No way, I said we'd battle and we're battling! It can get over itself. Manectric, use ice fang!"

Then a bit arcs, splitting and twisting into her, and she gets an echo of what the girl is hearing, ~Right of course, just a friendly battle, no reason to be afraid,~ before she snarls with all the black hate she can muster, "Shut up! Get out! Think I'll fall for that! Crush your voice between my jaws lap your blood off the dirt die before I listen to you!" Her panicked words have barely a trace of power in them and even her best would be like trying to shout the sun dark, but the connection breaks, or it chooses to break the connection, and she can't hear it dripping falsehoods behind her own eyes anymore.

"Ice fang! Not snarl, ice fang!"

The corpse tips forward, like it's finally toppling to lie still on the ground, but then the legs start to wiggle and it moves toward her.

She roars. It's not that she expects it to work, it's just a reflex at the thought of this thing actually touching her. And it...stops, for a moment. But not the way pokemon stop when she roars. It doesn't slow and halt, it doesn't hesitate, it doesn't flinch or step backward. It was moving and then it wasn't, like whatever power is here thought it would be fun to pretend for a moment she can do anything to stop it. And then it begins moving again. A little slower. But the legs are moving just as fast as before.

If Glass runs the girl will recall her. And maybe this thing or things will keep coming and kill the girl and then it'll have the pokeball Glass is trapped in and then...

"Ice fang!" the girl shouts, stomping her foot. "Why are you always like this! You know the move!"

No, she doesn't dare run for it. She breathes in deeply, feeling the energies swirl between her teeth, pushing aside the taste of death and pressure and focusing everything she has into a hyper beam. It shoots out and -

She knows what it should look like, hitting another pokemon. But millimeters before it reaches the dead sandshrew, an almost invisible line of light gets in the way and the beam splits, streaming away to either side.

When her attack fades and her back legs collapse under her, the untouched corpse wobbles like a tapped ball, then rolls to one side and the limbs...they don't go limp, they can't, not swollen and stiff like they are. Instead they bend, swollen flesh bulging from the compressed joints, into the imitation of a live sandshrew's legs drooping they go unconscious. The limbs hold the position and she stares, expecting the stretched, weakened skin to rupture under the pressure and splatter the grass in putrid goo. It doesn't.

The choking energy continues to writhe. "Yeah. But a strong pokemon's not much good if it doesn't listen, ugh. You got another pokemon? Oh, okay. Good battle, anyway."

It is smiling and its teeth are so bright they glow.

The girl lifts the pokeball. Glass does bolt, but it's not fast enough. "Manectric, return!"