The Friendly Battle & Other Pokemon One-Shots

Curate's Egg

Jackson cursed, chasing the seedot, or more accurately, chasing his watch currently held tight in the curled leaf bobbing behind the cursed pokemon. He'd just been thinking how it'd be nice for there to be something to actually deal with instead of waiting around staring at flowers, and well, talk of a gyarados and you'll get eaten.

The seedot sprinted up to a blonde girl with a bidoof standing near her feet. It hopped into her arms, his watch still clutched in the leaf growing off the top of its head.

"Is that your pokemon?" he shouted.

~I'm terribly sorry.~ Some psychic? Didn't they usually stick to psychic pokemon? And this was one so infuriating pretentious she was showing off rather than just talking like a normal person. As he glared, the girl pried the watch loose and gingerly held it out to him.

He snatched it back, not at all mollified. "And what are you even doing here, Floaroma Meadow's off-limits! There's a sign!"

~I was pursuing Autumn Bounce here,~ she responded, as if that didn't just underline the problem. ~The good weather has him so excited. He only wanted to play.~

"You need to keep your pokemon under control!" he thundered. "When were you last at a pokecenter? You should've had that leaf clipped off as soon as you noticed it, weeks ago!"

~Clipped?~ she repeated. Her eyes grew big and trembly. In her arms, the seedot began to bleat, "Dotse!"

He ignored both forms of nonsense. "It's basic husbandry!"

~He uses the leaf to hold things,~ she said.

"Yes! That's the problem! What is wrong with you!" Arg, kids these days. "That's it, trespasser. I challenge you to a battle," he said. "And then you're getting yourself out of here when you lose. Go, Zangoose!"

Her expression transformed in a flash to a pleasant smile, like this was some sort of joke to her. ~Oh. How nice. Three will love this.~ And then, like some sort of crazy person, she sent out a seviper.

He tried getting out at least one order but his zangoose was already in a wild frenzy. The girl just stood there silently. Under any other circumstance, he'd complain about the terrible sportsmanship of using private telepathy to hide her commands but there was no way she could be giving any. This was someone incompetent enough to think of sending out a seviper against a zangoose when Cynthia herself would be hard-pressed to keep one listening in such circumstances.

Which by all rights should have meant his zangoose won. Everything about this girl said she was some coddling airhead who didn't know a thing about actually handling pokemon.

But her seviper was an absolute beast, the sort of thing that made you think about how in the old days people just called these things monsters. Zangoose had quite the resistance to poison but within minutes his pokemon had more venom than blood in its veins.

"Hrn." He recalled his pokemon and regarded her with grudging respect. She looked back with a smug serenity. Well, she'd earned that. "Not bad. You're a better trainer than I expected."

~I can't take the credit,~ she said modestly as she knelt down by her seviper, dropped her bag, and began applying medicine. So she had enough successes to have money to burn as well. ~She's quite tenacious.~

"Well then. My name's Jackson. What's yours, trespasser?"

~Ormarr Shesha. I do apologize for trespassing, though.~

He waved a hand. "I'm just supposed to make sure no one tampers with the eggs for the 'Easter' hunt," he told her, unable to hold back the sneer. "Everyone else is attending Easter mass so I was tapped to help out, when the whole reason I'm not taking one step into that church is the pastor supporting this sort of pagan garbage. Eggs, eggs, eggs, like what comes out of a pokemon's butt has anything to do with divinity. You know, they've also doing this ridiculous 'tournament' about" - he checked his watch - "now where all the kids bang their colored eggs against each other and whichever one doesn't break is crowned champion."