The Friendly Battle & Other Pokemon One-Shots

Slush

The cruelest part of it all is that there's no time to mourn in the aftermath.

The remainder of the skulk gathers outside. It would be at least a small kindness if the morning snowstorm had continued but it is a terrifically clear noon with a terrifically blazing sun, the sort where even the purest white fur risks being picked out from the white snow and the only cover available is the too-large loom of the tunnel's entrance, the one everyone's eyes avoid. It is not sized for vulpix, because vulpix do not come out of it.

Min, ever the quick one, manages to interrupt before they can even begin. "I nominate no one," she says.

Seong replies, soft and with all the pain in his voice that Min's lacks, "Without a ninetales this will only get worse."

"Can it?" Min growls. Her six tails thrash against the snow. "Can it get worse? Or are we just throwing good lives after bad to pretend the world is the same?"

Satomi says firmly, "Eunji knew her duty. She did this to protect us."

"And it was for nothing." Hye's voice cracks like melting ice. It had sounded little better a week ago, when she was pleading with Eunji. "As it was with Yong. As it was with Doyun. As it was with Siu. They will not leave our mountain when they are asked, and they will not retreat when they are attacked. The time of protection passed us by. You heard the one who took Eunji. It came for the very purpose of finding her."

"A ninetales is proof to humans that this mountain is sacred," argues Seong. "Even if..." He shakes his head. "We must have a ninetales. We've all been down the mountain, we've all seen how bad things are for people elsewhere."

"A ninetales was sacred to them before that," Min snaps. "Humans believed us divinity before they believed us servants of another divinity. The ground's been melting under our feet for long before this. Now the water's so hot it scalds our paws and we pretend to be surprised to find them wet at all, as if the ice only just disappeared. They've gone up and down our mountain for generations now and we made excuses for it to pretend it meant nothing. That we chose to let through the strongest, that their trips were a sign of mutual respect. But we can no more defend ourselves than any of their other conquests. We are not any different than those below us. No better. It took longer to come to us, but it came."

"But if one of us can drive the next ones away..."

"Then a swarm darkens the snows to capture them!" Hye cries. "A human doesn't care about any particular person down below. We all know how it works. We've known that there is no winning, that strength brings only greater pain before loss."

"Down there! But things are different up here, for us," Satomi insists.

"Were."

"Are!"

"Were," Min snaps. "Were, years ago. The only difference between above and below is we pretend there's one. You pretend we are staring down our end, that anything remains to fight. Our end has come already, come and passed while we buried ourselves in the snow rather than see it."

"We can't give up. Without a ninetales, without anyone to drive them away, how long will anyone else last, how long before humans take us all? Everything you're saying - what else can we do but strive to put things right? It cannot be too late." Satomi looks to Seong. "Let us both enter."

"No," Min says in horror.

Seong looks to the ground instead of meeting her eyes. "The snow's different these years," he says. "Softer, more air than water, but no deeper. But there's snow still."

"Seong, no."

"We won't know until we try."

For the last time, people enter the tunnel.

Four days later, the last two ninetales of Mount Lanakila are gone from its slopes.