Thread: The Surprising Adventures of a Glaceon in Unova (Finished!)

Chapter Nineteen: Rolling Rocks

A few hours after they were awoken by the light turning on again, Sage Bronius and a grunt entered the room. It was the first time they had seen Bronius since they had become his captives, and he seemed to be inspecting them.

“Decent specimens, I suppose,” he said, “I think they'll put in some good work. But if- Dummkopf!” he suddenly shouted at the grunt, “You put the Servine in a normal cage? It has vines, you idiot! Get it a closed off, plastic cage!”

Realising it was his last chance, Octa immediately extended his vines to Bronius and ran them through his pockets. Bronius, however, grabbed the vines with both hands and gave them a hard pull, thus smashing Octa into the cage's bars. “Next time your vines are out of your cage I'll tear them off.”

Octa retracted his vines and rubbed his bruised face. Suddenly a different grunt from the one that had just left entered the room. “Sage Bronius! The ship has arrived!”

“Ah, gut! See to it that these seven are brought there as soon as the Servine is put in a plastic cage.”

“I will, sage. There was a bit of trouble, by the way.”

“Trouble?!”

“N-nothing to worry about, sage. Just some stupid tourist with a Sinnoh accent who wanted to get on board and have us give him a tour of the city.”

“You told him to go away?”

“Yeah, but he tried to sneak on board anyway, so we knocked him out and threw him off the ship.”

“Gut.”

“Yeah, but he was carrying something you will find interesting: some strange rock!”

The grunt presented a piece of light grey rock to Bronius, who recoiled a bit as he took it. “That's odd... Ja, this will be interesting to research when I have some time.”

After examining the rock for a moment, Bronius put it in a pocket in his brown mantle and walked over to inspect Boreas. “I don't think we need to bother with taking this one to the castle, it can't work.” The door opened, and Boreas could hardly believe his eyes when he saw whom entered.

Still looking at Boreas, Bronius pointed at the person whom had just entered. “You, have this Eevee put out of its misery.”

“Get away from my pokémon,” said Black. Bronius turned around in surprise and Black punched him in the face. Bronius stumbled back, hit his head on Boreas' cage, and fell to the ground.

All the pokémon cheered for Black as a brown-haired human female wearing a white shirt and blue shorts entered the room. “White!” Febby cheered.

Black cheerfully greeted all his pokémon and stole the keys, as well as the odd bit of rock, from the unconscious Bronius. He released them one by one, and Toxica and Octa immediately jumped into his arms, while Capella maintained a more respectable distance and Lucius just walked out of his cage without paying Black any attention. Boreas, finally, had to be carefully carried out of his cage by Black, who gladly hugged him.

“I'm so glad you guys are here!” he said, “Don't worry, Nurse War can heal you all, I'm sure.”

Boreas saw a lithe, feminine Eevee with a bushy tail in White's arms and suddenly felt oddly dizzy and nervous. “You're an Eevee!” he exclaimed.

Febby looked around and saw him. “Oh! And s-so are you.”

A bit of an odd silence fell between them as they both cuddled with their trainers.

“Blimey, it's nice tha' choo got reunited wiff your trainers, but shouldn't we scarper? I ffink this dental flosser 'ere's wakin' up!”

Boreas turned to talk to Thomas, but when he actually saw him, he suddenly felt very cold and a veil of crimson hatred clouded his mind.

He was back in the forest, seeing his father's corpse and his mother about to die fighting the vicious monsters. He saw his brother collapse, his throat cut, and expected to die as the beast lifted its sharpened claw up to execute him.

“Someffink wrong, guv?” the Zangoose asked as he stared at it with the sort of stare that usually only those who have died and returned as some form of vengeful ghost to avenge their murderers manage to pull off.

“You...” Boreas hissed, his voice drenched with pure hate like a garment soaked with poison to assassinate a king, “You're a monster, you killed them...”

“What'choo talkin' 'bout, guv? I ain't killed nobody, it' chore china Thomas, remember?”

“You killed them! I'll kill you! I'LL KILL YOU!!!!” Boreas screamed, and he tried to launch himself at the Zangoose, but a severe pain shot through him as his legs immediately gave way and he plummeted from Black's arms. Octa managed to catch him just before he hit the ground and returned him to Black's arms.

“I'LL GET YOU!!!!” Boreas screamed like a madman, “MURDERER!!!!”

“Blimey, i' wasn' me, wha'e'er i' was! Wha' 'appened to us bein' mates?”

“Calm down, my dear fellow, please!” Octa commanded, “Thomas did not kill your parents, he's our friend!”

Boreas came a bit closer to calmness, like Pluto coming a bit closer to the Sun during one part of its orbit. “It.” Boreas seethed between clenched teeth, “Is. Not. My. Friend! It's a Zangoose, a murderer!”

“Arceus luv a Ducklett, I didn' make chore paren's kark it, guv, i' was a differen' Zangoose!”

“You're all the same!” Boreas hatefully seethed, “Your kind murdered them!”

“Please,” Octa apologised, still holding Boreas, “accept my humblest apologies for this behaviour.”

“No problem, guv'nor. I unnerstan' chore anger, but i' wasn' me what kill 'chore parents, mate. An' I'm sorry for wha' other Zangeese did to choo. Just lissen to me voice, an' remember tha' I'm chore china.”

His logic managed to calm Boreas down a bit more. “I don't care, your kind murdered my family! You can't be my friend, you're my enemy!”

“Look guv, can I help i' that I look like the Aris wha' kille' chore parents?”

Then this little argument was interrupted as Bronius had awoken and was sending out his pokémon. “I was merciful to you, boy, and let you live, and this is how you repay me? Fine, then it's your own fault! Kill them!”

Black, White, their pokémon, and Thomas ran for their lives out of the room into a long white corridor as the six mighty rock types started pursuit. Boreas and Octa were still in Black's arms.

“My dear fellow,” Octa said, “I thought you were over it.”

“Yes, so did I!” Boreas snapped, “But I guess we were wrong, hmm?!”

“Look, you have to realise that this is highly illogical. Thomas didn't-”

“Logic be damned! That thing is a Zangoose, and I hate it!”

Gigalith and Omastar followed them through the door, while Rhypherior and Aggron didn't bother with that formality and just bashed through the wall with a single stroke. White threw five pokéballs to unleash a Vullaby, a Rufflet, a Darumaka, a Panpour, and an Audino. They all ran in a fighting retreat, except Boreas whom was still being carried by Black as he was unable to walk for himself. The other eleven battled as they ran off, only fighting to block the enemy's attacks or slow them down.

Octa launched a Leaf Tornado at the Omastar which was shooting its sharp spikes at them, Lucius spit fire at Aggron in an attempt to slow it down, Vullaby, Rufflet, and Capella launched themselves into the air to intercept Archeops attempting to fly over the others to attack Black and White. Rhypherior fired a massive rock at Thomas, who dodged it with unbelievable agility. Boreas caught himself hoping that the Zangoose's Detect would fail.

Don't be like that, he thought, even if his species turned out to be a bit of a nasty surprise, it's Thomas, I don't actually want him to die.

Yes, I do. It's a Zangoose, how could I not want it to die? They killed my family!

He didn't, and I'll feel very bad if his Detect actually fails.

No, I won't, I'll feel very good, because there will be one less of those bastards around.

They turned a corner into another long white corridor, and Aggron saved itself some time by cutting the corner through the walls and the room on the corner. It was now running in front of the other rock types, trying to kill Panpour and Octa with a single Iron Head. But Panpour was only scraped by the attack and Octa dodged it with a bizarre pirouette, launched himself into the air with his vines, and landed in Aggron's neck. In an excellent position to do so, he began draining Aggron's energy with a Mega Drain. The others overtook Aggron as it slowed down trying to get Octa off it.

The rock types were a bit too large for the small corridor together, and actually destroyed quite a bit of the corridor's walls as they pursued Black and White, leaving a trail of destruction behind. A storm of sharp gemstones wounded everyone when Gigalith used its Power Gem attack. Capella tangled with Omastar as she fled, returning its water attacks and paralysing it with electric pulses at the same time.

They tried to make obstacles for their pursuers by pulling down lamps, throwing over drinks machines and cupboards, and opening doors in passing, but there was just nothing that could even slow down the powerful rocky creatures pursuing them, as they casually smashed through any obstacle as if it was a cardboard prop in a poorly budgeted sixties sci-fi show. Occasionally grunts would show up ahead to block the way, but Black and White shoved them aside without slowing their running.

Gigalith took a break from shooting gemstones at them and instead fired a barrage of sharp stones the size of a fist that missed all of them. However, it seems they were not even aimed at them, as they floated around further down the corridor, waiting.

“Stealth Rock!” White shouted, “Go left!”

They entered a door instead of continuing down the trapped corridor and entered some kind of large mess hall. It mainly contained cheap plastic tables, and quite a lot of them too. A few out of uniform grunts who were eating dinner looked very surprised at the group of humans and pokémon running for their lives, and then looked even more surprised when the wall collapsed and five powerful rocky creatures bashed through, destroying the entire hall. Cheap plastic tables were splintered en masse as rocks were shot into them and they were brushed aside in large groups by Rhypherior's powerful rock arms. Seeing the sharp plastic splinters flying about, Boreas had an idea. “The shards!” he shouted, “use them as ammunitions, aim for their eyes!”

Vullaby made a Gust, which immediately sucked up a lot of shards, turning into a whirlwind of sharp plastic. She caught Omastar, by far the most vulnerable enemy, in it, and it came out with several of the sharp plastic spikes sticking out of its body. Archeops flew over, but was suddenly caught by vines coming from somewhere in the charging horde of rock types, and before it could respond Octa launched himself into the air by pulling on the vines, flew barely over the charging Rhypherior's horn, and landed just behind Black. He retracted his vines, whipped up a Leaf Tornado which gathered some splinters, and fired it at Omastar. In severe pain, with a lot of deep cuts and sharp spikes sticking from its soft body, the cephalopod retracted into its shell. There was no time to cheer, though, as the other four were still after them. They crossed the last part of the mess hall, jumping over a fallen table and ducking under a ray of sharp gems and entered a door leading to another corridor.

They dashed through the corridor, and by now Boreas was really starting to wish that he could walk for himself so he could make some meaningful contribution instead of just lying in Black's arms. Archeops was the first to catch up as the others started demolishing another corridor in an attempt to kill them, and it swooped over the battling pokémon, ready to grab Black in its claws, when Lucius made a large jump, landed on its back, and dug his jaws into its neck. With a screech the Archeops missed Black and struggled to get Lucius off it. Lucius suddenly shone with a blinding white light, and they left Boreas' view behind White. When he saw them again a moment later, Lucius had evolved to Houndoom and Archeops collapsed to the ground, unable to fly a creature heavier than itself around, especially with Lucius' terrifying jaws around its neck. Lucius was about to kill it by biting its throat, but changed his mind when Rhypherior came very close to crushing him and ran away instead, very fast now that his size had increased.

They were nearing the end of the corridor where a door blocked the way. Black and White kicked the door down together, and they entered what seemed like the reception room of an office building. The other side of the reception was a wall of thick glass with an unmoving revolving door in it. They ran for the revolving door immediately, but found it was closed and the glass of the walls and door was more than a decimetre thick. However, through the glass the Gym on the other side of the street was clearly visible.

“What the...” Black exclaimed, “This is Gym Street!”

“They made a hideout right in front of the Gym?” White said.

At that moment Aggron, Gigalith, and Rhypherior burst through the wall, covering the entire reception in rubble. As there was no way out, their only hope was to defeat their enemies. Rhypherior suddenly shot off a massive rock that exploded just before Black and White's feet, and the humans were knocked away, Boreas launched from Black's arms. He thankfully hit the ground with his right side, and immediately tried to see if Black was alright. He seemed hurt, but alive and busy trying to get away from the huge Rhypherior trying to crush him. The pokémon were mostly fighting Aggron and Gigalith in groups.

Boreas saw Thomas rush forward at Aggron, slashing and kicking it in powerful Close Combat, and wounded his enemy pretty badly by dislodging the armour on its underbelly and cutting into its soft flesh underneath. The Aggron screamed in pain, but in Close Combat Thomas had neglected his defence, and the Aggron smashed into him with a calamitous Head Smash. Thomas was launched through the hall, and hit the glass outer wall above Boreas head-first. He fell down on the ground before Boreas, his neck twisted in an impossible angle, and Boreas heard him exhale his final breath and saw the light leave his eyes.

“N-no.” Boreas stammered.

It's a Zangoose. He thought, don't feel sorry for it, it got what it deserved.

That's rubbish! It's Thomas, and he didn't deserve this at all!

A tear ran from Boreas' eye as he looked into his dead friend's eyes. Realising that this was hardly the time or place, he turned his thoughts to the battle, and saw how Rhypherior crushed Panpour into the ground.

“Hey, Aggron!” he shouted, bringing himself as close to a standing position as he could manage, “you killed my friend! I'll get you for that!”

Aggron looked up from his battle with Toxica, Darumaka, and Audino to give Boreas a mocking look.

“Come on here, then, and I'll kill you myself!” Boreas shouted, “Just you and me, one on one! I'll get you!”

The Aggron ran at him, ignoring his current opponents, and charged at him with a Head Smash. Boreas grinned as his plan was working, until he realised he couldn't walk properly and thus couldn't get out of the charging behemoth's way. Black ran by, just before the Aggron, picked him up by the scruff of his neck in passing, and dived out of Aggron's way. It kept going and crashed right through the thick glass wall, immediately collapsing it into a million shards.

Now that they could get out, the surviving combatants rushed outside, into the street full of shocked people, but they were quickly followed by their enemies. Then Burgh, Bianca, and a long-haired human girl rushed out of the Gym and joined the battle.

Now that they had such a massive majority, the battle seemed to be going the other way. The enemies just weren't powerful enough to battle almost thirty pokémon at once. Then Bronius and his three pokémon that had fallen behind showed up in the ravaged reception.

“Arceus in Halle des Beginns!” he cursed, getting his Xtranceiver, “Plasma, our hideout has been discovered! Initiate Operation And The Bandit!”

The building itself exhausted thick black smoke, plunging the entire Gym Street, as well as most of the rest of the city, in smoky darkness that persisted for more than an hour and allowed Team Plasma to escape them, as well as caused quite a lot of accidents.

–

A few days later Boreas found himself alone at a simple grave on a grassy knoll. He wasn't sure what you were supposed to do at a grave and just sort of looked around nervously. That didn't really make him feel better, though. For some reason he felt as if he had to say something.

“I'm sorry I hated you for being a Zangoose,” Great, now I'm talking to a grave. “I... Shouldn't have acted like that. Your species shouldn't have mattered, and yet it did. I know you can't really hear this because you're dead,” So why am I saying it in the first place? “but I'm sorry I acted like that in our last conversation, my friend.” He looked around, “I hope you won't mind- I guess you won't, 'cause you're dead- But I hope you won't mind if I just pretend for now that my family is buried here too... They never had a grave, you see...”

He visualised their names on the grave. “Dad, Mum, I miss you... I remember the day you took me outside of the burrow for the very first time... I was so fascinated with finding out that there was so much more than just our burrow, and wanted to see it all that day, and you had to disappoint me by telling me it would take a bit longer than that...” the tears were streaming now, though he felt oddly happy at the same time, “...And then you caught me sneaking outside that night, Dad, and got very angry... But the next day, everything was good between us again...

And Eurus, remember that time when you told us all you had found a monster, and then I wanted to see it, and we ended up running through the forest all day looking for it?

Notus, remember that time when we were at the brook and you wanted to swim like the Duckletts, and the water made me all wet and miserable and we ended up being chased off by the Swanna? Odd how that seems like such a good time now, looking back.

And Zeph, remember when we scared all those Pidoves together and we felt incredibly cool for doing it? And that time when we found Nuvema and spied on the humans there and thought they would eat us?” he chuckled, “If only you could see me now. Humans are really pretty friendly... Well, most of them, that is.

I must be nuts talking to you like this, but it really made me feel better, you know. Farewell.”

That was a really good chapter
the whole thing with thomas was really well done and the scene at the end was nice
great work

Chapter Twenty: Water and Ice

Present

“So did you ever find out what they meant by “the castle?” asked Aqua.

“No,” said Boreas, “but from the way they talked about it, I think it's a place where they put the pokémon they claim to have liberated to work.”

“Did they literally say that, or did you have to read between the lines?”

“They didn't literally say it, but they did say we would be taken to this castle and talked about whether or not we could work, and it sounded like there was a relationship between those two topics.”

“I see,” Aqua thought for a moment. “Well, it could be that “castle” is a place like the daycare you visited, and that you'd be taken there and expected to care for young pokémon...”

“They literally used the phrase “What use is a pokémon what can't work or fight?””

Octa interrupted him. “Whom can't fight.”

“Yes, I know,” said Boreas annoyed, “But the grunt used the word “what”. And later, Bronius ordered me put out of my misery because my legs were broken. Does that sound innocent to you too?”

Aqua thought for another moment. “No, I guess you're right. There is certainly something fishy going on in that branch of Team Plasma.”

“That branch?” Boreas asked exasperated, “what about all the others?”

“Well, from what you're telling me it sounds like each of their sages commands a part of their forces. So perhaps Bronius is the only one who makes pokémon work for them, while the others may actually be liberating pokémon. There's a rotten leppa in every basket.”

Boreas was going to answer that, but then he saw they had arrived back in Driftveil and where just mooring onto the pier. “Oh, looks like we're back.”

Aqua stood up. “Well, I think I'd better be going.”

“No, wait, don't you want to come with me? You could have dinner with us at the pokécenter.” he pleaded.

“Nah, I have to swim all the way back upstream and it's getting late. But perhaps we can meet up again tomorrow?”

Boreas' heart and stomach both made a double somersault as he realised she had just asked him on a date. “Yeah, great! Gladly. Sure! Where d'you want to go?”

“I've got an idea, but we can only get there by swimming. Let's meet right here on the pier tomorrow.”

As much as he liked having a date with Aqua, Boreas didn't want to put his very limited swimming skills to the test. “I dunno... You've seen I'm not much of a swimmer.”

“All the better... Then you can hold on to me...” she whispered. Then, with a wink, she jumped overboard. Boreas looked over the moored boat's edge to watch her swim away. She was swimming under water, so he only saw an incredibly fast moving shadow swim up the river. He watched her swim away into the distance, wishing he could swim along with her. Even after she had long disappeared from sight, he kept looking at the river dreamily until the Sun set half an hour later.

–

That evening Boreas was playing chess with Octa, and losing even worse than usual. It was mainly because he kept daydreaming about Aqua. He kept running over their conversations in his head, hearing her voice like a nightingale flirt with him, saw her wink at him, and felt the kiss she had given him whilst swimming.

Octa moved his bishop, and though Boreas hadn't been paying much attention to the game and had already lost all his small pieces and a rook, he immediately saw his chance and took it with his sole remaining rook.

Then he noticed Octa was grinning smugly. “I see. Your eyes are open, you can move the pieces, but the brain is on vacation with a certain charming lady, isn't it?”

“What d'you mean?” Boreas responded.

“This.” Octa took the rook with his knight, “Check.”

Boreas saw that not only his king was in danger, but his queen as well. If he moved his king out of the way, the queen would be taken. Sighing, he moved his king to the only tile he could. “I see what you mean. A bishop for a rook and the queen is a very poor trade for me.”

Grinning self-assuredly, Octa took the queen. “Do you think that's all you're losing here? This is checkmate, my dear fellow.”

“You're right. You win..”

Of course, now the boasting began. “Obviously my strategy was superior, my dear fellow, the fork I executed just before checkmate was a thoroughly masterful move, even if it hadn't led directly to my victory, as it gave you no choice but to sacrifice your queen.”

“It sure was, but I was just a bit distracted, you know.”

“You see, this is why looking ahead is so important in chess. 'Tis not good enough to be able to make a good move, you have to anticipate making that move ten turns ahead.”

“Alright, I was just a bit distracted. I think I'm going to go to sleep now.”

“Already? Don't you want to play another round?”

“No, I want to be well-rested tomorrow.”

“Alright. I'd wish you sweet dreams, but I doubt you shall need my wishes to get those after meeting your new ladyfriend.”

–

After a night of pleasant dreams, Boreas awoke. Normally, he would go back to sleep pretty much instantly, but now he immediately stood up, got out from under Black's bed, and walked to the door silently, attempting not to awaken anyone.

“My dear fellow, what on Earth are you doing?” a voice said.

“What does it look like I'm doing?”

“It looks like you are sneaking away to go to your date at half past six.”

“Exactly.”

“Don't you think your ladyfriend might not have meant for you to encounter one another this early in the morning? She is probably still sleeping, like all civilised people do at this hour.”

“That's no problem, I'll just wait for her.”

“My dear fellow, we both know your patience is as capacious as an ant's bladder. And being enamoured makes one's judgement worse. Yes, you could go to the pier now and wait for hours, probably start feeling very miserable and doubtful that she'll ever show up, or you could just go back to sleep, go there in a few hours, and only have to wait for her for a short while. 'Tis your choice, my dear fellow, but I believe you know which option I would recommend.”

Boreas couldn't help see the logic in that and got back under the bed. “Okay, fine. But I don't think I can sleep at all... I'm so excited!”

“Yes, I get that impression,” said Octa.

“I'm in love, Octa! I'm in love, I'm in love, and how could I not be? Y'know, I suddenly understand why people write poetry now. I thought they were just being whiny and overreacting, but now I see that when you're in love, you just have to express yourself somehow. I had no idea someone could be so madly in love with another person. And I completely take back what I said about that Byron-guy a few weeks ago.”

“Good. Lord Byron did not deserve your original assessment.”

“I wish I could just go to her right now... It's as if every fibre in my body is magnetically pulled to her, she's so incredibly lovely... I mean, when she smiles, her black eyes light up as if there were stars in them, and her ears point up a bit, and she gets these really cute dimples in her cheeks... Oh, she's so charming, and nice, and handsome... Her eyes, have you seen her eyes?”

“I believe I may have caught a quick glimpse of them.”

“And her tail... Wow, her tail... And her nose is so pretty... And she actually kissed me yesterday!”

“Did she?”

“Yeah, it was just on my cheek, but it felt as if time stopped and the entire universe was absolute bliss... If I was the kind of ice-type that's actually made of ice, I would probably have melted... Y'know, it feels as if I'm going mad, but in such a good way. I thought I had been in love before, with Febby, but now I know I was just attracted to her, that it wasn't even close to the real thing... Octa, have you ever been in love?”

Octa answered with a snore, and Boreas realised that while he felt more awake than ever before, to everyone else it was still 7 in the morning and that he probably should shut up.

–

At nine, Boreas just couldn't stand lying under the bed thinking of Aqua any more, and was pining for the real one. So he got up, ate a minimal breakfast on the pokécenter's ground floor, and left to go to the pier. To his disappointment, she wasn't there yet. He sat down on the wooden pier and started scanning the river. It wasn't long before he got up and started pacing around the nearby shore. He started worrying she would not show up, that he would never see her again. Though he knew that fear was probably ungrounded, it gripped him like the cold, slimy, dead hand of a ghost and made him very nervous and afraid. Am I stupid? He wondered, it's just very early, no need to start hyperventilating.

But he wouldn't stop being nervous and wondering if she'd ever show up. Then he became nervous about how he would look if she did show up and tried to take a look at his reflection in the water. He walked back onto the pier to look at his reflection in the water. His reflection looked back with an intelligent gleam in its eyes and rather unkempt hair for a Glaceon. He sighed and ran a paw through his hair to make it look a bit better. Just his luck that he was one of the few species of pokémon who had a different kind of fur on their heads than on the rest of their bodies, and thus had to worry about haircuts like humans. He was blushing slightly, which mixed with the blue fur on his cheeks to give it a slight hint of purple. He remembered that Aqua had said he looked cute when he blushed, and immediately his cheeks turned a much clearer and more expressive purple.

Suddenly a splash of water hit his face and a gorgeous blue face breached the water. “Hi!”

Boreas made an involuntary movement in start, lost his balance, moved his legs by reflex to regain it, moved them off the pier and fell into the water. He surfaced clumsily next to Aqua laughing. “H-hi.”

“I see you fell for me.” Aqua joked.

“How could I not?” Boreas said, “so, where is this place you wanted to swim to?”

“I thought you weren't so enthusiastic about swimming.”

“Well,” said Boreas, “I wasn't at first, but when you promised I could hold on to you, I liked the idea a lot better.”

“Oh did you? Well, if you want to hold me, you'll have to catch me first!” she said with a grin as she rapidly swam a few metres away and splashed some water into his face. Boreas swam after her, but just before he reached her she dived underwater and reappeared almost instantly on Boreas' other side. He tried to grab her, but she was gone again and Boreas felt a sudden yank on his tail. He turned around only to see Aqua looking innocently at the shore. When he tried to get her, she disappeared, reappeared on his other side, and splashed some water in his face.

“Heehee, catch me if you can!” he tried to catch her, but she was gone again. “Here I am.” she whispered in his ear.

He tried to catch her, but as was to be expected she was gone again. “Okay, you win! I can't catch you, you're too fast. Can you help me get to the shore? 'Cause I'm having trouble staying afloat.”

“Do you really think I'd fall for the same trick twice?”

“It's no-” a wave washed over his head, and he resurfaced coughing, “trick! I need your help!” he disappeared underwater.

As he struggled underwater, he felt Aqua nudge him up to the surface and immediately used the opportunity to put his paws around her. “Gotcha.”

Aqua chuckled. For a moment they just relished in the aquatic embrace. Then she said: “Yes, you did. But there's something you failed to consider: what are you going to do when I dive down to the bottom of the river?”

“Hold my breath until you resurface, I suppose.”

“I can hold my breath for five hours, y'know.”

“I can hold my breath for five minutes. I hope. But by all means, dive. When I run out of breath, you can give me mouth to mouth resuscitation.”

Aqua brought a paw to her mouth pretending to be insulted whilst trying to stifle her laughter. “I would never! What kind of girl do you think I am?”

“I bet you would,” he teased, “You would jump at an excuse to snog me.”

“I would not! I'd rather let you drown.”

“No, you wouldn't. Besides, what about all those stories about Vaporeons rescuing drowning people?”

“Two things:” Aqua said, stroking Boreas' left ear gently, “firstly all those stories happen at sea, while this is a river. Secondly those are the good Vaporeons. I'm a bad one,” she said with a wink.

“Yes, you are,” said Boreas as they moved their faces closer together. Then he was suddenly underwater, zooming through blueness.

“Pretty, isn't it?” he heard Aqua's voice, though he could barely see her.

“Bllupp,” he said. Then he mouthed the words “I don't know, I can't see underwater.”

Suddenly the bubbles of air he had just exhaled when he tried to talk came back and clung to his eyes. After a moment of getting used to it, he actually saw everything in brilliant detail as if he was above the surface. It was indeed pretty, but he mainly had eye for Aqua, who looked even prettier than above the surface with the wet fur clinging close to her body and the movements her tail and finned ears made to help her swim. He was about to start pretending he was suffocating so she would give him mouth to mouth resuscitation, when they resurfaced.

“Well, what did you think?” Aqua asked, her face close to his.

“Absolutely gorgeous,” Boreas said, staring deep into her black eyes. “So was the view, incidentally.”

Aqua chuckled. “Are you ready to go again?”

“Always,” said Boreas with a suggestive smile.

They dived underwater once again, and Aqua made sure air bubbles clung around his eyes once again. The river was full of life, with many aquatic creatures and plants everywhere. They were swimming at incredibly speed, though Boreas thought he was bound to be slowing Aqua down. He hoped he was, as it would mean it would take longer to get to their destination, so he would get to hold her like this longer.

After a few more dives at incredible speed, they resurfaced once again, near a small, white beach sheltered between rocks. “Look, this is where I was taking you. Barely anyone knows its existence, so we won't be disturbed.”

“Good.” Boreas smiled.

“Anyway, you've clung to me enough. Let's see you swim the last bit for yourself.”

Boreas pouted. “But I can't swim.”

“Yes, you can.” She struggled to get free from his grip, and managed to escape very quickly. He swam after her, and when he reached her found he already was on the beach. As they got onto the sand, Boreas shook himself dry.

“You know,” he asked Aqua, “I have been telling you quite a lot about myself, but I still know so little about you. Like, how did you evolve to a gorgeous, foxy Vaporeon?”

“I don't know how you evolved into such a cute Glaceon either. You first.”

“But I've already told you so much...”

Aqua blinked in rapid succession a few times and snuggled up to Boreas.

“Okay, fine. You're very persuasive. I evolved quite soon after we escaped from Team Plasma, actually...”

Very good chapter, the interactions between your characters is brilliant, you really get to know the Pokemon
And I can't wait to find out how Boreas evolved should be interesting

Chapter Twenty-One: Premier Insect Artist

Past

Boreas tried to ignore the pain in his legs as he walked through the street, following Black to the Gym. It had been six weeks since his legs were broken, and Nurse War said they were healed as well as they ever would be. But the fact was, despite the nurse and Capella's cares, his legs hurt a lot when he walked. He tried not to let anyone notice, though, not wanting the Gym battle delayed even more than it already was. He was sick of Castelia after so many weeks there and just wanted to defeat Burgh and go somewhere else. Though he tried to hide the pain he felt with each step, it seemed he was not entirely successful.

“My dear fellow,” said Octa, “do your fractures continue to ache?”

“No, not at all!” Boreas lied, “I'm just... Uh... Annoyed by the warm weather. Yeah, that's it. Bloody August, eh?”

“It so happens August has always been my favourite month of the year, actually.”

“Really? Why?”

“Well, for one thing, I like the heat and the long daylight. For another, it was named after a namesake of mine.”

“No, it isn't,” Boreas said with annoyance, “if it were, you would be named August or the month would be named Octavianus.”

“Actually, it is. August was named after a Roman named Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, whom transformed the Roman republic to an empire through sheer cunning and charisma and became its first emperor. Then he changed his name to Augustus, which is Latin for majestic or honoured, and changed the name of the month Sextilis to August.”

“So it's not really named after a namesake of you, but after someone named Augustus.”

“Didn't you listen to what I said? It was named after-”

“Yes, I heard what you said, but obviously he stopped being a namesake of yours when he changed his name to Augustus.”

“But that is not the point, is it? The point is he originally bore the same name that I do.”

“Yes, but the month was named after him after he changed his name.”

Octa was going to say something, but they had arrived in Gym street. The complete carnage that the skirmish with Bronius had caused in the street had been completely cleaned up, the only trace of it was that the former Team Plasma building was now enveloped in construction scaffolding to rebuild the glass outer wall. Black paused in front of the Gym, which looked like an ordinary building, except for the large red and green sign above the door that said “BurGH'SgaLlErY” in hideous purple and yellow neon letters. Black stopped and talked to his pokémon.

“We're at a type disadvantage here, as Burgh uses bug types and two of you are grass types, including Octa. That means I'll have to rely on the rest of you. Despite the disadvantage, I think we can defeat Burgh.”

He started to open the Gym's door, but a voice said:

“Black, wait up!” White was running at them.

“Hi,” Black turned his attention to White as Boreas nervously greeted Febby and then started staring at the hideous sign instead, “come to watch me beat Burgh?”

A mischievous smile spread on White's face. “Well, that too.”

Black responded with a grin of his own. “Oh? For what else?”

“You'll see.”

Yellow everywhere and a rancid, sweet stench assaulted their senses as they entered the Gym. Bizarre surreal painting hung from the honey-covered walls, and some of the walls were actually made from only the honey. Insects buzzed around. Black and his pokémon looked at it with mouths hanging open with surprise. After a few moments, they started to realise Burgh wasn't there.

“Looks like Burgh's not here. Can't blame him either, this place stinks!” Black exclaimed.

Burgh's voice sounded. “I'm here, actually. You just have to find me!”

“You have to walk through that wall of honey there,” White said.

“You can't be serious.”

“I am serious.”

“This is what you came here to watch, didn't you?”

“Yep.”

Black arched an eyebrow. “So did you walk through the wall of honey when you challenged the Gym?”

White blushed. “Yes, I did. And stop imagining me drenched with honey.”

Octa sniffed the air haughtily. “Walk through a wall of honey? Me? Are they completely doolally?”

“It is rather undignified,” said Capella, “but it won't stick to us too badly. I would be more worried if I had fur.”

“That is not the point, is it?” Octa responded, “the point is that it's disgusting, and that I shall look like fifteen types of twat when I come out on the other side. And I shall smell like the decaying corpse of a beekeeper who forgot to put on his protective suit and was stung to death inside his bees' hive. Besides, Black already indicated he does not plan to use me in this battle.”

“Come on, don't be such a big girl's blouse and just walk through the wall.”

“I am not doing it. It doesn't befit a gentleman.”

“I've got an idea,” Toxica said blushing, “Octa, why don't you and I go through the honey wall first so no one sees you, and then I can lick you clean.” she was blushing so deeply now that it looked as if she was about to burst an artery.

“There'll be no need for that,” Boreas said gladly, “there are holes in the walls small enough for us to fit through, probably made by the bugs. Black's the only one who has to walk through the honey.”

They all sighed relieved, except Toxica, who gave Boreas a foul look. After crawling through the holes, they saw Burgh painting something that seemed like a Dugtrio turned inside out flying out of the mouth of a bizarrely proportioned and partially molten Mr. Mime. They heard a blobbering sound and saw something that could most accurately be described as a honey elemental emerge from the wall of honey. It began clawing at itself and shaking honey off until it took on a vaguely anthropomorphic shape. Finally Black managed to get his face mostly honey-free.

“Burgh!” he said, stepping towards the painting artist as big blobs of honey fell from him, “I've come to challenge you. And also to tell you you're insane, what's with the honey walls?”

Burgh turned around in surprise. “Oh, hello. I didn't hear you come in. You're that guy who was running around in Pinwheel Forest with Lenora, right? The one with a colour for a name.”

“Black.”

“Right, that. So you've come to challenge me? How do you feel about using three pokémon each?”

“Alright, I accept!”

Burgh didn't do anything and Black just stood there rather awkwardly, dripping honey. After about a minute of nothing happening, he scraped his throat. Burgh didn't respond. After another while, Black said:

“So... Shall we get to it?”

Burgh looked at him as if he didn't know Black was there. “To what?”

“The battle?”

“Battle?”

“Yes, the Gym battle! Three vs. three, no switching out, that sort of thing!”

“Excellent idea! Go, René, bug him out!” he threw a pokéball, sending out a Whirlipede.

“Lucius, start with Ember!” Black commanded.

Lucius ran at René, spitting fire. Though the Whirlipede looked like a plump, compact, and slow creature, he immediately proved this impression wrong as he began rolling around at high speed, making Lucius' flames miss easily. He tried to steamroll over Lucius, but the canine proved himself fast as well despite his large size. They tried to hit each other for a while, both failing. Lucius managed to get the first hit in, singing his opponent badly with the flames he spit. Lucius was now aiming his flames quite a bit ahead of his opponent, anticipating where the Whirlipede would be once the flames got there., and he was managing to hit the circular centipede time and again. To prevent being hit again, René began moving very erratically, not only managing to dodge Lucius' flames, but actually managing to hit him. The centipede suddenly hit Lucius from the side, knocking him down, and immediately proceeded to roll right over him, going back and forth several times. Suddenly there was a burst of flames, the Whirlipede squeaked loudly, and it stopped rolling and fell over sideways.

Lucius got up, looking pretty bruised and with some wounds caused by the Whirlipede's spikes. “Yeah, and how did you like that?! Get me another opponent now!”

Burgh returned René to his pokéball and sent out the Dwebble whom had lost her shell in the battle with Gorm, now with a brand new shell. “Snick, my switch was turned on! Go, Max!”

Boreas was just left speechless by Burgh. “...I don't even want to know what's going on with your 'switch'...”

The Dwebble immediately began proving her worth as a rock type by firing parts of her rocky shell at Lucius. The Houndoom was hit by several of them, but retaliated by spitting flames at Max. The Dwebble retreated into her shell for protection and shot more rocks at Lucius. Lucius ran at the withdrawn Dwebble and grabbed her shell in his jaws, lifting the entire smaller pokémon up. Boreas saw him strain to bite through it.

A dampened laugh came from inside the shell. “Go on, break your teeth on my shell if you like!”

Lucius stopped trying to crush the shell in his jaws and instead breathed fire straight into the shell's opening. He threw the shell away, and Burgh returned Max to her pokéball. Lucius howled victoriously.

“Good job!” Boreas cheered, “You're on fire!”

“Don't encourage him, my dear fellow,” said Octa.

“Oh, bugger! Could it be time to bug out of here?” Burgh asked, throwing his third pokéball, “No, no, I refuse to be squashed!”

Salvador the Leavanny appeared from the pokéball. “Ha!” Lucius barked, “a grass type and a bug type in one, this is my lucky day! I'll toast you for appeti- AARGH!”

With movement as fast as a lightning bolt, Salvador had rushed forwards and given Lucius two deep, long cuts with his scissors. Lucius tried to retaliate, but Salvador kept giving him more cuts, not giving him a moment to respond, before he collapsed with a patchwork of red cutmarks over his body.

“Okay Capella, it's your turn!”

“Leave it to me,” said Capella. She slithered into the battlefield and nets of electricity were launched from the jewel on her head in an attempt to slow Salvador down by paralysing him. But the Leavanny jumped aside with startling agility to dodge the Thunder Waves. Capella kept trying, but because of his quick movements she couldn't hit him. Then Salvador jumped forward and started cutting Capella, but unlike Lucius she was prepared for it and managed to break the rapid slashes by Slamming Salvador with her long body, hitting him like a whip. The Leavanny was knocked away, lost his balance and fell on his bum, and Capella reacted immediately with another Thunder Wave to paralyse him. It nearly hit him in his helpless condition, but again he was just too quick and was only scraped by the electric web. Giving Capella another X-Scissor in passing, Salvador got out of range of her Slam and began firing sharpened Razor Leaves at the draconic pokémon. Though the leaves didn't seem to do too much damage, there was little Capella could do about it. Salvador was just too quick, especially at a distance. The leaves were leaves lots of little cuts to go with the big cuts made by the earlier attacks when Black realised there was nothing Capella could do and forfeited. “Capella, switch out for Boreas.”

Boreas didn't feel too good about going up against Salvador with his pained legs, but he stepped forward, clenching his teeth at every step. He was about to start doing something when all of a sudden Salvador was in front of him and there were two long cuts in his skin that hurt like extremely long papercuts. Though the cuts were not very deep, this being a friendly battle, they still hurt like blazes.

Boreas didn't give Salvador a chance to start cutting at him like he did with Lucius and immediately jumped into him with a Quick Attack, knocking the Leavanny back. He sunk his teeth into an arm, but was immediately thrown off and received a few more slashes that, combined with his poorly healed legs, were rapidly weakening him. He realised he needed to think of something very fast if he was going to win at all, and ran for the wall to buy some time. He got a nasty cut on his tail as he crawled into one of the holes to the other side. As he tried to think of something, Salvador began cutting big slabs of honey out of the wall to get to him. As actually getting out of the other side of the hole would probably be considered a forfeit, Boreas had no choice but to go out the same way he came in. He waited a moment until Salvador had slashed, then ran out, just before the slash of his other scissor, Tackling the Leavanny and than ran off as fast as he could, which was not very fast courtesy of his legs. He didn't have a plan yet, but was mainly trying not to get cut up now. He ran back, ran past Black, who looked very nervous and was looking in his backpack for some chewing gum. Salvador caught up with Boreas as he was running past Black, and launched himself at the Eevee at full speed, but Boreas flattened himself to the ground and made a sudden turn despite his legs protesting. Salvador missed him, and with a tearing sound he cut Black's backpack open instead. A rain of berries, maps, papers, and other things showered Boreas. Among the other things, he caught a glimpse of the piece of light grey rock Black had stolen from Bronius about to hit him on the head, and before he could react, it hit him. He shuddered, feeling it was icy cold to touch.

Suddenly the icy coldness of the rock melted through his skin and filled his entire body. For one second it felt unbearably cold, then he experienced the tactile equivalent of looking at a picture of two silhouetted faces and suddenly seeing it as a picture of a white candlestick, and felt very comfortable with the cold instead. In the surprise at the cold moving into his body, he hadn't even noticed yet that his body was shining a bright, white light. He was filled with a deliciously icy feeling and a feeling of power as he was growing with amazing speed. His brown fur was rapidly turning an icy light-blue, and hit tail grew longer, more pointed, and less bushy. His legs increased in size, making him feel like someone standing on stilts.

As the frigid, but pleasant sensation filled him, he realised two things: the tourist Team Plasma had stolen the chip of icy rock from must have broken it off the Ice Rock of Snowpoint City, and also that he wanted to be a Glaceon. Being a Glaceon didn't just seem cool, but now that he was rapidly turning into one he felt he would love to spend the rest of his life as one. His collar was retracting, and instead longer dark blue hair was sprouting on his head in a haircut formed of three diamonds of hair, while two strands of it grew very long. The light finally subsided, and Boreas was reborn as a Glaceon.

Everything around him suddenly looked tiny, and despite the cold feeling inside him, the air around him seemed to have been heated quite a lot. The pain from the wounds he had received and from his poorly healed legs was completely gone. He drew his first breath with his evolved body, and felt hot air enter his lungs and frigid air leave them.

“Splendid, my dear fellow!” Octa cheered.

“Wow, you evolved!” Black said, “Get him with... Let's try Icy Wind!”

“Icy Wind?” Boreas mocked, noticing his voice's altered sound, “I can do better than that! I'll use Blizzard!”

Salvador had watched the evolution patiently, but now that the battle had recommenced, he ran at Boreas to X-Scissor him again. Boreas felt all kinds of powers inside him he never had before. He tried making the air around him colder, and immediately it was as if coldness rushed from nowhere, using his body as a conduit, and chilled the air around him. Then he made a Blizzard by doing the same, but this time really putting effort into making as much cold as he could. Frigid, howling, ferocious cold blasted into his body and then into the air around him, immediately freezing all the moisture in the air around him and making a Blizzard so cold even Boreas found it painful. He tried to stop more cold from coming in and tried to command the Blizzard to move to his opponent, but neither of these things happened. Instead icy waves of cold kept flooding through Boreas and increased the severe Blizzard.

Boreas felt incredibly cold, and began to panic as he realised he couldn't stop the cold rushing into the world through his body. Though he couldn't see more than a metre ahead in the howling Blizzard furiously raging around him, he heard the creaking of the freezing honey walls, the splintering of the Gym's windows, and the screams of agony as the bitter cold hit everyone else in the room. By now, droplets were forming out of nowhere as the air was beginning to condense. Then Boreas' eyes froze over painfully, making his visibility even lower. He tried desperately to stop the out-of-control Blizzard, but it was far too powerful for him. He was in agony, every part of his body rapidly freezing in temperatures usually unseen between here and Saturn. An idea came to him, and he immediately stopped trying to stop the cold, instead he tried to create even more and send it off onto the world with as much force as he could muster.

His set-up worked: instead of remaining close to him, the cold now had a lot of energy and blasted away into the world, making the Blizzard expand hugely, far beyond the Gym, and in doing so it became so diffuse that it became little more than a cool breeze after unleashing snow and ice on the streets near the Gym. Now that the Gym was approaching terran temperatures again, Boreas found it much easier to stop more cold from coming in and stopped the Blizzard. Then he collapsed with effort and the cold. He soon felt a gentle hand helping him up.

“Are you alright, my dear fellow?”

“Yes, I think so.” Boreas said, rubbing his eyes to thaw them, “I just got a bit overconfident and let it get out of control. What about you all?”

“We are fine. Black returned us to our pokéballs immediately to protect us. So did Burgh. The humans don't look too good, though.”

“S-s-s-s-sorry.” Black stammered at Burgh. His lips were blue and he was shivering all over. The honey still hanging onto him had frozen into hard yellow crusts which were shattering and falling off as he moved.

Burgh began laughing, which made some icicles fall from his hair. “Oh b-b-b-b-b-bugger! I lost, b-b-b-b-but what a cool way to w-w-win!”

“W-w-win?” Black asked stupefied. The pools of liquid air lying on the ground had almost completely boiled away by now.

“I returned Sa-Sa-Salvador t-to his pokéball, didn't I? That's a forfeit, isn't it? But losing to you doesn't bug me because your insectibly- I mean incredibly- strong! Here, take this Insect Badge!”

–

That evening Boreas stepped in front of the pokécenter's mirror to get a good look at himself. He saw a Glaceon in the mirror, and looked behind him to see if there was one standing there before he realised he was the Glaceon. It was bizarre to see the Glaceon copy his every move exactly. It was going to take some getting used to this new form. He could recognise his own face in the Glaceon's after a while, but it took some effort. He was also still not used to feeling like a giant. He had grown by almost a factor three, and everything suddenly looked tiny.

He gave the mirror a long look. He did look pretty cool and elegant now. He looked at the hair on his head and wondered if it would stay in the haircut it was currently in or if he would have to take effort to keep it like that himself. He ran a paw through his hair to test it, and already his haircut was coming undone. That got him to wonder about the long strands of hair that hung from his head almost to the ground. He had nearly tripped over the things twice already. The hair in those things seemed to vastly prefer staying together, and separating hair from it was pretty hard, and even then it seemed to automatically reattach itself to the long hair thingie. Boreas wondered if the hair would grow back if he cut it off. He was really going to have to find a word for the hair thingies. Fringes or bangs just didn't seem to fit. Headtails sounded like the most appropriate word for them.

Really good chapter, Lucius looks like he's getting a lot stronger.
I was surprised with how you evolved Boreas, I really wasn't expecting that, good work.

Originally Posted by Akimbo

Really good chapter, Lucius looks like he's getting a lot stronger.
I was surprised with how you evolved Boreas, I really wasn't expecting that, good work.

Lucius is indeed getting stronger, now that he evolved he's probably the most powerful pokémon on the team in terms of pure power (i.e. use in a poké battle in-game).
And I'm glad you're surprised, the reviews on deviantart were also surprised by it, which is a good thing as I was really worrying I had foreshadowed it too much and that it was too obvious the bit of rock was a piece of the Ice Rock.

Chapter Twenty-Two: 8/7

Present

“Talk about a surprise,” said Aqua.

“Heh,” Boreas chuckled, “you're right. One moment I was an Eevee, not expecting to evolve yet for a while, the next I suddenly was a Glaceon, and the moment after that I nearly froze Black, Burgh, and myself to death.”

They were lying on their backs on the beach, enjoying the moderate heat the winter Sun provided. Boreas couldn't resist occasionally throwing a quick glance at Aqua's belly button. “I guess it's my turn to talk now,” said Aqua.

Boreas shifted positions to lie closer to her. “I guess it is.”

“Well, first of all, I take it you know how an Eevee evolves to a Vaporeon?”

“By Water Stone, right?”

Aqua started laughing. “You really haven't spent much time with your own species, have you?”

Boreas felt ashamed and a bit insulted. “No, I haven't, but Eevees do evolve to Vaporeon by Water Stone, I'm sure of it.”

“That's the answer a human would give, and it's not entirely wrong.” Suddenly she looked troubled, “I hope someone did tell you about the Pidoves and the Combees?”

Boreas blushed like mad and looked away. “Y-yeah.”

“Oh, good, just checking. Now, I suppose I'll have to tell you how Eevees normally evolve. Usually our evolution is based partially on our personality and partially on adaptation to the area we live in. An Eevee living in a forest will usually evolve into a Leafeon and an Eevee with a fiery temper will often evolve to a Flareon. Since an Eevee who is with humans doesn't live in nature, they usually don't evolve by themselves when they are with a trainer, unless it's to Umbreon or Espeon, because we don't interact with nature enough. But items like a Water Stone or an Ice Rock contain a lot of energy that is similar to that found in a natural habitat but much more powerful, enough to induce an Eevee to evolve in an instant.”

“I didn't know that.”

“It's no problem,” said Aqua sweetly, running a paw through his hair, “when you have spent so little time amongst your fellow Eevees, I guess it's only natural that you know little about them.”

Boreas gently rested the back of his head on Aqua's soft, blue stomach. “Now tell me how you evolved into such a comfortable pillow.”

Aqua giggled and pretended to be insulted. “Did you just call me fat?”

“I would never! I'm just saying you're a very comfortable pillow. Nice and soft and warm.”

“If I actually was fat, I would smother you right now.”

“Well, you're welcome to try anyway.”

Aqua seemed to consider it for a moment. “Perhaps later. I'll answer your question first. Evolution was a surprise to me too, though not nearly as much as it was to you. Most of my family consists of Vaporeons, you see, as we lived near the river, and so we usually spend most of our time in or near the water. Occasionally someone evolves into something else because they don't like the water or have a strong personality that leads them to another evolution, but usually we become Vaporeons. I never doubted I would become one as I already was a brilliant swimmer when I was still an Eevee, and I would often swim and practically lived off fish alone.”

“And you also have a personality that befits a Vaporeon,” Boreas added, “very elegant and lovely and charming. But what happened on the day you evolved?”

“I was a bit older than you when you evolved. I was about a year old, so pretty much an adult. I had swum down the river pretty far from my family's burrow to meet my bo- to go catch some fish, when a pair of hunters saw me and-”

“Hunters?”

“You know, humans who hunt pokémon.”

Boreas wasn't sure he understood. “Hunt them for what? To catch them and train them? For the pokédex?”

“No, to kill them.”

Boreas couldn't believe what he was hearing. “What?! Kill pokémon? That can't be true, surely they're just trying to catch them to train them or to sell-”

“They killed my sister, my brother, my grandmother, several cousins, and a friend.”

“Oh. I'm sorry-”

“Don't be, it's not your fault.”

“But... Why? Why would they do that?”

“In our case it's either because of our fur or-”

“Our fur?!” Boreas spat, “That's disgusting! What kind of monster would want to wear another creature's skin?”

“Or,” Aqua continued, “for fun.”

Boreas was revolted. “Fun? That's even worse! These people consider murdering a living creature fun?”

“Yes, they call it a sport.”

“But that's...” Boreas searched to find the right word for it, and eventually settled on “...Barbaric.”

“It certainly is. But that doesn't stop them, I can assure you. But as I was saying, a pair of them saw me while I was fishing...”

–

Past

Aqua swam through the clear river, looking for Lothario with her head just above the surface. Though they had agreed to meet here, she didn't see him, but knew he was somewhere as she smelt his odour on the water's surface. She wondered if he was hiding and called out sweetly: “Lothario? I'm here...”

He didn't respond, but he had to be hiding nearby from the strength of his odour. She took a look under water, but couldn't see anything that looked like an Eevee. She grinned. “I know you're hiding, so there's no point in trying to startle me.”

Something rustled in the thick shrubbery on the water's edge. “Alright, then I'll come find you!”

She began by looking in places she knew he wasn't hiding to make him think she didn't know where he was. She searched at a small group of rocks, then between the reed. Then she dived underwater and rapidly swam to the shrubery where she knew he was hiding. She jumped out of the water and ran into the shrubs. “Ready or not, here I come!”

She was expecting to see Lothario's surprised face as she ran into the shrubbery, but instead she saw something horrifying: a Machop was handing Lothario's limp, bleeding body to two large humans carrying rifles. She cried in fury and charged the Machop, knocking it over in surprise, and she tried to reawaken Lothario as the humans exchanged surprised remarks. Lothario was no longer breathing and had a bloody hole all the way through his chest. Tears of rage filled her eyes as she looked up to those responsible, and looked right into two gun barrels aimed for her head.

Two deafening bangs were followed by a vicious, searing pain in her tail and her right hind leg, as she jumped away immediately, but not quite fast enough. She limped back to the water with all the speed she could muster, fighting tears of rage and pain. She dived into the water a moment before she was grabbed by the Machop, and tried to swim away as fast as she could. But she found that with only three legs to her use, she was much slower than she normally was, and her tail was providing her much less speed than it usually would. She looked around to see why, and gagged when she saw the top two-third had been shot off.

A shot scraped her head, leaving a painful path of burnt skin so she dived underwater to avoid the shots. She tried to swim further, but could see the humans on the shore walking along with her, rifles aimed. The water around her was slowly turning red while she ran out of breath rapidly. She was determined though not to go back to the surface. She refused to give them the pleasure of killing her, preferring vastly to drown. After several minutes her vision began fading, first going black and then white, so she closed her eyes. She realised drowning wasn't so bad after all. After the initial unpleasantness of running out of breath, it felt a lot like falling asleep. Though she had always liked the water and the river, the water had never felt as soft on her skin, nor had she ever felt as if the river was a friendly, living creature before. She didn't even feel the pain in her leg and tail any more. She floated underwater for several minutes, expecting her breathing reflex to kick in at any moment making her die of inhaling water, before she realised something very strange was going on: she had been under water for at least seven minutes, and had spent most of that time thinking she was about to die.

She opened her eyes, and to her surprise her vision had stopped going either black or white, and was back to normal. Much better than normal, actually, considering she was under water and should actually be seeing everything vague and unfocused, but instead she saw everything perfectly clear, much clearer even than she normally would above the surface. She went to rub her eyes in amazement and recoiled when she saw her paws had turned blue. A quick look at her body showed the rest of her had done the same, and that her tail was back, much larger and more powerful than it had been before. With a sense of euphoria she realised she had evolved to a Vaporeon. She swam a bit and was startled at the speed she could effortlessly make. For a moment she was overjoyed, but then she rememberer how Lothario had just been murdered, and a grim determination sunk in.

She looked at the surface and saw the two humans and their Machop putting their rifles away and walking off, apparently convinced she had either drowned or escaped. But Aqua wasn't going to let them get away. She tried to make a wave to practise. At first she failed, but then it was almost as if she melted into the water, becoming one with it, and when she tried to make the wave again, this time doing it as if the water was a part of her body, a minor wave formed. The wave calmly washed over the feet of one of the humans, leading him to curse and the other to laugh. Then Aqua, still feeling as if the river was a part of her in a bizarre way, summoned all her rage and hatred and put it into a gargantuan wave. The river responded furiously, foaming and waving like the sea during a storm, and a massive wave of fury bashed on the shore, washing the humans and their Machop away in a single wave. The river returned to its bed, taking the horrid creatures with it. Aqua could feel them swimming around pathetically and swam back to the surface and closer to them to make sure they knew why this was happening before she drowned them. The look in their panicked faces as they saw her almost moved her to pity them, but then she saw Lothario's corpse floating around. Her entire being filled with hate and disgust for the humans, she extended her will into the water and pulled them under, creating a powerful downward current that made it impossible for the murderers to stay at the surface as they were sucked to their grave on the river's bottom.

–

Present

“...After one of them had drowned, though, I felt pretty guilty about killing them, so I let the other one and the Machop go. But after that, I realised they would be looking for me, prepared for taking on a Vaporeon with electric weapons or harpoons, so after a visit to say goodbye to my family and warn them about the hunters, I swam down the river for about a week before I found a nice burrow on the riverside, not too far from here,” she concluded.

Boreas felt as if he should be feeling a lot sadder after that story than he was, but it was hard to feel anything but delight as Aqua was stroking his hair while he lay on her stomach. “I'm so sorry.”

“Look, don't be. Don't pity me, after all I don't pity you either, even though you've lost your family entirely. There just doesn't seem a need for it, as you sound like you cope with it very well and have a fun life now. The same has happened for me. I'll admit I was very sad about Lo- about having to leave my family like that and very lonely at first, but it's been six months, and it's not as if I can never see them again either, I occasionally swim upriver.” She chuckled and stopped stroking through his hair. “There, you're all done.”

“With what?”

Stifling her laughter, she said, “Why don't you take a look at your reflection?”

Reluctantly Boreas got up from his extremely comfortable position to take a look at his reflection in the water. An androgynous-looking Glaceon with braided hair and girlish pigtails looked back. Aqua couldn't hold in her laughter any more and burst into roaring laughter as Boreas ashamedly undid the pigtails.

“Aww, you looked lovely,” Aqua laughed, “have you ever been mistaken for a girl?”

“No, have you?” Boreas responded, “How did you do that without opposable thumbs anyway?”

Aqua winked. “It's a secret. Now, why don't you come back here and tell me more?”

Boreas obliged to the first part, sitting down in such a way that as much of his side as possible was touching Aqua. “Tell you more about what? I've already told you how I evolved, and I don't have much more compelling evidence against Team Plasma.”

“Just continue your story. I like it, and you have an attractive voice.”

“I do?”

“Yeah, you should try singing sometime.”

“I did, actually, at the pokémon musical in Nimbasa.”

“Well, then start with telling me about that, and we'll see where it goes from there.”

“Okay. I'll start by telling you about the other things that happened in Nimbasa, as you'll find some of it very interesting. The day after the Gym battle and my evolution we set out for Nimbasa. Unfortunately Route 4 is almost entirely a desert, and I'm an ice type, so that didn't work out too well.”

“I wish I'd been there. I could've at least kept you wet.”

“As tempting as that sounds, that desert would've been hotter than the Sun's surface with you there as well. As it was, it was far too warm there for me, so Black returned me to my pokéball for the journey. Which was, in fact, the very first time I'd ever been in there.”

Aqua's ears raised curiously. “What's it like?”

“It's...” Boreas searched for the proper adjective. “Bizarre. Surreal. You're essentially turned into pure energy. You're only semi-conscious, it's like a sort of state between being awake and sleeping, like a dream. Or like being really, really pissed. You're in a sort of dream world, where your thoughts don't seem to be your own and they seem to be all around you, like in a dream. There's no up, down, left, right, ahead or back, and yet every direction is all of those things at the same time.”

“Oh, that clears it up,” Aqua drolly said.

“I can't really describe it otherwise. You don't really have any senses in there, as they have all been turned into energy along with you, and yet a part of your mind is aware of what's going on outside, and you can see, hear, and touch your thoughts that are all around you, a bit like in a dream. In my case, my awareness of the outside world was usually nothing interspersed with an occasional battle.”

Aqua seemed lost in thought. “Doesn't this worry you, though: when you are turned into energy when you get put in a pokéball, you're essentially destroyed. The exact composition of your body is stored, obviously, but I wonder if you don't actually die when you are put in a pokéball. Then, when you're released, the pokéball uses the stored information to build another you, and since its brain is the same, so are the memories, so you never know, but essentially the original you was killed when he got inside the pokéball and the Boreas I'm talking to now didn't come into existence until the moment he was released from his pokéball, not realising he had just been born because he had all the memories of the original Boreas.”

“Yes, I have thought of that. And there's unfortunately absolutely no way to prove or disprove it.”

“It's scary though, innit? Especially the thought that you would never know. If you do actually die, it would happen too fast for you to realise what happened and you'd be gone before you knew the answer, and if you don't die you can never be sure you didn't.” She shuddered.

Boreas was feeling pretty spooked now as well, so he cautiously draped a paw around Aqua's shoulder to see if she would object and to reassure both of them. She responded by leaning closer to him. “I know, it's a scary thought. But essentially it's a bit of a form of paranoia to assume the pokéballs kill you when you enter them and you come out as a copy. And I can hardly go through life assuming I was born on 10 September either and that I'm a copy of the original me, whom died not even eight months after he was born because he was put inside a pokéball.”

“I guess you're right. But it's still a pretty disturbing thought.”

“It certainly is. I'm not planning to be put into another pokéball any time soon either. But let's move on from disturbing thoughts.”

“Great idea. It's chilling me to the bone. Which brings to mind another question: how come you're so pleasantly warm? I would've thought a Glaceon would be icy cold to touch.”

“You mean like this?” Boreas lowered his body temperature below zero for a moment.

“Eep!” Aqua yelped before Boreas restored his body temperature to normal so she wouldn't move away from him.

“We can control our body temperature, and can channel it to use in various ways, as most of our moves are based on it. But if I'm not doing that, I am still a warm-blooded mammal like you, so then my body is warm too.”

“Well, don't do that again, okay? I don't like to feel as if I'm snuggling with a snowman. I like you better warm. So continue telling me, skipping the creepy metaphysical questions that pokéballs raise.”

“Okay. Black let my out of my pokéball when we were approaching Nimbasa and the climate was getting less harsh...”

Originally Posted by Akimbo

Really good chapter, Lucius looks like he's getting a lot stronger.
I was surprised with how you evolved Boreas, I really wasn't expecting that, good work.

Lucius is indeed getting stronger, now that he evolved he's probably the most powerful pokémon on the team in terms of pure power (i.e. use in a poké battle in-game).
And I'm glad you're surprised, the reviews on deviantart were also surprised by it, which is a good thing as I was really worrying I had foreshadowed it too much and that it was too obvious the bit of rock was a piece of the Ice Rock.

Chapter Twenty-Two: 8/7

Present

“Talk about a surprise,” said Aqua.

“Heh,” Boreas chuckled, “you're right. One moment I was an Eevee, not expecting to evolve yet for a while, the next I suddenly was a Glaceon, and the moment after that I nearly froze Black, Burgh, and myself to death.”

They were lying on their backs on the beach, enjoying the moderate heat the winter Sun provided. Boreas couldn't resist occasionally throwing a quick glance at Aqua's belly button. “I guess it's my turn to talk now,” said Aqua.

Boreas shifted positions to lie closer to her. “I guess it is.”

“Well, first of all, I take it you know how an Eevee evolves to a Vaporeon?”

“By Water Stone, right?”

Aqua started laughing. “You really haven't spent much time with your own species, have you?”

Boreas felt ashamed and a bit insulted. “No, I haven't, but Eevees do evolve to Vaporeon by Water Stone, I'm sure of it.”

“That's the answer a human would give, and it's not entirely wrong.” Suddenly she looked troubled, “I hope someone did tell you about the Pidoves and the Combees?”

Boreas blushed like mad and looked away. “Y-yeah.”

“Oh, good, just checking. Now, I suppose I'll have to tell you how Eevees normally evolve. Usually our evolution is based partially on our personality and partially on adaptation to the area we live in. An Eevee living in a forest will usually evolve into a Leafeon and an Eevee with a fiery temper will often evolve to a Flareon. Since an Eevee who is with humans doesn't live in nature, they usually don't evolve by themselves when they are with a trainer, unless it's to Umbreon or Espeon, because we don't interact with nature enough. But items like a Water Stone or an Ice Rock contain a lot of energy that is similar to that found in a natural habitat but much more powerful, enough to induce an Eevee to evolve in an instant.”

“I didn't know that.”

“It's no problem,” said Aqua sweetly, running a paw through his hair, “when you have spent so little time amongst your fellow Eevees, I guess it's only natural that you know little about them.”

Boreas gently rested the back of his head on Aqua's soft, blue stomach. “Now tell me how you evolved into such a comfortable pillow.”

Aqua giggled and pretended to be insulted. “Did you just call me fat?”

“I would never! I'm just saying you're a very comfortable pillow. Nice and soft and warm.”

“If I actually was fat, I would smother you right now.”

“Well, you're welcome to try anyway.”

Aqua seemed to consider it for a moment. “Perhaps later. I'll answer your question first. Evolution was a surprise to me too, though not nearly as much as it was to you. Most of my family consists of Vaporeons, you see, as we lived near the river, and so we usually spend most of our time in or near the water. Occasionally someone evolves into something else because they don't like the water or have a strong personality that leads them to another evolution, but usually we become Vaporeons. I never doubted I would become one as I already was a brilliant swimmer when I was still an Eevee, and I would often swim and practically lived off fish alone.”

“And you also have a personality that befits a Vaporeon,” Boreas added, “very elegant and lovely and charming. But what happened on the day you evolved?”

“I was a bit older than you when you evolved. I was about a year old, so pretty much an adult. I had swum down the river pretty far from my family's burrow to meet my bo- to go catch some fish, when a pair of hunters saw me and-”

“Hunters?”

“You know, humans who hunt pokémon.”

Boreas wasn't sure he understood. “Hunt them for what? To catch them and train them? For the pokédex?”

“No, to kill them.”

Boreas couldn't believe what he was hearing. “What?! Kill pokémon? That can't be true, surely they're just trying to catch them to train them or to sell-”

“They killed my sister, my brother, my grandmother, several cousins, and a friend.”

“Oh. I'm sorry-”

“Don't be, it's not your fault.”

“But... Why? Why would they do that?”

“In our case it's either because of our fur or-”

“Our fur?!” Boreas spat, “That's disgusting! What kind of monster would want to wear another creature's skin?”

“Or,” Aqua continued, “for fun.”

Boreas was revolted. “Fun? That's even worse! These people consider murdering a living creature fun?”

“Yes, they call it a sport.”

“But that's...” Boreas searched to find the right word for it, and eventually settled on “...Barbaric.”

“It certainly is. But that doesn't stop them, I can assure you. But as I was saying, a pair of them saw me while I was fishing...”

–

Past

Aqua swam through the clear river, looking for Lothario with her head just above the surface. Though they had agreed to meet here, she didn't see him, but knew he was somewhere as she smelt his odour on the water's surface. She wondered if he was hiding and called out sweetly: “Lothario? I'm here...”

He didn't respond, but he had to be hiding nearby from the strength of his odour. She took a look under water, but couldn't see anything that looked like an Eevee. She grinned. “I know you're hiding, so there's no point in trying to startle me.”

Something rustled in the thick shrubbery on the water's edge. “Alright, then I'll come find you!”

She began by looking in places she knew he wasn't hiding to make him think she didn't know where he was. She searched at a small group of rocks, then between the reed. Then she dived underwater and rapidly swam to the shrubery where she knew he was hiding. She jumped out of the water and ran into the shrubs. “Ready or not, here I come!”

She was expecting to see Lothario's surprised face as she ran into the shrubbery, but instead she saw something horrifying: a Machop was handing Lothario's limp, bleeding body to two large humans carrying rifles. She cried in fury and charged the Machop, knocking it over in surprise, and she tried to reawaken Lothario as the humans exchanged surprised remarks. Lothario was no longer breathing and had a bloody hole all the way through his chest. Tears of rage filled her eyes as she looked up to those responsible, and looked right into two gun barrels aimed for her head.

Two deafening bangs were followed by a vicious, searing pain in her tail and her right hind leg, as she jumped away immediately, but not quite fast enough. She limped back to the water with all the speed she could muster, fighting tears of rage and pain. She dived into the water a moment before she was grabbed by the Machop, and tried to swim away as fast as she could. But she found that with only three legs to her use, she was much slower than she normally was, and her tail was providing her much less speed than it usually would. She looked around to see why, and gagged when she saw the top two-third had been shot off.

A shot scraped her head, leaving a painful path of burnt skin so she dived underwater to avoid the shots. She tried to swim further, but could see the humans on the shore walking along with her, rifles aimed. The water around her was slowly turning red while she ran out of breath rapidly. She was determined though not to go back to the surface. She refused to give them the pleasure of killing her, preferring vastly to drown. After several minutes her vision began fading, first going black and then white, so she closed her eyes. She realised drowning wasn't so bad after all. After the initial unpleasantness of running out of breath, it felt a lot like falling asleep. Though she had always liked the water and the river, the water had never felt as soft on her skin, nor had she ever felt as if the river was a friendly, living creature before. She didn't even feel the pain in her leg and tail any more. She floated underwater for several minutes, expecting her breathing reflex to kick in at any moment making her die of inhaling water, before she realised something very strange was going on: she had been under water for at least seven minutes, and had spent most of that time thinking she was about to die.

She opened her eyes, and to her surprise her vision had stopped going either black or white, and was back to normal. Much better than normal, actually, considering she was under water and should actually be seeing everything vague and unfocused, but instead she saw everything perfectly clear, much clearer even than she normally would above the surface. She went to rub her eyes in amazement and recoiled when she saw her paws had turned blue. A quick look at her body showed the rest of her had done the same, and that her tail was back, much larger and more powerful than it had been before. With a sense of euphoria she realised she had evolved to a Vaporeon. She swam a bit and was startled at the speed she could effortlessly make. For a moment she was overjoyed, but then she rememberer how Lothario had just been murdered, and a grim determination sunk in.

She looked at the surface and saw the two humans and their Machop putting their rifles away and walking off, apparently convinced she had either drowned or escaped. But Aqua wasn't going to let them get away. She tried to make a wave to practise. At first she failed, but then it was almost as if she melted into the water, becoming one with it, and when she tried to make the wave again, this time doing it as if the water was a part of her body, a minor wave formed. The wave calmly washed over the feet of one of the humans, leading him to curse and the other to laugh. Then Aqua, still feeling as if the river was a part of her in a bizarre way, summoned all her rage and hatred and put it into a gargantuan wave. The river responded furiously, foaming and waving like the sea during a storm, and a massive wave of fury bashed on the shore, washing the humans and their Machop away in a single wave. The river returned to its bed, taking the horrid creatures with it. Aqua could feel them swimming around pathetically and swam back to the surface and closer to them to make sure they knew why this was happening before she drowned them. The look in their panicked faces as they saw her almost moved her to pity them, but then she saw Lothario's corpse floating around. Her entire being filled with hate and disgust for the humans, she extended her will into the water and pulled them under, creating a powerful downward current that made it impossible for the murderers to stay at the surface as they were sucked to their grave on the river's bottom.

–

Present

“...After one of them had drowned, though, I felt pretty guilty about killing them, so I let the other one and the Machop go. But after that, I realised they would be looking for me, prepared for taking on a Vaporeon with electric weapons or harpoons, so after a visit to say goodbye to my family and warn them about the hunters, I swam down the river for about a week before I found a nice burrow on the riverside, not too far from here,” she concluded.

Boreas felt as if he should be feeling a lot sadder after that story than he was, but it was hard to feel anything but delight as Aqua was stroking his hair while he lay on her stomach. “I'm so sorry.”

“Look, don't be. Don't pity me, after all I don't pity you either, even though you've lost your family entirely. There just doesn't seem a need for it, as you sound like you cope with it very well and have a fun life now. The same has happened for me. I'll admit I was very sad about Lo- about having to leave my family like that and very lonely at first, but it's been six months, and it's not as if I can never see them again either, I occasionally swim upriver.” She chuckled and stopped stroking through his hair. “There, you're all done.”

“With what?”

Stifling her laughter, she said, “Why don't you take a look at your reflection?”

Reluctantly Boreas got up from his extremely comfortable position to take a look at his reflection in the water. An androgynous-looking Glaceon with braided hair and girlish pigtails looked back. Aqua couldn't hold in her laughter any more and burst into roaring laughter as Boreas ashamedly undid the pigtails.

“Aww, you looked lovely,” Aqua laughed, “have you ever been mistaken for a girl?”

“No, have you?” Boreas responded, “How did you do that without opposable thumbs anyway?”

Aqua winked. “It's a secret. Now, why don't you come back here and tell me more?”

Boreas obliged to the first part, sitting down in such a way that as much of his side as possible was touching Aqua. “Tell you more about what? I've already told you how I evolved, and I don't have much more compelling evidence against Team Plasma.”

“Just continue your story. I like it, and you have an attractive voice.”

“I do?”

“Yeah, you should try singing sometime.”

“I did, actually, at the pokémon musical in Nimbasa.”

“Well, then start with telling me about that, and we'll see where it goes from there.”

“Okay. I'll start by telling you about the other things that happened in Nimbasa, as you'll find some of it very interesting. The day after the Gym battle and my evolution we set out for Nimbasa. Unfortunately Route 4 is almost entirely a desert, and I'm an ice type, so that didn't work out too well.”

“I wish I'd been there. I could've at least kept you wet.”

“As tempting as that sounds, that desert would've been hotter than the Sun's surface with you there as well. As it was, it was far too warm there for me, so Black returned me to my pokéball for the journey. Which was, in fact, the very first time I'd ever been in there.”

Aqua's ears raised curiously. “What's it like?”

“It's...” Boreas searched for the proper adjective. “Bizarre. Surreal. You're essentially turned into pure energy. You're only semi-conscious, it's like a sort of state between being awake and sleeping, like a dream. Or like being really, really pissed. You're in a sort of dream world, where your thoughts don't seem to be your own and they seem to be all around you, like in a dream. There's no up, down, left, right, ahead or back, and yet every direction is all of those things at the same time.”

“Oh, that clears it up,” Aqua drolly said.

“I can't really describe it otherwise. You don't really have any senses in there, as they have all been turned into energy along with you, and yet a part of your mind is aware of what's going on outside, and you can see, hear, and touch your thoughts that are all around you, a bit like in a dream. In my case, my awareness of the outside world was usually nothing interspersed with an occasional battle.”

Aqua seemed lost in thought. “Doesn't this worry you, though: when you are turned into energy when you get put in a pokéball, you're essentially destroyed. The exact composition of your body is stored, obviously, but I wonder if you don't actually die when you are put in a pokéball. Then, when you're released, the pokéball uses the stored information to build another you, and since its brain is the same, so are the memories, so you never know, but essentially the original you was killed when he got inside the pokéball and the Boreas I'm talking to now didn't come into existence until the moment he was released from his pokéball, not realising he had just been born because he had all the memories of the original Boreas.”

“Yes, I have thought of that. And there's unfortunately absolutely no way to prove or disprove it.”

“It's scary though, innit? Especially the thought that you would never know. If you do actually die, it would happen too fast for you to realise what happened and you'd be gone before you knew the answer, and if you don't die you can never be sure you didn't.” She shuddered.

Boreas was feeling pretty spooked now as well, so he cautiously draped a paw around Aqua's shoulder to see if she would object and to reassure both of them. She responded by leaning closer to him. “I know, it's a scary thought. But essentially it's a bit of a form of paranoia to assume the pokéballs kill you when you enter them and you come out as a copy. And I can hardly go through life assuming I was born on 10 September either and that I'm a copy of the original me, whom died not even eight months after he was born because he was put inside a pokéball.”

“I guess you're right. But it's still a pretty disturbing thought.”

“It certainly is. I'm not planning to be put into another pokéball any time soon either. But let's move on from disturbing thoughts.”

“Great idea. It's chilling me to the bone. Which brings to mind another question: how come you're so pleasantly warm? I would've thought a Glaceon would be icy cold to touch.”

“You mean like this?” Boreas lowered his body temperature below zero for a moment.

“Eep!” Aqua yelped before Boreas restored his body temperature to normal so she wouldn't move away from him.

“We can control our body temperature, and can channel it to use in various ways, as most of our moves are based on it. But if I'm not doing that, I am still a warm-blooded mammal like you, so then my body is warm too.”

“Well, don't do that again, okay? I don't like to feel as if I'm snuggling with a snowman. I like you better warm. So continue telling me, skipping the creepy metaphysical questions that pokéballs raise.”

“Okay. Black let my out of my pokéball when we were approaching Nimbasa and the climate was getting less harsh...”

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Shining Beauty

Past

Though they arrived at the Nimbasa pokécenter at noon, Black and his pokémon were more exhausted than Kublai Khan was the day he jogged from the one side of his empire to the other. They all collapsed on various soft places as soon as they entered their room in the pokécenter, falling asleep within seconds. They woke up around 22:00, had breakfast in the pokécenter, and then decided to explore the city since they couldn't go to sleep again anyway.

Outside it was as if Nimbasa City considered the fact that the Sun had set a personal insult and pretended nothing had happened. The entire city was lighted by millions of lights everywhere, and it seemed everyone was still awake and going about their business. In fact the only difference between night and day seemed to be that the light came from a single direction at day, while it came from everywhere at night, and that the sky was light-blue at day but dark-blue at night. Not a single star was visible, and even the Moon seemed feeble and unimpressive compared to the city's own light.

The walked through the busy, heavily enlightened streets. It was no wonder no one went to bed, as there was a lot to do. There were amusement parks, sporting events, something called “Battle Subway”, loads and loads of shops, and much more.

“Heeey, Black!” someone shouted from behind.

“For crying out loud, woman, don't scream like that, you're standing right next to me!”

Black turned around greeting them. “Hey, Bianca. Hey, Cheren. I didn't expect to see you two here, I'd have thought you'd be in Driftveil by now.”

Cheren looked embarrassed. “Yeah, we... uh... Decided to wait for you. I didn't want to be too far ahead of my rival.”

Bianca giggled. “No, we didn't, silly. We're still here because we lost to the Gym Leader.”

Cheren seemed even more embarrassed and annoyed. “Well, yeah. She's sort of right about that. Bianca lost to Elesa, and then I tried to show her how it's done, but unfortunately I'm suffering from gastritis and had a heavy attack during the battle, so I had no choice but to forfeit.”

“You don't have gastritis, silly,” Bianca said sweetly, “you just can't handle roller coasters.”

“No, it's gastritis, don't be ridiculous.”

Bianca turned to Black. “He turned all green and white the moment the coaster launched, and was vomiting over the side before the first pokémon had fainted.”

Black laughed along with Bianca. “Hey, it's okay, Cheren. That's fairly common. What's this about a roller coaster anyway?”

“Oh, didn't you know yet?” Bianca exclaimed, “Elesa's gym is a really cool roller coaster in the amusement park! You battle her in a large, open carriage, and while you battle the roller coaster goes up, and down, and turns, and even makes loops!” Cheren was rapidly going white while she described the roller coaster. “You can't even hear the description of the coaster without going queasy?”

“I can handle the description, it's no problem,” Cheren said panicky, “describe it all you want. I'm just having another attack of gastritis!”

“And I told you: you don't have gastritis, silly, you're just afraid of roller coasters.”

“I am not. And stop calling me silly. I am neither silly nor your boyfriend.”

“Yes, you are,” Bianca said before adding with a blush: “silly, I mean.”

“I am not! And besides, it's rude to make fun of someone's disease.”

“What disease? Being a nervous Nellie?”

Black interrupted Cheren before he could respond to quell the argument. “Where is the Gym, then? I'd love to challenge it tomorrow.”

“You probably don't have to wait that long!” Bianca exclaimed, “almost everything in this city is open day and night, including the Gym!”

“Great, I'll challenge it right now if you show me where it is.”

“Uh,” Cheren nervously said, “wouldn't you rather challenge tomorrow? You and your pokémon must be tired after a long day, you'll be much better rested tomorrow.”

“No thanks, we've slept all afternoon.”

“So you're already adapting to this city?”

“No, we were just really tired after walking through the desert.”

“It's okay, Cheren,” Bianca said, sticking her tongue out at him, “you don't have to come if you're scared.”

“I'm not scared! Lugia's liver, woman, I just suffer from gastritis.”

“Suuuuure.”

“Look,” Black said tiredly, “it's nice to see you two so much in love with each other, but can it please take another form than this constant arguing?”

“Are you insane?” Cheren protested, “I, in love with her?”

“Yuck!” Bianca exclaimed.

But after some more protestations, they stopped arguing and just showed Black to the Gym. The Gym was a flashy purple building covered in neon lights in the middle of an amusement park.

“Oh hey, a puppet theatre!” Cheren exclaimed in a forced voice, “I love those. Black, do you mind if I don't cheer you on?”

“Sure, have fun.”

Bianca looked like she was going to tease Cheren, but remembered what Black had said about their arguing and kept quiet. At least until Cheren was out of earshot. “Hehe, Cheren gets sick on roller coasters. Funny, innit?”

“If you say so,” Black said, “personally I found it funny the first time I heard it, but I've kind of moved on from this joke.”

“Well, okay, but what's so funny isn't that he's sick on the roller coaster in itself, but that he gets so embarrassed about it and tries to cover it up with obvious lies and stuff. I mean, if he just said he got sick on the roller coaster, I'd try to support him and help him get over it and all, but when he acts like this... I just can't help teasing him... Hey, about what you said earlier, that was a joke, right? You don't really think I'm in love with Cheren, right?”

“Are you?”

“No! Obviously not! I mean, maybe you were right about him, maybe he's in love with me... D'you think he's in love with me?”

“I wouldn't know, I just said that to get you two to shut up. Let's go to the Gym now.”

Black talked to his pokémon as they walked the final bit. “Three of you are at a type advantage to the Gym leader's electric types. Boreas and Lucius have recently evolved and are pretty powerful now. But that doesn't mean we should assume we're just going to win. We shouldn't underestimate Elesa, she didn't become Gym Leader for no reason.”

From the inside, the Gym was a massive hall filled mostly with a roller coaster track. The roller coaster tracks lighted up with purple lights, and rested on a black platform that ran the entire length of the roller coaster, except for the loops, and was about fifty centimetres on each side of the tracks. Near the door there was a large tiled blue and black platform where they were currently standing on. They were alone except for a tall, thin woman in yellow who was wearing enormous headphones that were leaking very loud and fast music. She was messing with the interior of some machine that was sparking with electricity at every touch. Bianca walked over to her and tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention.

“Oh, hey, Bianca!” she spoke terribly fast, “good to see you again, I thought you'd die laughing after your friend's challenge failed with him getting sick and all that, have you come to challenge me? I hope you have, you really showed potential during our last battle.”

“...” Bianca said.

Elesa had paused for just long enough for Bianca to begin talking before she resumed the flow of five words per second. “Speaking of potential, you really shouldn't surprise me when I'm repairing the machines, before you know it I could've startled and been shocked, and then my hair would stand upright like a Jolteon's, I imagine my designer might like my hair standing upright from that, maybe she would even design me a Jolteon-based dress, but I wouldn't, especially because it would obviously hurt, speaking of, she's designing a dress based on a Weavile, not the sort of pokémon they usually base dresses on, which is cool, right, because that means it'll really look special, instead of like a generic dress, hey, I see you've brought a new friend, what's his name?”

“Black, and-”

“Oh, Black, what an unusual name, what's it's origin? Does it come from the English word black or is it based on a foreign word that just sounds like it but is unrelated? Or maybe it's based on a foreign word for black which has been translated into English, or is it just short for something, like Blackburn or Blakeley or Blagorod or Blandford?”

“It's-”

“And where are you from, are you from Nuvema too like Bianca here? I've never actually been there myself, is it a nice place for a vacation? In spring I mean, I can't go on vacation in summer because there's too much work to do in summer and my designers prefer if I don't catch too much of a tan anyway, it wouldn't really fit with my image, see? So why are you here, Black, did you perhaps come to challenge me, instead of Bianca? That would be interesting too, I always enjoy battling new people!”

“...” Black said.

“Oh, great, let me formally introduce myself then, my name is Elesa and I'm Nimbasa City's Gym Leader and I also happen to be a model, we will have our battle on the roller coaster, let's use three pokémon each, switching out counts as a forfeit, no using items, that sort of thing, also I must warn you that the entire Gym is the battlefield, not just the cart where we'll be sitting, and your pokémon are allowed to battle outside if they want, are you ready?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess-”

“Great, let's get on the cart then, Bianca, are you coming to watch?”

“Yeah.”

“Great, great, great, great, great, let's get into the coaster, I can't wait!”

They entered a big blue cart with no roof which was mostly empty space, with only a row of seats backed against the outside of the cart. Though Black's instinct was to stand in a fighting pose for the battle, Bianca and Elesa sat down on the seats and strapped themselves in, so Black reluctantly did the same. “What about the pokémon?” he asked.

“Well,” Elesa said, “they can't really battle sitting down and strapped in, and they go through worse than can happen to them here in most battles, it's less dangerous than it looks, though you can't see it the Gym's floor is not very deep below and covered in soft pillows, and there is no current flowing through the rails because the cart runs on a battery.”

“This sounds like a really bad idea,” Capella mused.

“Well, are you ready, let's go!”

The cart fired off at great speed and began shooting up and down and lurching left and right, making Boreas feel pretty queasy and scared. But there was no time to enjoy the ride, as the battle was beginning. “Did the fantastic speed leave you dizzy already?” Elesa asked, releasing an Emolga from its pokéball, “my beloved pokémon will be the next to make your head spin!”

“B-Boreas!” Black yelped while holding the seat next to him tightly, “show her what you can do, but don't overdo it this time!”

Boreas cautiously stood up, nearly lost his balance due to a sudden turn, and began chilling the air around him, careful not to let the attack get out of hand again, and summoned an Icy Wind.

The Emolga was much faster than him, however, and dived under the freezing gust, charging herself with electricity as she dived, and swooped just over Boreas, releasing all the charge. Every muscle in his body spasmed at the shock. He created more cold air to freeze his opponent, keeping it around himself until the Emolga attacked again this time. The flying rodent dived again, swooping at him with another Spark, so Boreas jumped aside, trapping her in the freezing cold cloud he had gathered while the attack missed. He made sure to keep the icy cloud around his opponent even as she struggled to move free, but she was just too fast. Boreas tried to hit her with another Icy Wind, but suddenly she had left the cart and was flying through the Gym on her own, electrifying Boreas from a distance with Thundershocks.

Boreas tried to hit her with Icy Wind and Powder Snow, but both attacks were just far too slow to hit the Emolga, especially at a distance. It graciously soared through the sky on its own, making Boreas feel like a right prat, unable to do much more than sit in the cart and wait for his opponent to electrify him. He realised he would need a more powerful and faster attack and tried to create an Ice Beam. He lowered his body temperature to Antarctic levels and channelled all the cold to his mouth, envisioning a thin beam of coldness. But all that happened was the saliva in his mouth freezing before he received another shock.

He realised that wouldn't work either and looked ahead to see where the cart was going, just in time to brace himself for a loop. As they were going upside-down in the loop, Emolga flew through it, shocking Boreas at every point of the loop. Boreas' fur was now constantly standing straight up with charge and he was rapidly weakening, but saw something ahead that gave him a chance. He summoned the largest icy cloud he could handle safely, and instead of actually trying to hit Emolga with it he tried to herd her to the exact spot he wanted her to be.

The moment they reached the sharp turn Boreas had seen, he jumped out of the carriage, using his momentum for an enormous jump, and landed on the surprised Emolga in mid-air. The moment he touched her, he received a severe static shock, and she immediately began giving him more shocks as she tried at the same time to keep flying. That was, of course, not working with a Glaceon five times heavier than her refusing to let go despite the defibrillating shocks he received. Boreas channelled all the cold inside him to his mouth once again and sunk his ice-cold teeth into his opponent.

They were rapidly collapsing to a lower part of the tracks, but the cart had gone through several turns while they were fighting in mid-air and was now approaching the part they were collapsing to. Alternatively freezing and shocking each other, they hit the cart with a mighty thud. Boreas was in severe pain and felt his consciousness slip away like a particularly large fish you've just caught slipping from your hands back into the water before you even had the chance to show it to anyone. Despite his best efforts to stay awake, everything went black.

–

Boreas awoke wondering why everything was shaking so much. It felt as if he had gone to sleep in a roller coaster. He opened his eyes and yelped when he saw a huge yellow spider. Then he remembered what had happened and got up. He fell down again as the cart lunged, and was helped up by Octa. He saw Lucius was battling the Galvantula, exchanging flames and electricity.

“What did I miss?” Boreas asked as the spider jumped over Lucius' attack, launched a thick, yellow, sparking strand of spider wire at a far away bit of track and swung away from the cart, leaving a furious Lucius behind.

“Hey, get back here, you stinkin' bug!” he roared.

“You were out for less than a minute, my dear fellow,” Octa explained, “your opponent was unable to battle at the same time as you were, so Elesa sent this Galvantula out and Black responded by ordering Lucius to battle. And, as you can see, things are not going excellent.”

Lucius was getting more and more covered by electrifying webs while his opponent used those same webs to spin wires at the different parts of the track and keep pace with the cart. It was pretty amazing how fast the slow-looking arachnid managed to crawl over its wires. “They're at an advantage to us,” Boreas said, “they can move freely here, but we're stuck in this cart.”

Octa nodded gravely. “If we can't solve our mobility problems, I fear we shall lose this battle.”

That was proving to be increasingly true. No matter what Lucius tried, he became more and more stuck in the Electroweb with every move, and it was completely non-flammable too. The Galvantula was moving too fast to hit, and Lucius was continually being electrocuted. After a while, Black forfeited and ordered Capella to attack.

Capella attacked Galvantula with a howling Twister sucking up most of his webs, but the Galvantula managed to stay out of it himself and began firing Electrowebs at Capella. Though she was hit by them, her type had a natural resistance to electricity and her skin was much smoother than Lucius', making the webs stick less to her. She began parrying the spider's electric attacks with her own Thunder Waves. The Galvantula soon approached the cart closer, and jumped on top of Capella, sinking his mandibles into her skin and delivering shocks directly to the flesh in this way.

Capella wrapped herself around Galvantula and squeezed him as hard as she could while shocking him with her own electricity, but with his mandibles biting and shocking her, she couldn't keep it up for long and eventually fainted.

“We... Lost.” Boreas muttered disappointedly.

“Whew!” Elesa said, “I won, but you and your pokémon shone brilliantly! I'll be more than happy to grant you a rematch once you've trained enough!”

Chapter Twenty-Four: Hours of Fun

Black, Cheren, Bianca, and their pokémon entered Nimbasa central station for the fifth day in a row. The large, round station featured twenty-five different platforms with trains to the various cities of Unova. The station was this huge because it made sure any station in Unova was reachable from any other by at most two trains, as every train stopped in Nimbasa at some point. But the platforms that interested the trainers were the five that hosted the Battle Subway. The Battle Subway consisted of several trains were trainers battled while being driven to their destination, so to Black, Bianca, and Cheren, that meant a morning of battling, an afternoon spent picnicking in some new place, and an evening spent battling again, which was great training and fun. That day they decided to try the one platform they hadn't tried yet.

“Sorry,” the conductor stopped them, “this 'ere's a tag battle train. You can only board in groups of two or four.”

“Oh, that's a shame. I guess we-”

“That's no problem, there are four of us,” said a new voice.

They turned around in surprise to greet the new arrival. “Oh, hey White,” greeted Black, “what are you doing in Nimbasa?”

“Just visiting the city.”

Black introduced the others to one another and they boarded the train. They entered a large, mostly empty wagon and the train began riding.

“I guess we should get started with the battle,” said Black.

“Right!” exclaimed Bianca, “I'm with Cheren!”

“What?” Cheren said while Bianca pulled him to the opposite side of the wagon by his sleeve, “but I want to team up with Black!”

Bianca stuck her tongue out at him. “Too late, you're with me now!”

“Then I guess we are a team as well,” said White.

“Great. Let's use three pokémon each,” said Black, “Octa, you're up first.”

“In that case,” Cheren said with a grin, “I'll use Pignite!”

“Then I'll use Oshy to complete our starter trio!” Bianca exclaimed.

“Don't you know anything?” Cheren asked exasperated, “You don't use pokémon that are at a type disadvantage to your opponent's if you can help it!”

“It's just a training battle, and how better to train him for battling electric types than to use him against his other weakness?”

“Training or not, you battle to win.”

“Well, I battle to have fun!”

White cleared her throat. “Rufflet, go!”

The four pokémon looked at one another for a moment, then Octa summoned a Leaf Tornado at Oshy the Dewott, while Pignite encased itself in flames and bashed into Octa. To complicated matters further, Oshy slashed at Rufflet, who performed an aerial swoop over Pignite at the same time. As the battle turned into close combat, Octa switched to using Vine Whip attacks while Pignite used his fists and mass to do the talking.

Boreas was watching the battle intently, but slowly became aware that with each Vine Whip Octa used, Toxica's grin became a bit broader and her blush a bit deeper. Eventually she sighed deeply. “Oh, how I wish he would just sweep me off my feet, wrap me up with his gorgeous green body, and kiss my lips while he's at it...”

“Please excuse me while I go vomit into someone's eye,” said Boreas, quickly moving away from Toxica to go to Lucius and Capella who were sitting a few metres further, chatting with White's pokémon, including, Boreas nervously noted, Febby.

“Hello, non-creepy, non-obsessed people,” he greeted them.

“I take it Toxica was swooning over Octa once again, then?” Capella amusedly asked.

“More like obsessing over him.”

“Don't worry,” Lucius sneered, “I'm sure Octa has eyes for no-one but you.”

“Shut up.”

While Boreas hadn't been paying attention, the battle had continued and by now Octa was the only combatant left standing. “Octa,” Black commanded, “switch out for Boreas.”

“Good luck, my dear fellow,” said Octa as they passed each other.

“Then it's up to you, Liepard!” Cheren said.

“Pansy,” Bianca commanded, sending her Pansear out, “begin by lowering its defence with Tickle!”

White sent out her Vullaby to help Boreas. Pansear lurched at him, but he dodged with a quick roll that led his straight into Liepard's claws. The feline slashed him several times, opening long cuts on his body. As he recoiled in pain, Pansear used the opportunity to grab him and begin tickling his belly. Boreas recoiled and laughed as he tried to wrestle the Pansear off him.

–

Present

“So you're ticklish?” asked Aqua, interrupting Boreas.

“A bit, yeah,” said Boreas.

A diabolic grin slowly spread on Aqua's face. “Oh, you are?” she said in a tone that was as sweet as a caramel onion.

Suddenly she jumped on top of him, placed her paws on his stomach, and started tickling him. He tried not to laugh, but the feeling of her tickling was too much to handle and he burst with laughter while his limbs convulsed uncontrollably. “Hahaha- No, stop it- Heehee- Please- Nononono- hahaha- Okay, stopstopstop, please- hahaha- knock it off, pleahease!”

“Never!” Aqua said, tickling even faster, “I'm going to tickle you to death!”

“Hihihi- pleaheaheahease- haha- stohohop!”

“Maybe I'll be lenient to you if you beg me for mercy.”

“Hahaha, mehehehehercy, please!”

“Percy?” she said with a look of ignorance, “My name's not Percy!”

“Hahaha, mehercy!”

“Do I look like a Percy to you?”

“No, no, hahaha, merceeheehee!”

“I don't think this “Percy” of yours can hear you, so he won't come to save you. You're all mine!”

Realising she wasn't going to show him any mercy, instead he tried to get his convulsing limbs under as much control as possible, grabbed her wrists, flipped her over on her back, and sat on her hind legs. “Ha!” he exclaimed, “we'll see who tickles whom to death now!”

He began tickling her stomach, finding out that she was ticklish too as she began laughing. “You do know you really deserved this, don't you?”

“Hahaha- if I sayayayay yes, will- heehee- you stohohohop it?”

“Not a chance,” Boreas grinned, enjoying this position very much.

“Hahahaha- stop it- heeheeheehee- I gayayave you a fair way ouhout!”

“Okay, I'll stop if you can say 'antidisestablishmentarianism'.”

“Ahahantidisest- ahahaha- Antidihihihi- it's not faihaihair, knock it ohohoff!”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Hahaha- please- hahaha- pretty pleaheahease!”

“Not a chance. I'm tickling you to death!”

“Hahaha- no, mercy!”

“Percy? I don't know anyone named Percy.”

“Thahahahat's mean! Hahaha- knock it off, mehehercy!”

“My name's Boreas, not Percy.”

“Stohohop, Borayayas”

“That's not my name either.”

“Hahaha- I give uhuhuhup. You win.”

Boreas stopped tickling her, and immediately she grabbed him, rolled them over, and said “And now it's payback time!”

But Boreas was prepared for that: he used their rolling momentum to continue rolling and end up on top again. “You were saying?”

She laughed coquettely. “I guess I shouldn't have tried to trick you. Now you really win, you sly fox.”

As she lay there, still panting from the tickle fight, she looked absolutely stunning and Boreas was overcome by an overpowering sense of adoration. “To think that I only met you yesterday...” he whispered.

“Incredible, isn't it?” Aqua whispered blushing, “it seems as if I've known you for so much longer.”

“Yeah... It does.” Boreas slowly leant forward, approaching her face closer and closer as she held her breath in expectation. But when he was only twenty centimetres away from her, he suddenly lost all courage. His nerves made him freeze in place, he blushed so deeply it was a surprise his eyes didn't pop out of their sockets, and he got off Aqua.

Why didn't I kiss her?! He thought, angry at himself, if I hadn't chickened out, I would be feeling her soft lips on mine right now!

But what if she didn't want to kiss me? A voice of doubt inside him asked.

Obviously, she wanted to kiss me, she hasn't exactly made it a secret that she fancies me! And look at the disappointed look on her face right now.

A few seconds passed in a highly awkward silence, and Boreas was deeply jealous of another Boreas in a parallel universe, who was spending those few seconds snogging Aqua instead. But in this universe, the moment had passed and Boreas felt he had to break the silence somehow.

“So... um... when Bianca's Pansear tickled me, it wasn't remotely as much fun as that,” he said.

“Oh?” asked Aqua, somehow managing to put interest, indifference, disappointment, and curiosity into just two letters.

“Yes,” he continued, “because as soon as I began laughing, it gave me a Fire Punch instead and the Liepard scratched me with his claws.”

–

Past

Boreas cringed in pain from the several attacks he was being hit by and his vision was rapidly going black. He concentrated on staying awake and created Powder Snow out of thin air to cool and soothe his wounds. Feeling less dizzy, he took a look at the world around him. His ally had taken the pressure off him by engaging both opponents at once, and though her bone-armour protected her she was clearly about to faint. He formed Icy Wind to envelop both opponents and draw them to him, but once again he was finding the attack was just not direct or powerful enough for his purposes. He tried to concentrate all his cold in a beam, but again, all it did was make his mouth very cold, so he resorted to using Ice Fang on Liepard instead.

Vullaby immediately reacted by stabbing her beak into Liepard's flesh like a knife. Pansear tried to use Boreas' distractedness while he bit Liepard to give him another Fire Punch, but Boreas had expected that, jumped aside just in time, and laughed as Pansear punched his own ally. Using moves from when he was an Eevee, he Tackled the Pansear multiple times, pinned him down to the ground, and allowed his ally to Peck it again. Pansear and Liepard were soon defeated, and Black recalled Boreas as White switched the wounded Vullaby out for Febby. “Boreas, switch out for Toxica.”

Boreas was rather surprised by that, as he couldn't remember a single time when Black had used Toxica other than against Team Plasma. Apparently Cheren was surprised too. “An Oddish, really?”

“This is a training battle,” explained Black as Boreas sat down by Capella and Octa, “and I think it's about time she evolved, so I'm training her.”

“That is weird, now that he mentions it,” Capella mused, “Toxica should have evolved a while ago. I wonder why she hasn't yet?”

Boreas had a pretty good idea of why Toxica hadn't evolved yet, recalling her conversation with Octa where he called Glooms smelly and ugly. He didn't say anything, though, as though Toxica's fawning over Octa annoyed him highly, he still wasn't going to spill her secrets to others.

Cheren sent out his Tranquill and Bianca her Munna to battle Toxica and Febby. They began attacking Toxica, who unleashed a cloud of powder before jumping out of the way, so that her opponents both inhaled a big breath of the toxic powder.

“Excellent!” Octa exclaimed. For once, Boreas was not annoyed by this as he was too bust watching Febby. Toxica turned for a moment to smile and wave at him with one of her leaves, and was immediately punished for it as Tranquill swooped over her and slashes his talons across her face, while Munna was battling Febby.

“Just out of curiosity,” Capella's calm voice whispered, “have you told her how you feel about her?”

Boreas turned in surprise. “Whom? And what am I supposed to feel about her and tell her about?”

Capella sighed. “Look, don't bother trying to hide it, it's pretty obvious and I've seen it often enough.”

“Okay, fine,” Boreas submitted, “no, I haven't told her.”

“I've been in love more times than I can remember, and let me tell you that it's always better to tell her. Sure, she might not return the feelings, but in that case you get over it relatively quickly compared to how long it takes if you never know what she might have said.”

“I appreciate your concern, but just let me deal with it my way, okay?”

After relentless psychic attacks by Munna, Febby collapsed. However, the effects of the Poisonpowder were rapidly becoming apparent: one by one, every vein in the opponents' bodies became clearly visible as it turned black, and their eyes were turning a bloody red while their faces were screwed up in pain.

Before White could even switch Febby out for Vullaby, Tranquill swooped over Toxica, scratching her with his claws. Meanwhile Munna's bleeding eyes glowed and Toxica seemed to be in severe pain. Within moments, she fainted as well.

“Woohoo!” Bianca cheered, “we won!”

“I'm afraid we didn't,” said Cheren, “White still has a pokémon left, and Black only retreated his Servine and Glaceon, they never fainted, so he can use them again, while our last two pokémon are poisoned.”

“Oh,” said Bianca disappointed.

“We could call it a tie,” suggested Black.

awesome couple of chapters, the way you right battles is awesome, you're righting is great keep it up

Chapter Twenty-Five: Sunset at the Ferris Wheel

“Take a look behind us, my dear fellow,” said Octa.

Boreas did so. The Sun was setting, the lower half of it already disappeared behind the horizon while the upper half was very dim and red. Because they were on Main Boulevard, a broad street that crossed Nimbasa in a single straight line, they could see it even in the middle of the city. “Yes, it's a sunset,” observed Boreas.

“I think it looks really romantic...” Toxica swooned.

“Uh, yes, quite,” said Octa, “but 'tis no ordinary sunset, you see. Today is 23 September, meaning 'tis an equinox.”

“Equinox...” Boreas thought, knowing he'd heard the word before, “That's your ancestor's name, innit? The one your family names itself after, because he was pretty awesome?”

“Quite right, my dear fellow. I am pleased you remember some of my family's history. However, my illustrious ancestor is not the type of equinox I speak of. I mean the astronomical event. You see, twice a year, as the Earth moves around the Sun in its 360 day-long orbit, its rotational axis is pointed at an angle exactly perpendicular to the Sun's direction, meaning the Sun is exactly above the Equator the entire day. Thus these are the only two days of the year when day and night are exactly equal in length, meaning the Sun rises precisely in the East at 6:00, and it sets precisely in the West at exactly 18:00, which is...” he looked at a nearby clock and then at the Sun, “in one minute.”

The last bit of the Sun that was still above the horizon turned into a stripe of red, and then disappeared completely. “Naturally,” Octa spoke, “the equinox is also by definition the conclusion of summer and the commencement of autumn. 'Tis a shame, really, I shall miss the heat and light.”

Boreas grinned. “Well, I shan't. I didn't like the summer when I was an Eevee, and evolving to an ice type really hasn't improved my opinion of it. I have never seen an autumn, but I think I'll like it.”

Lucius uttered a sigh that might have been mistaken for an approaching hurricane. “How long's Black gonna stay inside? 'Till we all died of old age?”

“Have some patience,” lectured Octa, “You do not see Boreas complaining, despite his astounding lack of patience.”

Three people in long coats entered the shop where Black was. “What do I care what Boreas does,” snapped Lucius, “he's probably too mesmerised by your fancy-shmancy talk of the Sun and equinoxes to be bored.”

“Hey!” growled Boreas.

“Equinoctes,” bettered Octa.

“He's been in the stupid egg shop for hours,” Lucius exaggerated, “If he doesn't get out in a minute, I'm goin' in to get him, and to hell with possibly upsetting the newly hatched pokémon.”

“Please do,” grinned Octa. “Go in and have a callow Igglibuff or a beatific Cleffa imprint on you. I can already imagine how much you would like a cherubic little creature with the misapprehension you were its mother following you wherever you went.”

“Hmpf,” Lucius grunted, but he didn't get the chance to say anything else, as there was suddenly sound of commotion inside the shop, and they heard Black's voice calling for their help.

Inside, the people in the long coats had thrown their coats off to reveal themselves as Team Plasma. One of them was just finishing stating their demands.

“I have some better demands,” stated Black as his pokémon entered, “One: you leave here right now, without disturbing a single egg or baby pokémon. Two: you tell me and the police every little bit of information you have on Team Plasma, then you leave Plasma forever.”

The grunts laughed. “Ha, why should we listen to some brat?”

“Because this brat has three badges and will kick your arses if you don't listen to him,” said Black.

“Ha! I'll warn you, brat: Sage Zinzolin authorised us to use any means necessary to liberate these pokémon eggs. We won't hesitate stepping over your dead body if you force us to.”

“And what are you going to do with these eggs?” Black angrily asked, “when you “liberated” my pokémon, I found them back in cages, their injuries not even treated! You shan't steal these helpless eggs!”

“Then prepare to die, brat!”

–

A few minutes later, the grunts had returned their pokémon to their pokéballs after losing the battle. “Uh oh, this is bad for Team Plasma! Or PlasBad for short!”

“Now will you-” Black started, but the Plasma grunts had already thrown smoke bombs.

“Oh no,” Boreas said determined, “not this time!”

He created a fierce Icy Wind, blowing most of the smoke out of the shop. The Plasma grunts were already outside, running rapidly over the boulevard. They began pursuing them immediately, but it almost seemed as if people were intentionally getting in their way, and the Plasma grunts were very fast runners. Unbelievable though it may be, they were getting away. The last glimpse they saw of the grunts in the distance, they entered one of Nimbasa's amusement parks.

Boreas tried to pick up their scent in the amusement park, but between the thousands of human and pokémon scents in the busy park it was like seeking a piece of hay in a stack of needles. It seemed they had lost Team Plasma, but then they saw a human in white clothes with long, green hair. “N!”

N was surprised to see them. “Oh, hello, Octa. Is that you, Boreas? You evolved to a Glaceon, that's great!”

“N, there's no time to talk!” said Boreas, “we're looking for Team Plasma, they ran into the amusement park!”

“Team Plasma, eh?” N smiled, “yes, I saw them run by just now. Come with me.”

They followed N for a while, but it soon became apparent that he'd lost them too. “Are you sure you saw them?” asked Black.

“Yes,” said N, “Let's ride the Ferris wheel and see if we can spot them.”

A large Ferris wheel, at least thirty metres in diameter was supported by a huge steel scaffolding. Eight glass carriages that were attached to the big wheel by their metal frames hung from the wheel and they entered the one that was just at the bottom of the wheel. The doors closed automatically as it began to rise.

Inside the carriage, N spoke: “I love Ferris wheels.”

Black was busy looking out of the cart trying to spot Team Plasma. “Oh, do you?”

N nodded. “The circular motion... The mechanics... They're like collections of elegant formulas.”

Black seemed a bit weirded out. “I... guess they are.”

An awkward silence descended over the cart as it passed its highest point. After a while, N drew a deep breath. “I must tell you... I am the king of Team Plasma.”

Boreas was quite surprised by that remark. It was obviously not meant literally, but he wasn't sure what N really meant by it. A look at the faces of him companions showed the same puzzlement in them. Black smiled a disbelieving smile. “Are you?”

N nodded, seemingly oblivious of the sarcasm. “Ghetsis asked me to work with him to save pokémon.”

“Did he?” asked Black.

“I wonder how many pokémon exist in this world.”

They had reached the ground again and exited the carriage. “I didn't see them, unfortunately,” said Black, “I guess they must be somewhere inside.”

After walking for a minute, they passed and ice cream parlour just as the three Plasma grunts came out of it. They stood still when they saw N and Black. “My lord N!” one of them exclaimed.

“What?!” said Black, “Do you mean you were speaking the truth? The literal truth?”

N seemed insulted. “Of course! Why would I lie? Only dishonest humans lie.”

Boreas' opinion of N plummeted like Icarus with the Titanic tied to his feet. He was completely speechless. “You...” he stammered furiously, “You fancy-dress fascist! Your Team Plasma set me on fire! And that really hurt!”

Black furiously set a step forward as N tried to say something. “You're Team Plasma's leader?” he spat in disgust, “You're responsible for all the things they did?!”

“Team Plasma tried to drown me, and kidnapped baby pokémon and eggs from the daycare!” Boreas accused N.

“Okay,” said N, “I know you and Team Plasma don't always see eye to eye.”

“Eye to eye?!” spat Boreas, “you broke my legs and stuffed me in a cage for a week! You murdered my friend!”

“I know my subjects haven't treated you too kindly,” said N, “but surely you're exaggerating. They would never do anything like that.”

“Exaggerating?! I couldn't walk for weeks! And even after that, it hurt until I evolved! Half my fur was burnt off and I would've been Dragon Pulsed to death if I hadn't got really lucky! And they were directly responsible for murdering Thomas!”

“Enough!” N shouted, surprising everyone, “this is not the time or place to discuss whatever Team Plasma might have done to you. What's important now is my subjects. You are part of the people we brought in to save the pokémon. That means you're under my protection. Go now, report to sage Zinzolin, and I'll cover your retreat,” he tossed a pokéball and released a Tropius as the grunts began running away, “Perhaps I can't beat you here and now, but my battle will allow my subjects to escape.”

“No, it won't,” said Black, “Boreas, battle that Tropius while the others go after the grunts.”

As the others ran past N, he threw four pokéballs at once over his shoulder, somehow managing to have every one land directly in front of one of them. Lucius was blocked by a Krokorok, Capella by a Scraggy, Toxica by a Darumaka, and Octa by a Sigilyph.

They had no choice but to fight the quintuple battle. Fortunately Boreas' opponent was at a severe type disadvantage and he thought there was still a chance to catch Plasma if he finished the Tropius quickly. He created an Icy Wind and enveloped the Tropius in it, expecting to win the battle in a single hit, but the Tropius emerged from the icy cloud grinning, barely even hurt. Boreas was so surprised he didn't even think of dodging when it pounced him and began slashing at his face. He squirmed under the weight of the massively heavy sauropod pressing on his ribcage, but couldn't manage to escape from under it. He could barely even breathe, and was pretty sure his ribs were about to break.

Boreas tried to free himself by summoning Powder Snow to fall on the heavy sauropod, but it didn't seem to care much. It kept slashing at him, which puzzled him, as it didn't even have sharp claws.

“Diego?” he asked, “how in the name of Kyogre's closet organiser did you get so heavy?”

The disguised Zorua was so surprised by Boreas saying his name that he was momentarily very distracted, so Boreas used that moment to scratch at where he hoped the other fox's face was while he kicked him using his legs. To Boreas' fortune, his leg hit something soft with great force and the fake Tropius howled in pain, giving Boreas a chance to wriggle free and envelop his opponent with another icy cloud. When the cloud disappeared the Tropius was gone, and in its place was a small black fox with an agonised expression on his face.

“I thought as much,” said Boreas smugly, “but how did you get so crushingly heavy?”

“I... Have heavy bones,” the Zorua lied between teeth clenched in pain.

Boreas laughed. “That is a blatant lie, and we both know it. Either your bones are made of enriched uranium, or...” he smiled as what he realised was the truth popped into his head, connecting all the dots, “Or you've evolved to Zoroark and are still using an illusion. That's the truth, isn't it?”

The still pained expression on Diego's face made place for resentment, and then the Zorua was gone and a huge Zoroark standing on its hind legs was in its place. Yikes, thought Boreas, he's as large as a human, it's no wonder he was so heavy, “So, you show your true form.”

“You're pretty clever,” said Diego. “I've rarely battled someone whom figured out the fact that I'm a Zorua, much fewer whom manage to deduce that I'm actually a Zoroark now. But that won't help you defeat me.”

Boreas laughed, though he did realise the Zoroark had a point, there was little chance of him defeating his opponent if he didn't think of something. “I guess your master doesn't tell you much about Team Plasma's matters, then.”

“My master?” Diego scoffed, circling Boreas like a predator circling its prey, “I have no master. N is my best friend, and he tells me everything.”

“Apparently he didn't tell you that I defeated three of his Sages using nothing more than my wit,” bragged Boreas, though he mentally added: and an immense amount of luck and a lot of help from my friends. And I never really defeated Bronius. “You don't have the skills or the wit to defeat me.”

“Wit?” Diego scoffed, “I don't need wit to break your spine!”

“See? That wasn't witty at all.”

Suddenly Diego charged Boreas, and as he ran a wave of murk formed around him; it was shaped like a gigantic monstrous maw about to devour Boreas. Boreas froze with fear for just a second before realising it was just an illusion, but that second was all Diego needed to pounce him with all his massive weight, slash a bloody red striped across his chest with his claws, lift him up, and punch him away with a near bonebreaking impact. Boreas landed in a heap several metres away, groaning in severe pain. The battle was beginning to look and feel a lot like a fistfight with a train.

Diego didn't even bother attacking him again, instead waiting for him to rise with mock-gallantry. Boreas managed to get up, groaning in pain. “If he told you- Argh!- everything, that means you must've known he's the king of Team Plasma.” Boreas enveloped his opponent in a freezing cold cloud.

The Zoroark jumped out of the icy cloud, small bits of ice glistening in his fur, and pounced Boreas, whom managed to dodge this time. “Knew it? I was there at his coronation as his chamberlain! And even before that, I have been with N from the very beginning. Without my guidance and friendship, he would never have grown into the man he is now, the man that Team Plasma and all pokémon need.”

Boreas enveloped him in another freezing cloud, but this time the larger vulpine didn't jump out immediately. Instead the white cloud of coldness transformed, became pointier and dark, until it looked just like a gigantic Zoroark's head. As the Zoroark licked its lips looking at him and opened its mouth, Boreas had to remind himself very hard that it was just an illusion, and that Diego was still somewhere in the actual cloud, rapidly freezing. Determined not to panic or drop his cloud, he stood his ground watching for the real Diego even as the huge maw opened up and he could see all the way into the illusion's throat.

Boreas couldn't resist closing his eyes in fear for a moment as hundreds of huge teeth came down, and the real Zoroark used this single moment to pounce him, nearly crushing him as he landed on top of him. After a few more slashes, Diego jumped off. Boreas rolled away and jumped to his feet, and Diego immediately backhanded him across the face, making him do a flip in midair and land on his back with an impact that promised to hurt for weeks to come.

As he lay staring at the sky turning all colours of the rainbow and quite a few outside of it, the dark form of Diego entered his field of view, towering above him with a broad grin. He realised it was absolutely adamant that he kept his distance from the Zoroark, as he didn't stand a chance in physical combat against and opponent twice as large, thrice as heavy, and at least five times as strong as him. Though if he kept his distance it would be hard to deal with the illusions, especially now that his opponent seemed to have latched on to the primal fear of being eaten.

“Had enough yet?” Diego asked.

As the sky returned to dark blue, Boreas decided to keep Diego talking as long as possible to catch his breath back and so that he might have a chance to think of something. “Argh, you never seemed this tough when you battled Octa.”

Diego's smiled broadened. “Evolution can change a lot.”

As his eyes became focused, Boreas noticed some details that showed his opponent to be much less invulnerable than he seemed: thousands of tiny ice crystals glistened in his fur, and there were even ice crystals in his nose and the corners of his eyes. His long pony tail was wrapped around him for warmth and he was slightly shivering. “I guess you're right,” he spoke slowly to stall. “When I evolved, I was losing a battle with a Leavanny, but then-” he looked in open-mouthed surprise at the sky behind Diego, “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!”

At the same moment that Diego looked up, Boreas rolled to his feet, exhaled a cloud of cold air, and ran as fast as his legs could carry him to the Ferris wheel. He could hear the sounds of the other fox behind him pursuing. At the Ferris wheel one of the carriages was just closing and rising, so Boreas sprinted even faster to jump through the door before it closed. He was a little too slow, so instead of jumping into the carriage, he jumped on top of it instead as it was rapidly going up the wheel. The carriage rocked as Diego jumped too, didn't make the jump, and hung from the edge of the carriage by his front paws. Before the Zoroark could climb on, Boreas stepped on his paws and pushed them off the slippery glass surface. He hit the ground four metres lower and immediately ran to jump on the next carriage.

As Diego climbed on the other carriage, Boreas created all the cold he dared handle and sent it in a wintrous cloud to Diego's cart, surrounding it in a miniature hailstorm. What exactly was happening wasn't visible because the cloud obscured it, but it suddenly rained shards under the cart as the glass had shattered from the intense contrast in temperature between its inside and outside. Boreas knew what was going to happen next and was prepared for any manner of illusionary horror emerging from the cloud.

A phenomenal roar sounded behind him as a gigantic Steelix had popped up there. He startled, not expecting it to come from that side, and slipped on the smooth glass, over the edge of the cart, and barely managed to grab it again. His claws couldn't hold on to the glass very well, though, so he was rapidly slipping away. He took a look down, and saw, aside from the open maw of the illusionary Steelix, the ground already being shockingly distant. He was half up on the wheel, at a height of about twenty metres. He nearly slipped, pushed himself to the left, and managed to grab the metal frame of the cart with a single claw. He climbed back on the cart, this time making sure he kept at least one foot on the metal frame and ignored the Steelix that was doing its best to scare him.

He took a look at Diego's cart and saw the glass had been completely destroyed; it only existed of the seats hanging from the metal frame and all of it was covered in snow and ice. But no Diego. Boreas spotted him climbing from the destroyed cart to Boreas' cart by the rotating frame of the big wheel itself. He was already past the halfway point and rapidly approaching. Boreas created a hailstorm around Diego, hoping to make his paws so cold that he wouldn't be able to hold on any more, while he tried his very best to ignore the terrifying Steelix that appeared to be about to eat the cart and Boreas with it. His instincts were telling him to get away, run away, even jump down, anything to avoid being eaten, though he knew it was a fake. He forced himself to concentrate on nothing but his opponent even when the entire cart disappeared in the gigantic steel mouth. He could barely contain his panic, yet he kept the freezing cloud where he thought his real opponent was.

He was almost happy when the fake Steelix's mouth disappeared as the heavily besnowed Diego jumped on the cart with a great swing. He ducked one massive punch, bit his opponent, and nearly slipped off the cart's edge. He jumped aside from the Zoroark's claw, but now found himself on the cart's corner. He considered climbing down, but the metal frame didn't cover this part of the cart and he couldn't risk it on the glass. Diego's powerful, but icy cold claw grabbed him around the neck and lifted him, cutting off his breath. He struggled, but the Zoroark's grip was too powerful. He tried kicking his opponent again, but since he held him at arm's length he couldn't reach him. Zoroark watched him struggle for breath with a satisfied grin, and for a moment Boreas thought he was going to choke him to death.

The cart reached its highest point where it passed by the steel scaffolding that held the big wheel; Diego, still holding Boreas in his death grip, jumped over from the cart to the scaffolding and climbed up using his three spare paws. Boreas wasn't quite sure what happened next because oxygen deprivation was beginning to black him out, but he felt two lungsful of sweet air enter him at the same moment as something heavy grabbed his tail painfully hard and hung from it. He opened his eyes to tell whatever it was to sod off and go pester someone else, when he saw nothing hung from his tail, but instead it was firmly stuck between two pieces of the metal scaffolding. He wasn't sure he had completely recovered, because for some reason the twilight sky was down and gravity seemed to pull up.

He looked up and yelped when he saw the Earth there. “What in the name of Darkrai's saggy left-” he began, before realising that he was in fact hanging upside down by his tail, almost fifty metres high in the scaffolding. He was dangling over nothing but open air, not a single metal beam in reach to hold on to. When he looked what was up to him, he saw Diego climbing down the scaffolding, back to the wheel.

“Diego!” Boreas shouted, making the other vulpine look up, “you utter bastard, get me down right now!”

The Zoroark looked up to him and grinned. “Or what?”

“Or...” he began, realising there was nothing he wasn't in a position to demand anything, “Or I will fall to my death when my tail slips away from between these beams. You win, just help me down.”

“Not much chance of that, I made sure your tail was stuck so hard it won't let go by itself.” he continued climbing down.

“You can't just leave me here!”

“Can't I? Watch me. That kick you gave me still hurts, so I'm not going to help you myself. Don't worry, though, I'll tell your friends where they can find you.” He jumped on a passing carriage and began going down, then added: “Tomorrow morning.”

Boreas found he couldn't even reach Diego with an Icy Wind, because he was just too far away. Instead he furiously roared every curse and insult he could think of at the grinning Zoroark. Then he tried pulling himself up, but he just couldn't get high enough to reach his stuck tail, which was already beginning to hurt from being clenched between the two beams and from having his full weight hang from it.

He continued roaring insults at the Zoroark, but he had arrived at the ground, much too far away to hear the names Boreas called him, and was walking away from the big wheel with an arrogant swagger. All Boreas' rage and hate concentrated itself in a single ice-cold point in his throat, and when he opened his mouth to call Diego a two-timing troglodyte, a super thin beam of intense cold fired out at high speed instead, striking the distant figure of Diego in the small of the back barely a second later. To his enjoyment he saw Diego fall over, look up at him, and begin to run away like a frightened rabbit instead. Boreas tried to make another Ice Beam, but found he couldn't do it again, no matter how hard he tried.

Diego disappeared from his view when he turned a corner, and Boreas' thoughts turned to how he was going to get out of his current predicament. He saw a few humans get in a carriage down and he tried to get their attention and hoped they would see him. But he soon found that he was virtually impossible to see from the carriages: not only was it dark and would they have to look straight up, but at almost every point of the wheel he would be obscured by the metal frame on the roofs of the carriages.

He had some hope that the operators of the cart would wonder what had happened to the destroyed cart and go investigate the entire wheel, but they just didn't seem to care enough to investigate at night.

Contemplating the stars below him as his tail began aching more and more, he realised two things: he would kill Diego next time they met, and that it would be eleven very, very long hours until dawn.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Of Trapped Tails, Crazy Corvids, and Fencing Friends

Boreas clenched his teeth in pain, as he had for what felt like days by now. He could barely believe the Sun still hadn't risen. How long it was exactly that he had been hanging upside down by his tail, he would know once he finished some final calculations. The previous evening, after some time of just furiously hanging there cursing Diego, he had realised he would need something to occupy his mind and some way to tell the time. So he had tried to recall several things Octa had once told him about the movements of the Sun and stars. He had forgotten most of it, but had the time to work the bits he had forgotten out. In fact that had taken what Boreas was sure was most of the night. The first thing he'd done was to determine the location of the Sun, as he'd been sure he'd need that to tell the time. Since the Sun was obviously under the horizon, he picked a bright star in the constellation Espeon that was just rising in the east, and therefore should be approximately at the opposite side of the sky from the Sun. Thus if he followed the star, he also knew where the Sun was under the horizon. After a lot of time of thinking and calculating while the pain in his tail slowly increased from annoying to torturous, now finally knew the exact location of the Sun under the horizon. It was at an angle of 47 degrees west of the north, and since it moved a full circle every day, it had to move fifteen degrees each hour, meaning it was...

“Eight minutes to nine...” Boreas whispered in horror. He had barely been hanging for two hours and there were still at least nine hours to go before someone would come rescue him. Fury and hate washed over him again like a crimson wave of blood. “Diego, I hate you!” he yelled at the night, “I will cut your gut open and strangle you with your own intestines! I will cut off your toes and tracheotomise you with them! I will castrate you with a train and bury you alive!”

Because of the shouting he noticed his throat was getting dry and he was feeling very thirsty. That wasn't much of a concern now, but in nine hours, he imagined, he would be very dehydrated. He had a splitting headache from all the hanging upside down, and muscles he rarely used hurt, protesting against their sudden, prolonged use to maintain a position that was not entirely uncomfortable with gravity coming from the wrong side. For a moment, he caught himself wishing he had never been born, but he quickly amended that to wishing Diego had never been born. As the constant, throbbing waves of pain from his tail grew a tiny bit worse with each heartbeat, he continued imagining graphic ways to kill the Zoroark.

While he was enjoying the thought of shattering a glass window with Diego's head and then force-feeding him the shards, he suddenly noticed something he hadn't noticed before: as one of the moons passed behind the higher parts of the scaffolding, the silhouette of a Murkrow was clearly contrasted against the pale moon. Boreas couldn't believe his luck to have someone with wings nearby. “Help!” he shouted.

The Murkrow had to have heard him as it was pretty close, but it didn't react at all to him. “Hey! Help me! Hello, Murkrow, look at me, I'm right here!”

The Murkrow didn't even turn around to look at him. “Please, c'mon, you're my only hope! If you don't help me, I'll hang here until the morning, and I'm already in a lot of pain!”

Absolutely no reaction. “Look, helping me won't cause you any trouble at all, it'll be quite easy! You just have to warn someone on the ground that I'm up here, that's all I ask, you don't have to fly me down or anything. I'll be eternally grateful and I'll get you mountains of food! And shiny things, lots of shiny things, you must like those! And anything else you want, you only have to ask and I'll get it for you!”

The Murkrow didn't move a muscle. “Fine! You're just as bad as the guy who hung me here! I hope the same thing happens to you some day!”

Boreas went back to grinding his teeth in pain and fury while he imagined more ways to kill Diego, now occasionally guest-starring a certain Murkrow. After a while, he saw the Murkrow still hadn't moved, which annoyed him to no end. “Do you enjoy watching me hang here?”

“I'm not watching you,” a hoarse voice said.

“Well, well,” Boreas sneered, “it can talk!”

“What can?”

“You!”

“Yes, I can.”

“Why didn't you say anything earlier?”

“Because I wasn't sure if you were talking to me.”

“What? Whom else could I have been speaking to? I even called you Murkrow!”

“That's not my name, and you could've been talking to another Murkrow. After a while, I came to the conclusion that you were talking to me, but then I realised that since you hadn't asked any questions, you probably weren't waiting for answers.”

Boreas wasn't sure whether the Murkrow was being intentionally unhelpful or just insane. “I- What- Never mind. Can you please help me?”

“With what?”

“Oh, I've got this scratch on my back, could you get it for me?”

“Okay,” said the Murkrow, beginning to spread its ragged wings.

“No,” Boreas explained in exasperation, “I was obviously being sarcastic. What do you think I want help with?”

“I don't know,” said the Murkrow, with genuine sounding confusion in its voice.

“Okay, I'll give you a hint: I don't have wings. Yet, I'm here at a height of fifty metres. My tail is crushed between two metal beams and I'm hanging upside-down from it.”

The Murkrow's silhouette shrugged after a long period of deliberation.

“Well, help me down, obviously!” Boreas snapped.

“Don't you like it up here?”

“Let me repeat: I'm hanging upside-down by my bloody tail from a metal scaffolding over a huge depth and it hurts terribly. I have had better times. Will you please help me?”

“Okay. What do you want me to do?”

“Great! Fly down and look for a Servine named Octa. He has a posh, upper-class accent, talks like an overacting Shakespearean ham, and walks as if he owns the planet. An annoying Oddish is usually following him around. He's probably looking for me so he'll be in or near the amusement park. Otherwise he'll be in the pokécenter. Tell him where I am and that I need his help. My name is Boreas.”

“Okay.” The Murkrow flew off, leaving Boreas alone yet again, though at least with some hope of salvation now. The pain in his tail was a lot more bearable now that he wasn't faced with the prospect of it continuing for nine more hours and only getting worse. But after a while, doubt began to gnaw at him. The Murkrow had seemed either intentionally obfuscating and unhelpful or a bit dotty. And he didn't even know its name, or even its gender, and its silhouette had looked ragged and shaggy. The more he thought about it, the more he realised what an idiot he had been to send his only hope away so soon. After some more time passed, all his hope for an early rescue had turned to bitter despair, and he tried to find the Sun's position under the horizon again to find out how long he still had to go.

“42 degrees west of the north,” he sighed as the pain in his tail slightly increased to a whole new form of horrible. Still almost nine hours to go.

It is, of course, a well-known fact that time seems to pass at different speeds depending on the situation you;'re in. When you're having a great time with friends, the river of time seems to be approaching a waterfall, rapidly churning at great speed; while if you are bored and have nothing to do, it flows like a river of syrup slowly crawling through a plain instead. When you're hanging by your tail from a metal scaffolding, the river of times has frozen to a glacier: it has not entirely stopped, which is of course impossible, but the movement is so slow that every second seems like an eternity.

Pain kept pulsating through Boreas' tail with every heartbeat. If there' a second between each heartbeat, Boreas thought, I still have more than thirty thousand to go before I'm rescued. At least.

He was beginning to notice another discomfort: he was getting very tired. The hanging was surprisingly exhausting. But, of course, there was little chance he would manage to nap between the pain, the thirst, the unusual position, the anger, and gravity pulling his eyelids up.

“By Jove, 'tis really him! My dear fellow, are you conscious?”

“Octa?” he mumbled, and saw his friend, with the Murkrow, on the scaffolding. “Octa, I've never been so happy to see you!”

“Hang on, my dear fellow,” Octa called, climbing up the scaffolding, “I am getting you out of there.”

“Brilliant choice of words, right there,” Boreas remarked, “why don't you ask me how it's hanging while you're at it?”

When Octa had reached the same height, he extended two vines, wrapped them around Boreas' shoulders and back, and lifted him slightly up, taking most of the weight off his tail. Boreas gasped with delight as the pain decreased by a lot immediately.

When Octa reached the beams were Boreas' tail was crushed between, he sucked air into his mouth with a sort of backwards flute that seemed to indicate it was going to be difficult to help Boreas. “How the devil did you end up in this position, my dear fellow?”

“Diego hung me up here.”

An angry cloud darkened Octa's brow. “How barbaric.”

“Yeah,” Boreas agreed, “now can you get me down from here?”

“'Tis not going to be easy, my dear fellow. First, I shall obviously have to pull you up onto this beam, or you'll fall. Then 'tis likely going to take the strength of both of us to release your tail. I should incidentally warn you: your tail is not a pleasant sight.”

“It doesn't feel too great either.”

Octa held on to the beam with his three other vines and pulled Boreas up with the two wrapped around him. When Octa deposited him on the beam it immediately went black in front of his eyes and he collapsed into his friend's arms as the blood flowed away from his head. It took about a minute before his heart had coped with gravity's new direction and he was as conscious as could reasonably be expected in the situation, so Octa let him go and he held on to the beam by himself. He took a look at his tail. What little of it he could see looked very bad; it was swollen and bloody. Boreas was sort of happy that he couldn't see the part of his tail that was crushed between the beams as, judging by the amount of blood that dyed the beams, it looked even worse.

“Are you ready?” Octa asked as they both got ready to pull the beam apart. They both pulled the top beam with all their strength, but it only moved for a tiny bit. Boreas tried to get his tail out, but it hurt a lot so he pulled the beam harder to make more room instead. Suddenly Octa grabbed his tail and gave it a strong yank, freeing it but causing terrible pain to Boreas as his wounds dragged against the beams. They let the beam go, Boreas cursing in pain. He took a look at his tail and nearly gagged. Most of the skin of the part that had been stuck was gone and it was very swollen. Boreas even thought he saw a glimpse of bone through a particularly deep wound. Now that his blood could flow freely into his tail, without being impeded by gravity and the crushing beams, the wounds began bleeding badly. Boreas suddenly felt very weak and wondered how he was ever going to get down. Octa answered that for him as he wrapped three vines around him, supporting most of Boreas' weight.

“So, where are the others?” Boreas asked.

“We are unsure of Black's location. Toxica and Capella both lack arms to climb with, and Lucius preferred to have me risk my life rather than he risk his.”

Boreas had almost forgotten the Murkrow, sitting on the scaffolding again. “Murkrow! Thank you!”

She (as Boreas was now pretty sure it was a female) looked at him with a quizzical expression. “What for?”

“For saving me.”

“But didn't your friend save you?”

“Yes, but you called him. I have to thank you for allowing me to escape early. What's your name?”

It seemed to be a very difficult question, as she had to think about it for a while. “What about Selene? Yes, Selene will do.”

“Well then, Selene, or whatever your real name might be, if there's ever anything I can do for you, you only have to ask.”

They climbed on in silence as Selene kept sitting on the scaffolding. After a while, Octa smirked. ““Talks like an overacting Shakespearean ham and walks like he owns the planet”, hmm?”

–

Present

“What a git,” said Aqua, “to leave you hanging up there.”

“Yeah,” Boreas agreed, “even if I did kick him in a very sensitive spot, that was just cruel. I'm very lucky to have managed to get out after less than three hours.”

“You were. But did your tail recover completely? Let me feel.” Her soft, strong tail wrapped around his and began rubbing and massaging it. Boreas felt dizzy, almost as if the blood was flowing away from his head again, though a fierce blush proved the opposite to be true.

“No, your tail feels fine. Great, even.”

“Actually,” said Boreas, thinking quickly, “Nurse Death couldn't heal all the damage, if you feel very carefully and take a long time for it, you may feel some damage yet.”

Aqua grinned and winked coquettishly. “Okay, then I'll look for it. While I try to find this damaged spot, why don't you tell me more about the pokémon musical? And I obviously want you to sing the songs for me while you're at it.”

“I'm not sure if- uh- I can concentrate enough to talk sensibly with you fondling my tail like that.”

“Oh, I'll stop it then, shan't I?”

“-No,” Boreas quickly added, “I was wrong, I could easily handle it.”

–

Past

“Aww, don't be such a party pooper,” Bianca whined.

“I will not waste my time on this,” Cheren resolutely stated.

“Since when is having fun a waste of time?”

“In case you forgot, we're on a pokémon journey, and are supposed to be training to beat Elesa. We won't defeat her by wasting our time with this rubbish, we can only win by training on the Battle Subway.”

“Or in your case, on other roller coasters.”

“I told you, I'm not-”

Black interrupted him. “Here's an idea, Cheren: why don't we go see a musical first to see what it's like, and if we like it we can follow Bianca's plan enter our own pokémon into one.”

“Hmpf,” Cheren sighed, “fine. Let's get it over with.”

Boreas felt a sharp pinch in his shoulder as Selene landed there. “Oh, hey Selene. What's up?”

The shabby-looking Murkrow looked at the sky. “Clouds. What are you going to do?”

“We're going to the pokémon musical.” Selene looked at him with a non-understanding expression, though it was pretty hard to distinguish as it was very close to her neutral expression. “It's a sort of theatre where pokémon perform a play and sing and dance.”

She thought about it. “Do you mean they pretend to be other people?”

“Yeah, I guess you could put it like that.”

“I like that idea. Can I come?”

“Sure. Don't pinch my shoulder so hard, though.”

As they entered the large hall of the theatre, Lucius said: “What, we're not taking this loony ol' chicken with us, are we?”

Though Boreas knew Selene was slightly dotty, he couldn't help defending her. She had saved him, after all, and he liked her better than Lucius anyway. “Shut up, Lucius. If you don't like it, stay outside.”

“I'm not a loony,” said Selene.

“You sure look like one to me,” Lucius retorted.

“The one difference between myself and a loony is that I'm not mad.”

Then Lucius did something that Boreas had never seen him do: he gave a friendly smile. It was very small and gone after a single moment, but it was unmistakably there. “Hmpf,” he snorted, “crazy bird.”

–

An hour later they all came back into the theatre's hall, enthusiastically talking about the musical. The story had been about a disfigured Weavile with a beautiful voice who falls in love with a Gardevoir singing in the pokémon musical. Some of the songs had been very good, and the last one was still stuck in Boreas' head. Though the humans couldn't even understand what the pokémon on the stage were saying, they all seemed to like it. Boreas had even seen Cheren enjoy himself. The black-haired human was now arguing with Bianca again, though.

“...And another thing, I thought it was very unrealistic that the pokémon constantly started singing.”

Though Cheren was obviously just kidding, Bianca responded seriously. “But, but, that's the whole point of a musical!”

“Nevertheless, it is completely unrealistic. You don't see our pokémon singing, do you?”

With a cheeky grin, Toxica began singing: “In sleep he sang to me,

in dreams he came...

that voice which calls to me,

and speaks my name.

And do I dream again?

For now I find,

the Phantom of the Opera is there...

inside my mind!”

Though the song sounded not half as good in her squeaky, cockney-accented voice as when the Gardevoir sang it in the musical, Boreas couldn't help joining in: “Sing once again with me,

our strange duet!

My power over you-”

“Yes, yes, I get it, thank you,” Cheren interrupted, “but Bianca, I still say it's unrealistic and silly.”

As they continued arguing, Boreas stopped listening to them. After a while Selene spoke for the first time since the show had begun. “I liked it. The pokémon would pretend to be people they weren't and say things they didn't really mean. Some of them even pretended to be humans! I wonder what that feels like.”

They were about to find out, as Black and Bianca signed their pokémon up for an upcoming musical about the musketeer trio. Boreas was immediately enthusiastic; his mother had told him stories about the musketeers when he was a cub, and he had loved them. So he found himself hoping to be cast in an important role in the casting room. All the pokémon who were going to be in the musical were lined up as a Smeargle who introduced himself as Grigor walked past them. Though most of the pokémon in the line-up would end up in the choir or with a minor role, all except Selene hoped for a major role.

When the Smeargle walked by Boreas he stopped and looked him in the face for a while, making him rather uncomfortable. “Hmm... Intelligent, piercing eyes; somewhat scruffy, Giratina-may-care look; mildly attractive... I think we may have found our Keldeo!”

“Scruffy?!” Boreas exclaimed, “What do- wait, Keldeo? I get to play Keldeo?”

“We'll have to see how good your acting and singing is, first. But if that's fine, then you probably can.”

The Smeargle moved on, but Octa, standing next to Boreas stopped him: “And I suppose you'll wish me to play Cobalion. With my impeccable, noble manners, general excellence, proper pronunciation, and bearing, I couldn't be better for the role.”

“Not really, but maybe I know a better role for you.”

“Ah, Virizion, then. Yes, between my wit, charm, and good looks I suppose I would make an excellent Virizion as well.”

–

A few weeks later, Boreas stood in the spotlight as he sneaked over the stage, a big, feathered hat on his head and his headtails drenched with water and then frozen to form the single horn/sword of Keldeo. A tense silence hung over the theatre, and though they had rehearsed this at least a hundred times and he knew what was coming, he knew he was going to startle.

Suddenly a second spotlight turned on as a single chord was played, showing Octa dressed in a long, black, Victorian coat, a top hat, and a monocle. “Keldeo!” he boomed, “I have been expecting you!”

Boreas looked up to the balcony where Octa was standing. “Count Rochefort, your reign ends here!”

Octa laughed a haughty, chilling laugh as the light spread, showing off the high, Gothic décor as Octa slowly and haughtily descended the stairs. “My dear boy, and who is going to end my reign? Your friends are currently battling my pokémon outside, as you are no doubt aware, and their skill vastly surpassed yours.”

“Your pokémon? You stole them all!”

“I took,” Octa carefully articulated, “what was rightfully mine. And no one, especially a” he sniffed haughtily as he paused dramatically, “commoner like you can stop me.”

“We'll see about that,” Boreas grinned as he saluted Octa.

Octa returned the combat salute and drew a Leaf Blade. “So we shall. En guarde!”

The friends crossed their swords as the choir began to sing a battle song. Since Octa was wielding the Leaf Blade with his hands while Boreas was using the frozen headtails that were attached to his head, Boreas was at quite the disadvantage. He had asked if he couldn't just make a strong icicle like a sword and wield it with one of his front paws, but the Smeargle had been adamant: everyone knew the musketeers fight using their horns as swords, so Boreas would just have to manage.

“Soon,” Octa threatened as he slashed with his blade, “you'll be wearing my sword like a shish kebab!”

That was not in the script, and the audience wouldn't be able to hear it anyway with the music drowning it out, but if Octa wanted to have some improvised fun with their fight, Boreas would happily join in. “First, you'd better stop waving it like a feather duster!” he responded, nearly hitting Octa with a lunge that forced Octa to jump back with a startled face. “Arceus preserve me, you look like something that's died!”

Octa jumped over Boreas with an impressive salto, swung around, and nearly stabbed him in the back. “The only way you shall be preserved is in formaldehyde!” Octa tried a more aggressive stance, forcing Boreas to take a step back or be hit. “My attacks have left entire islands depopulated!”

It really was a shame the audience couldn't hear their insults, Boreas mused. “With your breath, I'm sure they all suffocated!” he retorted, blocking Octa's attacks and making dangerous ripostes that forced Octa to take several steps onto the stairs. “Nobody has ever drawn blood from me, and nobody ever will!”

“Do you run that fast, boy?” Octa retorted. Now the song was reaching its climax, though, which meant that they had to stop improvising their duel and actually had to move on to the choreographed part.

Octa feinted, getting in a few hits that Boreas made look as if he could parry them only barely, and then it looked as if he was going to lose, as if Octa's next strike would finish him off, but he parried the hit and made a surprising riposte that looked as if it penetrated Octa's heart (though it was actually under his arm) just as the music reached its climax. He withdrew the sword from under Octa's arm, and the Servine clasped his hands to his heart with an agonised expression, actually making the packets of tamato ketchup hidden in his clothes tear open, making it look as if he'd actually been mortally wounded. With overly dramatic acting, Octa fell to the ground as Boreas began singing his part of the song.

“That was fun,” Octa whispered behind him, still playing dead, “we should try fencing more often, my dear fellow.”

Nice little act at the end, Selene's an interesting character, I would like to see more about her.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Great Warrior

Storms raged across Unova throughout November. Every single day fierce winds would howl through Nimbasa, tearing off roofs, uprooting trees, causing blackouts, and generally making the streets a place people didn't want to be. Water as cold as ice, occasionally intermixed with hail, poured down from the sky and made unprotected hands and faces feel frozen after just a few minutes. Rumours that Tornadus and Thundurus had declared war on civilisation were soon abound. After the third week of storms and a couple of gruesome railroad disasters, the Unovan trains were closed down until further notice, meaning Black, Cheren, and Bianca couldn't even train on the Battle Subway any more. They would have challenged Elesa then, but she had no time for it between her job as model and her volunteer work to help combat the many blackouts the storms caused.

The stormy weather was affecting all of Black's pokémon: all except Boreas were completely miserable and depressed in the constant icy rains and were very grumpy and quiet. Boreas actually liked the cold and thought the constant howling winds that seemed to slice straight through the flesh of others and freeze their bones were, in a certain way, delightful and awe-inspiring, as were the constant rolling clouds and the lightning. He didn't like the rain, though, as it drenched him like everyone else. But what was even worse was that he was stuck in the pokécenter. He hated staying in one place for too long, and it was even worse with it being a single building. He often went outside, of course, but the rain would drench him and he had to watch out for things being blown around by the wind. That didn't get him out of Nimbasa, though, something which he was really longing for. Whenever groceries needed to be bought, Boreas would happily get them, as it was better than to be stuck in the pokécenter with his friends while tensions ran higher and higher.

They had also been taking care of Selene. The Murkrow didn't see any problem with flying through the storm for some reason, and had ended up with several broken bones after being blown into a wall. After that, she was still convinced flying through the storm was a good idea, and no amount of logic or injuries could convince her otherwise. So for the weeks after that they had made sure she stayed inside the pokécenter and kept a close eye on her, though she wanted to go outside.

One day, Boreas was fighting the storm with Bianca to get groceries. They had tried letting Boreas get them on his own earlier, but the human clerks' inability to understand him had proved too much of an obstacle, so the humans would now take turns going with him. Bianca was wearing a lengthy raincoat that made the most infernal noises as the storm rattled it. An umbrella might've helped, but every umbrellas in the city had long been destroyed by the mighty winds and they were now usually flying around town like a swarm of metal-and-plastic insects occupying the city, giving the impression that they had gone feral. Boreas found the wind's howling through his fur and ears sort of pleasant. The streaming rain was another matter, though, and he tried to stay in Bianca's wake to keep at least a bit dry. When they finally reached the store, the human and the fox were both exhausted from fighting the fierce winds, and Bianca's face was red from the ice-cold rain. They began picking up what they needed, when they overheard two men talking in another isle.

“...And apparently he defeated Louis before his pokémon even got a single hit in.”

“But that's incredible, how did he do that?”

“Beats me. Apparently the guy was just standing around by the stadium as if the world wasn't coming to an end all around him, and he challenged Louis and all kinds of other trainers to battles. Well, you know Louis, he wouldn't refuse a challenge if his life depended on it, but he was completely steamrolled.”

“Must've been a pokémon master.”

“That's what they say, yeah. He uses some incredibly powerful fighting types, apparently.”

“Y'know, if the weather wasn't this awful, I might seek him out. I'd love to test myself against a real pokémon master.”

“Heh, rather you than me. I don't want my precious Cleffa punched to bits.”

As the two men started chatting about other things, Bianca and Boreas looked each other in the eye, having the same thought. They rushed out of the store, nearly forgetting to pay, and ran back to the pokécenter, dodging a few umbrellas on the way back.

–

“You forgot half the groceries!” Cheren snapped.

“I know, just listen to what I have to say, okay?” Bianca said, taking off her coat. The coat had barely helped against the storm, as she was almost as soaked as Boreas was.

Apparently Cheren noticed this too, as Boreas saw his eyes dart down for a moment before replying. “What is it now?”

“There's a pokémon master in town, and he's a really great master of the fighting type, and he's challenging people at the stadium and he defeated a guy named Louis!”

That got Cheren and Black's attention, and they wanted to know everything from Bianca. Boreas wondered something, so he asked Octa. “Octa, I wonder what a fighting type can really do. Apart from kicking and punching, I mean. They just seem at a bit of a disadvantage to other types like us, who can do stuff like making ultra-cold beams of coldness, spit fire, enter the opponent's mind, be plated with steel, and other useful things like that.”

“You are quite right, my dear fellow. Their fighting style is entirely based on simple physical strength, meaning they are at quite a disadvantage. Especially considering they usually aren't too bright either. When a fighting type encounters a problem it can't solve with violence, it usually tries to solve it with even more violence.”

“Perhaps,” interjected Capella, “if you two are not too busy feeling superior, you'll consider that this is a fighting pokémon master. If he became a pokémon master with the fighting type, that on its own shows he is a force to be reckoned with.”

Octa looked embarrassed. “Mmmyes, quite. I was just about to say that. Besides, my dear fellow, you should be extra careful regardless.”

“Why?”

“Because your type is at a disadvantage to fighting types.”

“It is? Why?”

“Well, ice is a brittle substance, which can be fractured by a powerful punch.”

“Right, I suppose ice is, but I'm not made of ice. I'm made of carbon, just like you.”

“Quite, but you are still an ice type, my dear fellow.”

“Yeah, I am, but since I'm not a Glalie or a Cryogonal, why would ice's brittleness be a concern to me? I'm not made of ice, I just use it for attacks, like most other ice types.”

“Um... Yes, but... Quite, yet... Oh, look, the humans have put on raincoats, it seems we are going outside.”

They asked Nurse Death to keep Selene with her and left the pokécenter. They battled through the raging storm, dodging feral umbrellas flying around. While the piercing cold combination of temperatures just above freezing, streaming rain, and sharp winds didn't bother Boreas too much, he saw all his friends hated it. He had once tried making it less horrible for them by creating Icy Winds in the direction opposite to the storm's, but that had turned out counterproductive: not only was the storm far too powerful to be silenced by him, but the opposing air streams actually fed the winds and made them very erratic, and it cooled the air down even further, turning the rainstorm into a frigid hailstorm. So Boreas didn't try that again this time and just let the storm be.

When they finally reached the stadium, they saw a lone figure stand in front of it. He wore a long white cloak that covered his entire body, including his head, but even with the cloak it was obvious he was a very large, hefty man. He didn't seem to care about the storm, though he had to be drenched and freezing. As they approached the man, a pair of other humans, a male and a female, jumped out of an alley. One of them carried a microphone and the other a camera.

“Hi,” shouted the one with the microphone against the storm, “we're from Unova News Network! Are you going to challenge the mysterious pokémon master?!”

“Yeah!” Black shouted back.

“Which one of you goes first?!”

“I am!” said Black.

Bianca and Cheren didn't seem to mind. “Great! Do you mind if we film your battle?! It may end up on the news, people are longing for news that isn't about the storms and the damage they're causing!”

“If you can film in this weather, that's okay with me!”

“Okay, would you mind introducing yourself and your pokémon and how you caught them real quickly?!”

“Fine! I'm Black from Nuvema Town. This is Octa, I received him from Professor Juniper as a birthday present; this is Boreas, I rescued him as an Eevee when Zangeese attacked him; I caught Lucius here on Route 3; and Toxica and Capella just sort of joined my party out of their own choice. Now can I get to battling?!”

“Yes! Show the world an amazing battle!”

Black walked to the cloaked figure.

“Do you wish to challenge me?!” a voice so loud and deep it could easily have been mistaken for thunder boomed.

“Yes!”

The voiced roared an inarticulate battle cry as the figure entered a battle position and threw a pokéball. A vaguely humanoid form with a big red nose holding two massive stone pillars appeared. The Conkeldurr's muscles bulged like steel cables in its massive arms.

“Toxica,” Black commanded, “you go first!”

The Oddish ran at the Conkeldurr, giving the impression of an ant attacking a tank. As she neared him, she released a cloud of powder, but the rain immediately flushed the spores out of the air. Before Toxica could react, Conkeldurr swung one of its pillars with a move so fast it seemed impossible, hitting her like a golfer hitting the ball, and she was launched off her feet at incredible speed.

Fortunately, Octa managed to catch her, and they exchanged some words before she fainted in his arms. For a moment Boreas though Octa was blushing, but then he realised it was just because of the ice cold rain and wind. Black cursed. “Capella, try to paralyse it!”

Capella didn't listen to Black, however. Instead the gem on her forehead glowed and the storm, instead of raging at random, suddenly obeyed her will and directed all its might, rain, wind, feral umbrellas, and assorted debris, at Conkeldurr. The fighting type was enveloped by the raging storm's energy concentrated in a single point. However, it was obvious from Capella's face that this cost her immense amounts of energy and that she couldn't keep it up long.

The two huge pillars suddenly flew from the concentrated storm cloud, and one of them landed on Capella and shattered into a thousand pieces, instantly knocking her out and returning the storm to its own chaotic will. Black rescued the heavily bloodied and unconscious Dratini from the mass of rubble that had been created around her.

“How many pokémon are we using anyway?!” he asked his opponent.

“Use as many as you want,” the voice responded, “you won't defeat Conkeldurr.”

“We'll see about that,” said Black, “Octa, you're up next!”

Unlike Toxica, Capella seemed to have done some damage to Conkeldurr: several of the umbrellas had given it mean cuts and it looked a bit hypothermic. Perhaps more importantly, it had thrown and destroyed its pillars, so its main weapon was gone.

Capella's attack had forced the Conkeldurr to actually move. So far it hadn't even taken a step, but now it walked at Octa threateningly, seeming to tower over the Servine, even though it wasn't actually that much taller. It was far more massive and muscular, though, and now seemed to radiate with pure might. Octa drew the long, sharp, rapier-like leaf that he used for his Leaf Blade attacks.

Suddenly Conkeldurr showed off its deceptive speed as it jumped at Octa with a pounce. It could easily have crushed him if he hadn't run at Conkeldurr at the same moment and jumped onto its back. He ran two steps over the flying Conkeldurr's back while dragging the point of his Leaf Blade across it and jumped off behind it with a jump that seemed more flashy than was necessary.

Conkeldurr jumped to its feet immediately with a roar of pain as the metre-long cut across its back began bleeding. Octa was going to say something, but he had to swallow his words as he pressed himself against the ground to duck under a fist like a cannonball aimed for his head. The Conkeldurr tried to step on him, but Octa rolled under its foot, jumped to his feet, and stabbed his opponent in the back of the thigh.

Conkeldurr responded with a mighty roar as it turned around while swinging its arm and backhanding Octa in the face. Octa was launched by the hand's impact, made a big parabola through the air, and landed with an awfully hard impact on the pavement.

“Boreas, take over!” Black commanded as he rushed to help Octa.

Boreas had been thinking of some way to beat his opponent, and had come to the conclusion that Capella had had the right idea when she took control of the storm. It was the only thing around that was even close to the power level of the Conkeldurr, so it made sense to try to use it against it. Of course, Boreas couldn't take control of the storm like Capella, nor would he have even tried to control something so mighty. Instead, he just cooled it down a degree or twenty while still letting it rage to its own will. The storm was already near zero, and cooling it down further only increased its ferocity while the massive raindrops froze and became large hailstones. Between wind speeds now approaching a hurricane's, temperatures far below zero, and hailstones the size of golf balls being blown around at very dangerous speeds, the storm was getting to be very painful for all present, except Boreas to whom it was merely uncomfortable.

Conkeldurr, very red with hypothermia and bruises from the hailstones, pounced Boreas, whom could only barely dodge by increasing the wind speed even further with an Icy Wind to make it so powerful that when he jumped, the wind carried him for nearly ten metres. He immediately followed up with more Icy Winds around the Conkeldurr, catching the creature in a flesh-freezing hurricane of ice and air. Boreas found he was thoroughly enjoying himself. After weeks of putting up with the storms and having everyone go grumpy and depressed because of them, he was now actually getting to make the storm even more powerful. He almost felt as if he and the storm were allies, even friends, though he was quickly reminded of reality when the sharp, frosty skeleton of an umbrella nearly hit his face.

Conkeldurr, now red all over, ran at him. He once again used the winds to get away, but the furious creature kept following him, and soon the unpredictable winds turned against Boreas. Conkeldurr ran at him, fists ready to punch him into submission, and Boreas saw there was no escape from his speedy opponent. Suddenly he had an idea and to his great surprise it happened exactly as he pictured it: all the cold the storm had created in his fur and a lot of cold inside of him all moved instantly to a single point on his forehead and shot off in a hyper-cold beam, shooting between Conkeldurr's legs into the puddle he was about to step into. The puddle instantly froze so that when Conkeldurr stepped on it to punch Boreas, it slipped and fell onto its face (and nearly on Boreas).

“I-Ice Beam,” Boreas stammered in surprise. He immediately jumped on his enemy's back and tried to do the same thing again. This time he hadn't created the Ice Beam out of pure anger, but had actually done it more or less consciously, so he found he could actually do it again this time. The cold drew to a single point and fired another Ice Beam, this time at the top of the long, bleeding cut Octa had left on Conkeldurr's back, right between the shoulder blades. The creature howled in pain and rolled over, slapping Boreas off him with an impact that knocked all air and nearly all sense out of the Glaceon. He was launched into the air and his ribs felt so sore they might've been broken. Boreas flew through the icy cold sky and saw the ground rapidly approaching. Quickly, he increased the wind he was in right now to increase his horizontal speed as he Ice Beamed his landing spot. He landed on frozen puddles, so instead of coming to a painfully abrupt halt on the pavement underneath he kept all his speed as he graciously landed on ice. He managed to turn around and launched himself into the air again with the winds. It was almost as if he could fly now: he would soar over his opponent on the storm winds and graciously land on the ground he had covered with ice first, all the while Ice Beaming his opponent.

Between the wounds Capella and Octa had caused and the fierce cold Boreas was subjecting him to, it was a surprise Conkeldurr didn't give up earlier. After having more and more trouble running after Boreas, eventually his trainer returned him to his pokéball.

“Impressive,” said his trainer, “No-one in this city has managed to do that yet.” A Mienshao appeared from thin air. Boreas was going to use the same technique, but suddenly his body screamed in pain as his new opponent punched him at the speed of sound. The Conkeldurr had been amazingly fast, but this was a whole different kind of speed. He couldn't even see the Mienshao moving, just felt its incredibly rapid fists punch him dozens of times in a single second. His insides felt like they were punched into stew. After a few moments of severe pain, he blacked out.