God's Most Unhinged Bildungsroman by Rafterman
Thud.
Slide.
Thud.
Slide.
Slight shuffle on every second step.
It was a hundred metres away, and yet she felt the vibrations perfectly. It was coming towards her. It
Most importantly, it was smaller than her.
It was with a practiced silence that the beast rose from the fine dust. Far more silent than any creature of her size her arms folded about her so their claws would not scrape the cave walls, nor their razor-edged gleam reveal her. Not until it was too late.
She hoped it was something soft. Edible. The gravelers and ferroseed which dwelt here weren't, as she had found out already. Her long tongue ran over the cracked fang. How long had it been since she had eaten? A day? Two? Without the indication of daylight, it was difficult to determine.
In the inky darkness, yellow orbs with tiny dark penstrokes of pupils darted around with an evenness as cold as it was economical. The eyes of a predator, made clear by the purpose of instinct. Hers.
The prey had advanced further. She felt a writhing slug of excitement in her gullet as those confounded footsteps furthered, each step dragging the foolish creature further into the earth from which it would never emerge.
Tiny coiled organs in her horns pulsed as the harmonics of the cave walls drew a sound to them. She paused momentarily, confused. Whistling?
It was high, warbling and seemingly nonsensical, flitting from one tone to another. Too complex to be the monotonous cries of a zubat. Too clumsy and heavy-handed to be a songbird (And for what reason would such a colourful, spirited creature deign to enter this dark, cold place?)
She crouched down flush with the floor, hiding her flare-red belly, deep-set amber eyes settling on the entrance to her chamber. Thick cords of muscles tensed in her legs, preparing to fall upon this trespasser with fury.
It was one of them. She still remembered the last one that had come for her. Still felt it. Not again, oh no. She wouldn't let that happen.
From far out in the cave, she heard a crumbling sound. the sound of spluttering and curse words as the man-things incessant whistling was halted by a mouthful of powdery dust. Not the baritone of the grown ones, not yet at least. A juvenile, then, one of the man-sons, with their spotted faces and cruel eyes.
The first she saw of him was that tennis shoe, faded, with a tattered sole. A sign of the , their weakness made manifest through the wrappings
It fell
He was tall, perhaps but a hands height or two below her own, though his muscles hadn't seemed to have noticed, leaving him with a gangly stature and too-large extremities. She guessed him to be of 16 winters, roughly.
He ambled into the chamber
He ground his shoe into the dirt non-committally, eyes sweeping the cave from beneath a dust-covered cap and blonde hair that stuck out like straw. They passed over her crouching form, dark as she was, before snapping back to her cold, furrowed eyes.
Every muscle in the man-son's body froze. She heard the sharp snap of his breath, could practically see the panicked thoughts twitch behind those white little eyes. So wide and wet, they were.
The tiny flinch of his temple preceded his escape. He was surprisingly spry. For a human. Long legs carried him around as he almost fell upon the ground
She was quicker, because of course she was, the single pounce carrying her into his fleeing form, her muscular mass driving the man-son's stupid face into the dust.
A spike of adrenaline curled around her heart. Her claws practically itched to stick him somewhere soft, to tickle the chest bones and slide under them. She wouldn't of course, couldn't, there would be consequences. The man-things took the absence of their progeny with
It was in bad taste to hurt the juveniles anyway, soft and inexperienced as they were. Let them , that the rending of their age-brined flesh be but the sweeter.
This one was alone, neither man-things nor Pokémon by his side. Strange. They were pack hunters, were they not? They had been when she last saw them. And felt them.
She flipped the teenager to face her emotionless, thick-hided face, bare toothed jaws wide open to alight just nearly against the tip of his nose. He was hyperventilating, his lip busted, the blood seeping into the dirt to make a grimy poultice that painted his teeth.
She felt she made her message clear, and that this whelp would listen well. She growled to herself. She'd have to find a new hiding place anyway. He might bring others. Of course he would, being a man-thing.
Then she smelt it.
It had been a long time since she'd experienced
She drew down to his baggy jacket, nosing it ineffectually. Eyes flicked back to the boy, hardened by way of question.
He seemed to understand, and cooperated vigorously, producing the package from his waist pocket.
Her eyes shifted to it. Beef jerky, that was what it was called, no? Meat. Torn, scorched, spiced and ruined with noxious smoke, yes, but meat nonetheless.
He had gotten into it already, torn the package, and ate some. She bit down on the package inches from his shaking fingers, upturned it in her jaws, sliding pieces down her gullet. Unwieldy, but she lacked the amenities to hold it properly, designed as it was for humans.
She kept the man-son pinned to the ground as she fed, a talon pressed against his sternum as a warning. Distracted as she was, to let him go would be to invite a surprise attack. That would be just like one of them. Of course it would be.
It was wonderful, sinew and salt melting on her tongue. Her hunger magnified the taste, nearly making her shiver in pleasure.
It was a delicacy, a
It wasn't enough, though.
A snack for feeble man-things, thats what the meat was. To a beast like her? But a morsel.
Could he have more, perhaps?
She markedly flicked her eyes to the empty, tooth-marked package, then to the boy. A crude message, but the children of men were ignorant to all tongues but their own. He lay still, confusion clear on his features as they remained fixed on her. She sighed internally. Idiot.
A talon drove deftly through the package, before she positioned it directly above his eyes, the hardened keratin of her claw a hair away from the wet, twitching surface. Shook it slightly, for good measure. She saw realisation in those brown pupils then, as they tried their damnedest to sink into the skull.
"There's more! I-i can get you more food!" It was half a cry, half a yelp. Funny how their voices got high when panicked. You'd think it better to hide such weakness, no?
The claw and its impaled plastic victim drew away, to the man-son's express relief. She settled back into a position that she hoped conveyed her interest. I'm listening she might say, were she human.
"At my campsite. Yeah, yeah, my campsite. I've got a ton more bags of it, oh, and other shit. A-a pot of chili, too!"
He'd understood her message well.
She softened her expression as she stood, as much as one can when their face is plated with armor and studded with fangs. Clever boy. He knew how things would happen.
A claw hooked the collar of the man-son's shirt, pulled him upwards. The other beckoned to the barely visible light of the caves entrance.
To the man-thing's campsite, then.
She stalked behind the human as he followed a route known only to him. Though the man-son seemed docile enough, she made certain to never stray too far behind him. No more than pouncing distance. With the sudden outburst of activity, she felt pain blossom across her body. The wounds that had sealed came apart. The wounds that had bled began to once more. A burn across her left flank itched angrily, almost mockingly, with each step. She didn't let a limp into her stride though, didn't lick at her wounds or acknowledge them. That would be weakness.
"Where'd you get those cuts?" The serenity of the quiet scrubland was sundered by the man-thing's warbling. She spared him a dry look. What did he expect from her, an answer?
For her to open into manspeech, tell him of her frantic week-long escape from the hunters and their Pokémon? For the story of her long weeks hidden in the cave, all alone?
She blinked back into the present. He was looking at her. She had expected a look of ridicule, amusement at her weakness, that her guard was weak and teeth blunt enough to allow these injuries upon herself. It was an expression she'd seen plastered across many a man-face.
What she saw puzzled her. It took her a moment to read the human's snoutless visage. Was that concern in his eyes? Ludicrous. His features were doubtless twisted in self-pity or fear.
"Are they hurting you?"
Self pity or fear. Thats what it was.
She shoved him forward with the flat of her claw, and he stumbled. The rest of their walk was unfettered by conversation.
The campsite lay in a clearing, hidden from the sun by a ring of twisting, thin-branched trees. Unorganised, but oddly comfortable, centered around a small campfire ringed with stones. Cooking tripod. Bedroll. Kettle. Seemed typical for a human traveller. A back-carrier (Was that the human word?) of some size lay splayed open, its contents sloughing out like a beasts ripe innards. Red packaging caught her eye, among the other cans and boxes. More of the "jerky", then. Though her instincts scorned her for it, she waited to tear into the plastic and devour their desiccated contents. The man had mentioned a "chili" earlier. She was curious.
While she had been gazing about the site, the man-son had crouched over a battered iron pot. Clearly, it had been left to heat itself during his ill-fated expedition. He lifted the lid to slide a wooden spoon in, allowing a spry wisp of steam to escape. She sniffed, and had to restrain herself from dipping her muzzle into it, as a succulent phantasm of spice and slow-cooked meat a chokehold around her brain.
One could say many evils about the humans, but bad cookery was not among them.
The beast's tongue ferreted the last of the rivulets of fat and juice from the bowl perched precariously on her knees.
It had been afternoon-coming-evening when they had arrived. Now, a quiet moon slid doggedly into the star-lit sky, competing with the roaring fire between them to light the sky.
The big white eyes of the human sat across from her, beneath a similar bowl. Whenever he thought she wasn't looking, he gazed over at her. He Eventually, he felt compelled to open his smooth, pointless jaws again.
"I heard about you, know that? The, uh, Garchomp what them fellas from that town over West were chasing. Don't have a lot of your types 'round these parts. Dragons, that is." That was humans for you. They obsessed over categorising things, putting them in little boxes, ordering them so they could make sense of them, understand them. Clearly, she fit into one of these categories, or types. Where did they slot into their ornate little systems?
His eyes wandered to her again. She looked back, kept her deep amber gaze and stared deep into his muddy brown pupils, lit as they were by the dancing flames.
"Course, I wasn't meaning to, um, hunt you down, understand? I jus' heard that they got zubats in there. Wanted something easy to catch, cause, well, I ain't got any Pokémon. Uh, if it weren't already obvious."
She hadn't seen a human up close before, not like this. He was just as scrawny up close. The hands were unusual. It would be difficult to cut anything with those, though they wouldn't have to. Of course; they didn't fight their own battles. Theirs was the way of conscripting others to do things for them.
She found herself drawn to the face. It was soft and expressive, in comparison to her own, with faint freckles crowning the cheeks and a noses worth of peeling, sunburnt skin. He had grown straggly wisps of hairs under his lip, a crude imitation of his elders. She noted his surprisingly calm features, most of all, the eyes, eyes that someone might call kind. Someone who wasn't her. Someone who knew less about human nature.
He stood then, enshrouding those not-kind eyes in nighttime shadow. He rounded the fire, and took the bowl from her after warily ensuring she had finished, and washed up.
His actions upon returning were curious. She saw him produce a scrap of cloth (handkerchief?) and a bottle of some amber fluid, of which he poured an amount onto the former. It wrinkled her snout to smell. He rubbed it onto his split lip, wincing as he did so.
He'd seen her watching him "It's antiseptic. Kills the germs. Makes you feel better, helps when you hurt". He paused then as if weighing his words, before vaguely motioning her. "I could, er, do it for you, if-uh, if you'd like"
She sat still. Why would he do this? Was it a trap? He'd just put it to himself, so likely not. A trick, to make her show weakness, perhaps.
He gestured to her leg with a jerk "You leave those untreated, they'll uh, get worse."
She couldn't see his angle, what he got from it. That unnerved her. And yet, the reward outweighed the risk.
The human had to stop himself from flinching as she suddenly stood before him. Hmm. She had folded her claws towards herself, close to her chest, to show a lack of aggression. Did he not understand the gesture?
"This will hurt, ok? Do you understand that?" His hand trembled as he reached out to her, cloth in hand. She gave him a withering look. What a stupid question.
The handkerchief pressed against a laceration on her bicep first. She clamped her jaws together to keep from hissing. The man-son's hand flew back. It took more than a fraction of her willpower to restrain herself from lashing out at it. Not his fault. He had warned her, hadn't he? She steeled herself and motioned to him again. He breathed in, then returned the wretched rag to her arm. More acid pulsing through her flesh. Over time, the pain subsided. He drew the handkerchief back, and she saw it stained with blood and dotted with grit trapped in the wound. She did not complain when he came back.
The burn was the worst of them. One of her pursuers had a camerupt. No match for her of course, but it had let off a vicious gout of flame before she had defeated it. Her hide was thick, but even it had scorched and burnt away from the heat. Dots of pus had begun to weep where the skin cracked. The antiseptic felt like she had been set alight again, as if she knelt in a campfire . But she sat through it. Wouldn't let the man-son have the pleasure of seeing her wince. He scuttered to his bag, then, and returned with a small plastic bottle.
"Burn heal" he replied in response to her tilted head. It needed , instead spraying onto the body Where the antiseptic burned, this concoction felt like someone had injected ice into her skin, let it pool in her veins. It was welcome after the burning. She could have sworn she saw the skin look not so parched and splintered where it was touched by it, that
"That was good. Thanks for letting me help you." It was a calm voice, the teenager having seemed to lose the sense of tension that had beheld him. He must have been relieved that she hadn't chewed his fingers off. She merely watched him,
Before she could do anything, he had reached up to her shoulder and given it a short, affirmatory rub.
She froze, and every muscle tensed.
He had felt the cords of muscle in her neck tighten, and drew back, spluttering an apology.
She wasn't sure what to feel. She had never been touched, not like that. Couldn't be. Her kind had arms tipped with blades of bone and hides as hard as the rock they tunneled through. Theirs was not a species capable of much affection. She'd learnt that.
It had felt... she didn't know how it felt. She refused to admit that it was a nice feeling. This didn't change that it was.
And of course, it had been a human to have done it. Of course. Of course.
She was half tempted to goad his hand back onto here, to have it rest its clever fingers to seek out the nooks between her muscles, to rub them again. To stroke the tension from he- no. No. To let a man-thing pet her like some common eevee or rockruff? Unthinkable, even more her enjoying it.
Had she been purring? She hoped not.
She readjusted herself, shook away the weak thoughts, and reaffirmed herself with a snarl at the human, who had stood puzzled at her reaction.
He flinched. Hmm, good.
Jacques awoke with a start.
The night had gotten warmer than he expected, and in his bedroll and sleeping bag, he was sweating. Maybe not just because of the heat.
Had he been dreaming about all that? He ran his tongue over his lip, reaching a jagged cut that intersected it. One that hadn't been there yesterday. His stomach flipped. No, no had not been dreaming. He'd had a fireside dinner with one of the more dangerous Pokémon in existence. Hell, he'd lived through it, somehow.
Hey, Jean couldn't say he'd done that, at least.
Well, it was over now. That Garchomp had wandered off. He could get back to looking for a Pokémon so he could pretend he knew how to battle as well as Jean, and go on this Pokémon trainer journey thing that he'd set off for last Thursday. Something small. Fluffy, perhaps. Gosh, his breath reeked something fierce. He'd forgotten to brush his teeth in last night's excitement. He turned to face his bag, where his toothbrush lay.
2 feet from his head, 105 kilograms of fangs, fins and fury lay curled up. It had been staring at him as he slept, and their eyes met. It sniffed.
Huh. Well alrighty then.
After overcoming his initial surprise he'd asked if she'd wanted more food. She'd readily accepted the bacon sandwiches and , though had knocked the cup of coffee away after a single sip.
She continued to stay afterwards.
He'd packed his bag, looking back at her repeatedly as he did so. "I haven't got any more of the jerky. You, heh, kinda cleared me out, see?" He flapped a limp plastic package at her. She didn't react, but her topaz eyes seemed to show understanding.
She continued to stay though. And when his worn shoes hit the earth once
He looked almost afraid as she continued to follow him, as he started to worm his way out of the scrub onto a thin, winding dirt road.
"What do you, uh, want from me?". Again, asking questions as if she could answer. She didn't answer, couldn't, realistically, merely followed him out onto the road, a lazy sweep of her arm clearing a hole through the brambles for her larger form.
They went like that for maybe five minutes
"You're not going to stop following me, are you?"
She nodded.
The cooking was good, that's why she stuck around.
It's what she told herself. She had seen the surprise on his face when. he awoke to find her beside him. It wasn't unfounded, she supposed. She had slunk away into the dark soon after the meal and treatment. And yet, as she stood in the quiet, empty scrubland, something had stopped her. What did she have to see in the future? Another dark cave? More days without the certainty of food?
Though it made her skin crawl to admit it, this meal with a human had been the most positive experience she'd had in months. Perhaps she could see more of them. Make him do more nice things for her. Yes. That would work. He still had a debt to pay to her, having trespassed in her territory.
And so, when he had laid his head to rest, she had crept back into that camp, with its warm campfire and nice smells, and curled up to sleep. She didn't know why, but she felt compelled to lie down close to him. To make sure he didn't try anything. Yes. That sounded about right.
Now, he wasn't "her trainer". She wasn't "his Pokémon". He hadn't dared to try and imprison her in one of those ball machines. They both knew how that would play out for him.
Yet together they walked. Talons and tennis shoes, side by side. Days became weeks, and soon they pooled into a month that they had been together.
One benefit of travelling with a human was safety. Her chest had cinched as an older man-thing had crossed their paths, accompanied by a brutish-looking grimmsnarl. That was a fight she feared she mightn't win, should the man seek to capture her. Yet, he had merely directly a greeting their way and passed by, the grimmsnarl offering a mellow glance her way. The humans acknowledged ownership, then?
That meant safety, so long as she stayed with her man-thing, and maintained this illusion of ownership.
And he was her man-thing. Not her trainer, no. But she would let him be her man-thing, or rather, man-son. She'd let him make her more tasty things, light more.
She could live with that.
She wasn't his, though. No, of course not.
The man-thing. It called itself Jock, or Jack, or something like that. Humans did that, give themself silly names. Did he give himself that? It wasn't a very good one. Something more akin to "Hair-like-straw" would be much better. Succinct. Descriptive. But that would require being pragmatic and straightforward; which humans hated.
She'd have told him her name, but he wouldn't have understood.
The most notable thing about him, she felt, was his determination to talk whenever possible. It didn't matter what exactly, whether it was the weather (Specifically, how awful it was), Pokémon battles and their strategems, to which he claimed a mastery, or a "movie" he had seen four summers earlier. Half of the time she hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about. She suspected he often didn't either. And yet the words came, a tide of anecdotes, musings, colloquialisms and statements, interspersed by "um"s, "yeah"s, and "y'know"s.
Even when he ran out of things to say, he wouldn't stop in his crusade to be unceasingly noisy. A wavering hum. Slaps to the knees. Finger-snappings. Had he a feud with the silence?
She hadn't the resolve to make him shut up. She had tried at times, early in their travels, but he slowly seeped back into his old ways.
Besides, she had to forfeit, some of the blathering was amusing. Some things were funny (Arceus, that fella back there musta' been half Probopass, size of the sniffer on 'im). Some were interesting (Y'know they put a guy on that moon up there? True story!).
Most were, truthfully, quite annoying.
He sang sometimes. Only when they were in the further reaches of the wilds, when as Jack would put it: "Some dickhead won't come along and call me a right poofter" She wished he would more often; It was nice. She had heard little of human voices, but nonetheless was fairly confident his was one of the better ones. Compared to his usual lackadaisical roundabout way of speaking, his singing voice was strong and clear, as he launched into rambling, cheerful human stories in song form, long, somber ballads in languages she did not know, or even nonsensical vocalisations formed into pretty patterns. She tried to sing once, when he had walked away to "chuck a piss". Her voice came out growling and harsh, not like the sweet fluting tones he had made. Hmm. Of course it did.
One of the things he talked about was Jean. He was older than Jack, and of blood to him. If Jack was to be believed he was "Just about the best trainer this side of bloody Kanto, and dad'd let you Arceus-well know it". Other traits held by this Jean included "A fuckin' six pack", "A new girlfriend every other bloody day", and the possession of "social skills"
Jack seemed fond of this Jean, and had a great many stories about the ventures the two had partaken in.
Jean getting the high score on a boardwalk arcade game, and the one beside it, and the one beside that one, and using the tickets to buy a mountain bike.
Jean agreeing to battle another trainers massive, experienced Gigalith, with his young Aron. Beating it by polishing his Aron so much its solar blasts merely bounced off it.
Jean single-handedly crash tackling a toxicroak that had gotten aggressive with Jack. And winning.
Jack was never the subject of these stories, merely a witness to the actions of this larger than life figure. Sometimes, talking about Jean made her man-thing's voice go quieter than usual, and his eyes go hard with thought. He sometimes said unkind things about himself when he was like this.
She preferred it when he didn't talk about Jean.
The father and mother, he talked about only once. That seemed quite enough.
There was an enthusiasm to his actions she found infectious, one tempered by the invulnerability of youth, and the bravado he bore on too-small shoulders as he pretended to be the grown man he wished he was. It felt strange to refer to him as a youth. She had at least seven summers on Jack, but was only slightly older in biological terms. Humans aged differently from her kind, did they not? Faster. He was passionate no matter what he was doing, travelling, cooking, reading or talking. He simply loved living, she thought. And it rubbed off on her. Where she would otherwise be passively sullen or irate, as many of her kind was, with him nearby, saying his silly words and trotting about, she consciously felt her mood rise, heartened by his presence. She had trouble remembering when she had last felt happy in this way.
She too, remembered the first time they had "battled" together. One cold morning, as they travelled the road not far from a large settlement, a polished young human female in bespoke clothing had approached them and called for a battle. This had been the first time it had happened, even in spite of her conspicuity; most everyone else must have been intimidated by her mighty frame. Jack had begun to shrink away, opening up on a statement about her not actually being his and him not being a proper train- She cut him off, striding forward to face the trainer. She wouldn't stand for this breach of his hon- no. No. It would be an insult to her honor, that's all.
The "battle" was a matter altogether more ritualistic than the fights she was used to. Each participant could only field one Pokemon at any time, with a limit of 6 each. This was good. Jack had no other Pokémon, as she had offered no help in his acquisition of any. Still, one at a time, she could take anything this priss had to throw at her.
Out first came a beedrill. To many it would be intimidating, all angled carapace and compound eyes, crowned by two vicious stings, humming ferociously like some psychotic racecar. Not her.
In the background, she heard Jack crying out something, related to the "typing" of the Beedrill, and which "moves" she should use against it. The blither was ignored, as much of his talking was. Who else could lead her in battle better than herself?
She drew her head back in a roar, arms wide in a challenging gesture, meant to goad the insect to offense. The beedrill whined angrily and took to the skies. It circled, before diving to meet her. Bone met chitin as their claws clashed. Her opponent occupied, she thrust an arm forward, with wing at full tilt. It caught air, and she used the displacement to drive herself forward, under the insect's guard. It hadn't expected that. Nor did it the headbutt, her horned skull driving into its neck. The bee reeled back, an antennae bent, stingers waving blindly. She pressed the advantage, smacking her tail. Its antennae damaged, the bees senses were shot, and it was delayed to realised its mistake and drew back. Not in time to prevent the swipe, a devastating uppercut aimed at the thorax. She was more than thrice its weight. The result was immediate, the insect sailing through the air to plummet to the ground, twitching weakly. The opponent called it back. She felt the surge of adrenaline that accompanied victory and restrained herself from roaring out. It was a bug, she'd squashed many before. Big whup.
Next came the octillery, which dived from the stream of red light in a way that put it far from her. She'd never seen one before, never seen the ocean actually. Thus, it nearly came as a surprise when the volley of water jets came spiralling at her. The first caught her centre mass, the sheer force of it making her stumble. The following few struck her torso and shoulders in short succession. Even behind her armored hide, they were immensely painful, the weight and speed not penetrating, but striking with a brutal, blunt velocity. It took an embarrassingly desperate scramble to dive away from this storm of projectiles, vaulting off her tail and onto all fours to dive through a series of bushes, the stream shredding branches and leaves centimeters behind her. She found solace behind a thick tree, the missiles thudding ineffectually against it. The onslaught was unyielding, the watery creature pausing for neither rest nor respite as a storm of water jets, bubbles and hard, round rocks came battering from its mouth. It was in the middle of a clearing, devoid of cover. She had no opening to launch an offensive and no projectiles of her own. She was in trouble.
"Dig!" She had moved further from Jack, but his voice had carried nonetheless. She saw him miming something with fervor, flat palms paddling at the ground beneath him. Ah. She got the gist. Actually, she was just about to do that before he interrupted. Yes, she was.
She risked a dive away from the tree and its root complex, taking a painful stone to the base of her tail before her sleek form and powerful claws ripped through the dirt and she was enveloped.
Thnk-uh thnk-uh thnk-uh. The cephalopod was confused, firing randomly in all directions.
She heard the other trainer cry, heard the vibrations rather. It was to the Octillery, telling it to stop firing. The Pokemon followed this, its volley subsiding and leaving her devoid of vibrations.
The girl knew that she could sense vibrations. Clever. Too late though; she knew where the octillery was. Her tail thrusting her, she sped through the soil at a tremendous speed. Not in a straight line, that was obvious. She flanked it curving at an angle that she assumed its back was to. Dive straight at it? No. It was surprisingly quick, might catch her with a faceful of those rocks. She pivoted slightly, holding both claws outstretched. Adjust the angle. Hold. Hold. Hold.
She rocketed from the soil. The octopus had predicted her flanking, had been facing towards her but hadn't predicted her sheer velocity. It had yet to fire a single blast before the vicious cruciate she held before her struck it directly in its puckered beak. A single stone had emerged from its jaws, but was soundly quartered by the attack, careening off harmlessly. The Octillery had suckered itself to the ground, but its head still whipped back with a frightening force, before its legs drooped and went limp. Good thing it didn't have a neck, or it may have broken.
She'd won. All by herself. Again. This time she didn't bother to restrain her victory cry. This had been tricky. She deserved it.
The competitor huffed, withdrew her dazed cephalopod, and drew another ball device out. She had a smile on her face. A thin one. She'd seen the kind before when she'd been hunted. She didn't like that one bit.
"I've still got one more"
Froslass. That was the term Jack cried out. She didn't like it from the moment she lay eyes on it. It hovered, bereft of wings, with a body that looked almost... hollow, and eyes that seemed clever, like hers. She could have sworn the air got colder around her when it appeared. None the matter.
She hit the offensive immediately, launching into a galloping sprint, low to the ground to provide a low profile. This thing seemed small and fragile, such an immediate blow would likely end this here. Strangely, the creature looked... amused? That annoyed her something fierce, providing extra drive to her muscled legs.
The slash was perfect, a brutal right hook with the tip of the claw centred directly at its eye socket. The Froslass hadn't even bothered to dodge, meaning the blow would strike directly where she predicted, with its full force to blow.
It was to her mortification, then, that it passed directly through it. She nearly fell over, the momentum of her strike carrying first her claw, then the rest of her body, cleanly through the thing.
She heard Jack curse and yell out, "It's a ghost type! Don't hit it with physical moves!" Nonsense. She didn't need his types and classification gobbledygook. She was in her element, doing what every inch of her, from her jagged teeth to her tail had been shaped to perform; fighting.
She rounded, the fins on her tail hastening her reversal with a tremendous swish, and a claw dug into the ground. She bore down. A leaping blow, bring all of her weight down on this thing. Yes, that'd do nicely. She'd just missed before, through some trick of the light. This time she'd hit it perfectly. She saw the Froslass had again. Its hands were splayed before it, fingers twisting in some odd esoteric movement. No matter. She sprinted a short distance, enough to gain the required momentum, before digging both both her claws into the ground and tensing her legs, summoning the tremendous might of all legs to draw her mighty frame fully into the air at a frightening speed.
Blinded as she was by her determination to pulp the ice creature, she saw the particles surrounding it too late.
As she leapt, the thing released the frost breath. She felt them first, bitterly cold, before their shine in the sunlight came to her attention
Only a desperate, reflexive swish of her tail saved her from suffering the brunt of the attack, careening to the left of her foe. She pirouetted gracelessly and unaerodynamically through the air, the horrid frost embalming her right side, coating her leg.
She would have roared in pain, but she felt none. Only a sickening nothingness, as all sensation left her leg. It felt wrong.
She landed, then. Stumbled was the better word, as she fell to one knee, her traitorous right side refusing to perform its function. She looked. A sheen of ice spattered her leg. It was frozen, and her flexing offered nothing.
Before she could pursue the matter further, she heard a sickening whistle from behind her. An icicle whistled towards her, materialised from the snow monster's hands.
It was reflex that saw her claw rise up, bisect the frozen missile more through coincidence than effort. One side careened into the background. The other sailed at her chest.
It was on an angle, its sharp point decentered as its blunt side slammed into her ribcage. It hurt fiercely. She didn't want to think what the full thing might have done.
"FALL BACK!" She heard Jacks's voice, raised in a roar that sounded more man than boy. He was right. Arceus damn it, he was right, she had no way to hurt this thing, and it had many to hurt her. She tried to stumble back, nearly fell again, as her frozen leg refused to bend. The Froslass had turned, and begun to charge up more of those evilly glowing snowflakes with a sadistic laziness. It would be grinning, had it a mouth. She felt the air around her get cold, water vapor turn to fog. This attack was far, far more powerful. She had seconds to escape, with a non-functioning leg. With a growl which she admitted sounded more like a yelp, she went the only way she could; down.
"DEEPER!". She heard the audible hum of icy magic, felt the frost nip at her tailfin. Arceus, the thing was freezing the soil, with her in it. Her smooth strokes turned desperate as she tore and bit at the Earth to avoid that cold, that nothingness. She felt it nearly catch up to her, before it receded with a spiteful reluctance. She'd reached a pocket of silt; it would prove more difficult to freeze.
She circled, near panic, as thoughts raced through her mind. She was trapped underground, with a frozen leg and an unhurtable foe. This soil, it wasn't sand, she couldn't breathe here too much longer, she'd run out of breath soon, and oh Arceus when she did, oh no, she'd have to go up there and then and then-
"Come here" Jacks words had once again found their way to her as they somehow always did, despite her being twenty-five metres underground. His words were muffled, like his lips had found obstruction. Ah. His face was pressed into the ground, wasn't it?
"You can hurt it" Like hell she could. Her mightiest strikes passed through with all the vigor of moonlight.
"Bite it" What? "It's a different typing. It'll hurt it. A lot"
Again with the types. What was the difference between a bite and a slash? But then, he had warned her she wouldn't hit, had he not? With no way of communicating, and no other options, she had no choice.
"You can still win this." Deep as she was, she could hear the belief in that voice. That belief in her.
"We just have to follow this plan, ok?". With that, in a calm, confident voice, he began to deliberate his plan.
The Froslass floated above the ground, its eyes. Despite its lack of knowledge about where its foe was, it remained completely calm, unconcerned. Completely cold. A cloud of snowflakes fluttered unnaturally about it, ready to encase her foe. Stupid dragon brute. So predictable.
"It's going to dive out at you, be ready!"
She looked to Janice her trainer. She knew that it was going to dive out at her, where else would it go? It'd jump out, try to run at her, and she'd freeze it from the toenails to the teeth, same as everything in a five metre radius.
Fucking Janice.
She shot a derisive look towards her competitor, who lay with his face planted in the ground. Was this some sort of tantrum? How infantile.
There came a rumbling. Not a sound, but a feeling, that shook the bones and chattered the teeth. Even the froslass, floating as she was, felt it. Her hollow eyes hardened, and the illusion of boredom vanished. Here it came...
Below ground, the beast powered upward. She'd arced downwards again before looping back up, powering through additional soil to gain momentum before she reached the frost line. Her legs ached from pressing against her body so tight and smooth. She didn't even breathe, lest the rising of her chest slow her. Up. Her tail screamed from the strain with each jerking, powerful stroke. Her arms arched to slice through upcoming soil, weakening its frozen surface. Up. Her head, pointed as it was, served as an icebreaker, driving apart the frozen earth like a chisel. Behind their false eyelids, her eyes saw silt, roots and soil all part before her at an astonishing pace. Up. Faster. She needed to go faster. Faster. She gritted her teeth, and put one last little bit of power, which she didn't know she had, into the tail. If this was to work, she needed to go as fast as damnedly possible.
The series of events needed to be slowed, should their complexity be appreciated.
It was beautiful, in a way, as she burst from the ground like some Biblical Leviathan. The Froslass had prepared for this, and let loose an overcharged frost breath, freezing the ground for metres around her. Anything around her would have been crystallised on the spot. But, she hadn't expected the shape to keep going, the tremendous velocity the dragon carried keeping her soaring into the air. Suddenly, she flexed, swiped her tail, and completely inverted herself, jaws facing down. Gravity remembered its role, and the dragoness plummeted toward her foe. The Froslass noticed this, and turned to dodge, but not quick enough. Her jaws found purchase, and gripped tight, not passing through the ghostly being, but biting down hard. The ice creature struggled, but her foe was stronger, larger, tougher, and far, far more angry. And just now, connected with the ground. Her claws dug deep into the frozen soil as she gave a tremendous heave...
And with a enormous swing, suplexed the Froslass into the ground between her jaws.
Everything was silent for a second, as the dust cleared from the impact area.
Only one silhouette stood, battered by the swirling winds.
One tall, claw-armed silhouette, with amber eyes and a mouth grit with determination. The ice which coated the ground around them had been shattered for a metre around it pulverised into tiny splinters. Flakes rained down on both shapes in the cloud, both the proud, upright one, and the limp, smaller form, which lay prone on the ground. The froslass had been stripped of much of its icy coat, gaps revealing its hollow interior as it lay still, eyes blinking feebly in surprise. Janice sighed, and recalled her Froslass for proper treatment. It'd be fine, it could just freeze itself a new body.
She turned to where her opposing trainer (Jacques, his name had been) had stood, preparing to offer a sporting congratulation, and the accompanying prize fee. She blinked. He was gone.
The dragoness stood panting; her vision blurred. Her mouth tasted like ice and sour air (The Froslass, no doubt).
Heated by the friction of her mad underground dash, her leg had begun to unfreeze, and the return of sensation was nearly unbearable. Snowflakes flitted about her
She didn't notice Jack bearing down on her until he was in spitting distance. Confusion nearly turned to panic and a reflexive strike, as she saw the blur enter her vision.
Then he threw his arms around her, and it turned to something else entirely. Wide eyed, and joyous, he yelled out; a sound devoid of rationale or meaning, but ripe with victory. In her exhausted, triumphant state, any restraint she kept vanished, and she held him too, her mighty arms crossing his back. Melting ice slid from her into his hair, and she lifted him tight, holding the human to her chest. Her human.
"Arceus f-fuck! Tha-thats the first time I ever won one of these! Ever!" He cried out wildly, feet dangling in the air, seemingly uncaring that she'd just lifted him into her.
His body was so very warm, very nice against her, his arms around her neck even better, fingers pressed tight against her flesh.
They felt like- Felt like they belonged there.
Oh, but if they could speak to each other. She would thank him for his idea, for saving her. What else might she say, oh, what else.
But she couldn't. Of course she couldn't
And so she did what she could; pressed her head against his, his sweat stained skin meeting her cold, hard hide, their eyes locked together. Flecked brown stared into yellow, so close together they could have melted into each other. She sighed, felt every shift of his body against her. She could have stayed there forever.
A snapping of fingers interrupted "Um, hello, do you want that prize money?"
It took everything she had to not chew that bitch up.
In retrospect, that event was the turning point in their relationship. Thats what she felt, at the least.
As she'd strode to that grassy plain, rival trainer across from her with pokeball in hand, she hadn't realised how much it meant to him, that victory.
He had been raised in a trainer family. And yet he had lived his 17 summers to not win a one, except when, as he so prosaically put it; "Jean let me so I wouldn't have a sook".
To him, it marked a passage into maturity. "I'm on the way to becoming a man, I tell ya" He'd remarked one night, proud grin jammed between his lips. That moustache had grown thicker, she noted.
It drew them closer, that victory. Mentally, and so too, physically (Spiritually? One could wonder). She and Jack had a cordial relationship before, but now? She was his most trusted confidant, and he'd have been hers, could she have spoken to him. Their one sided-conversations wandered often from their previous trivialities. He spoke of past regrets, future aspirations, the deeper parts of his soul made manifest and offered to her with the fullest of trust. She responded with as much support as one could muster with so many furtive glances, nods of the head and growls. Difficult to express ones feelings, when they had a snout, but he'd learnt to understand her. Close together, the two of them.
Sometimes his hands would find her body, not hold her, nor anything quite so intimate, merely touch her, or stroke her in a fashion that could just as easily have been friendly, or platonic or - something else altogether.
She lived for those moments, the man-thing (Her man thing) running those silky hands down her head, neck and shoulders. Sometimes he'd sing, something quiet, and sweet. Sometimes he'd say nothing at all, just be with her in that darkness, his features outlined by the lonely cold light of the moon or the hyperactive tongues of a campfire. What else could a girl wish for?
And she was a girl, she realised more and more as she spent time with him. She was not some beast, some wretch or ghoul that lurked in caves and was angry at the world. Not a woman either, that was a human term, though one roughly synonymous.
A dragoness, then. A full grown female of the house of tough skin and sharp teeth. She carried all it bore. All the feelings, the new sensations that grew to her. The new emotions and instincts she felt.
All the needs.
For he had grown too. They had been together a many long months, and through them, Jack had aged. Muscle had colonised his frame, the harvest of a thousand miles walked and their respective challenges. Alit by the fresh air and sun, his hair gained a lustre that matched the fullness of his lips, though it remained every bit as chaotic beneath his weather-aged hat.
She chided herself for seeing these things. What did such features mean to her? Her mind should seek the jagged, bone-tipped brutality that spoke to her kinds masculinity, the cruel certainty of powerful cords of muscle and flesh-shearing jaws.
And yet her eyes noted his warm features each time they crossed his face, and were her skin not thick and armored, she might feel a heat come to her face.
These thoughts were wrong. She knew what the act entailed, and the grim acceptance her kind held towards it. She had seen the scars which tattooed her mother, a necklace of bite marks pitting the flesh about her throat and shoulders, her waist and abdomen crosshatched with lines where a mate had adjusted their grip. Hers was not a body meant for affection. For love. She knew that.
And yet the heat remained, damnedly dogged as it dug determinedly at her deepest darkest dimensions whilst she dreamed dreadful deluded diegeses.
For her Jack could hold her. Could stroke her head and sing to her. Could smile at her as he .No dragon could do that.
What else, then, could he do?
The females of the humans were not like her. She'd known that even before she'd first seen one. They were smaller than their men. Soft, and curved in pleasant ways, with long hair. They did not have scythes for arms. They did not have jaws that could crack stone, or skin that could turn buckshot.
They could talk to their lovers.
Were her feelings incorrect? Had she interpreted this wrong? Their fireside rendezvous could merely be a show of affection to a trusted friend, no? He saw her as that, she knew. A companion in the wilds, a great warrior, an ear to talk to. Would he ever see her as something else? Could he? (What would happen if he said no?)
Humans, the problem was, had a tendency to keep to their own. It was generally understood that they could crossbreed, at least some of their stock, but it was rarely done. Mostly because of the half chance that the progeny would be a Pokémon. Nobody wanted to see their child captured.
Humans, however, were odd creatures. She was fairly certain they viewed sex as a recreational activity, and would happily grind away at each other for nothing but their own amusement (Why, she was rather uncertain, save that possibility they were all determinably and severely sadomasochistic). And, were her suspicions correct, they'd find companions for this act among a more diverse cast than their paternal species.
In this her hope lay.
For, at times on the road, one would see trainers whose interactions with their partners bordered on... questionable. The odd look between them. A touch that lasted but a second too long, or sunk a fraction too low. This sort of thing. Not concrete, but enough to raise suspicion in the heart, or as in her case, hope.
Of particular note, she remembered settling to a small, ramshackle campsite on the forested outskirts of a great city, populated solely by themselves and a pair consisting of a swarthy, bearded man and a lucario of some size, which had taken to wearing its trainers discarded jacket. How he held that jackals paw was tender in a way that surpassed the statutes of friendship, as were the kisses he planted on her forehead as her traitorous tail wagged. As he'd passed by, sje'd sampled the scent of the female, which coated him in a way that could not be unintentional. She knew little of the canids and their debased, pack-instinct guided ways, but had heard of scent marking, and its role in the mating process. The deeper parts of her, too, knew exactly what that twinkle in the jackals eye meant, as she let herself be carried by her companion to their tent, legs about his waist. It was good fortune, then, that the distance between their sites was further than vibrations could travel.
But a lucario was a different creature to herself. They were pleasant to the eye, with plush fur, under which hid curves of an altogether amiable and pliant nature. They weren't covered in spines meant to gut their foes. They could talk to humans, she was fairly certain. They could even read emotions, which she felt counted as cheating. It wasn't altogether unreasonable to see why a human might form... relations with one.
But her?
She sighed. This was eating at her.
Jacques' eyes burst open, his face flushed. He looked down to his crotch. Hidden though it was by the bedroll, the sensation down there, simultaneously deeply unpleasant and regrettably familiar taught him of what had just occurred. Oh fucking oath, not again.
He looked to his side, where his companion lay asleep. She hadn't curled over to wrap her arms around him this night, to his fortune. He'd welcome it any other, but he required freedom of movement as he scrambled stealthily from betwixt the covers.
He couldn't remember quite when the dreams began. It had been after he had won his first battle, he knew. After she had pressed him to herself, so tight to her he could feel her heartbeat. He'd never been close to her before then, not save
He had spared glances to her ever since, his tortured gaze drawn to certain features of hers, helmed by a hormone-strangled mind.
The soft, cool feeling of her skin under his hands. The gentleness in those yellow eyes, outlined as they were by black. Those little expressions she gave by way of answer when they talked. Those legs, holy demon. What would they feel like- oh no no buster, we aren't going there you sicko.
It wasn't right, was it? Nah, he was screwy in the head. Ha ha, yep. Nuthouse calling; we've got a reservation, patient J-A-C-Q-U-E-S. Straightjacket, shoes with no laces, little icepick up the sniffer, whole nine yards. Ten, even.
She'd be disgusted if she knew, he was all too aware of that. Oh-ho, yes she would. She was a Garchomp, and garchomps liked garchomps, right? Seemed about right.
He'd seen a bull 'chomp before, on tv. A tape of the '94 Sinnoh Opens, wasn't it, with that girl what was the champion there now? Impressive critters, they were. Maybe a half foot and 30 kilos on his companion. Lotta hard angles and armor plates, pointy bits (heh, heh), kind of muscles that break down a door and the house around it.
Yeah right. How'd he beat that, hey? He wasn't exactly top of the pecking order in his own species, anyhow.
He scrambled through his spare clothing, with the type of late-night stealth only teenage boys possessed. Every nerve in his body felt tensed as he prayed that she wouldn't wake up and see him, compromised as he was. Arceus, those dreams. He remembered a flash of tonight's garment soiling session. Something about that long, muscular tongue licking his chest, massaging his pectorals with a languid ease, sliding steady downwar- Oh fuck off subconscious, you nutter.
He spared a glance back to his companion, her snout tilted adorably as she dozed. She'd actually fallen asleep on him tonight, as he'd sung to her, some cowboy ditty he'd learnt as a kid. Been a bit of a chore lifting her off him. She was the only one who really appreciated it when he did sung. To be entirely fair, she was the only one he sung around. Heh, captive audience.
He liked singing. Jean fucking sucked at it.
Hyeh. He probably was too. She probably thought he was shit too. But she was nice, so she wouldn't say nothing. She couldn't, anyway. He chuckled bitterly to himself, before settling down once again to his resting position, as his partner slumbered away beside him, as oblivious to the world as she was his feeling.
Well, thats just how things were, weren't they?
She first met the Gardevoir in one of the human settlements. It was a smaller one, which agreed with her much better. A town.
It had been only once that she'd entered one of the main human nests, the "Cities", and she regretted it still. A wretched place, the concrete too thick to burrow through, with smoky air that singed the lungs, and the unending vibration of vehicles, underground mechanisms, and the sheer amount of lifeforms which swarmed through its innards and streets. It hurt just to stand in one. She'd made Jack promise to never return to one of those loathsome hives.
Jack spoke fondly of this place, though. He claimed to own a house here, It having been his haunt of many a family holiday apparently, with "Just about the best chip shop there is." He liked it, so, she decided, she would as well. She didn't find it too difficult to do this. It was a pastoral sort of place not far from the ocean, the cool breeze tipped with a salty tang. Flowerbeds and trees lined the brick-paved roads, aside squat adobe houses. Pleasant. Quaint, she supposed in a lazy, nostalgic sort of way.
She found herself loitering by the entrance of a park. Jack had told her to wait there, as he'd set off to get groceries. Her eyes flitted about to the Pokémon and people that littered the streets, finding ways to entertain themselves and one another on the sleepy weekend afternoon.
Then she saw it.
She had felt drawn to the creature, as it crouched, examining the flowers as it muttered away to itself, occasionally poking or prodding one of the blooms to gauge some minutiae apparent only to her.
She'd taken it for a human at first, a tall, lean one in a green partitioned dress, the tips of which brushed the ground as it worked away.
Then it had turned, straightening up from the flowers, revealing its crest of horns, ivory-white skin, and the large, red-hued eyes. The dress, or whatever it was, floated and waved about its ankles, in spite of the absence of a breeze.
It was apparent from the slight sensation at the base of the skull. She hadn't much experience with them, really. Psychic types, Jack would call them. She didn't have quite so much a word.
"Hello". It didn't speak. Not really. It merely thought what she wanted to say, and the dragoness heard it. Telepathy. Regardless, it gave the impression of a calm, steady voice, as far as her mind interpreted it.
"Hello." She had no such tricks, and merely grunted to it in their language. Sure, the dialects were vastly different across all the different species, but the basic etymologies remained and allowed for communication.
They stood and stared at each other for a few seconds. She scratched her toes in the dust, and the humanoid stood still, eyes to her. Hmm.
"What are you?". It was a genuine question. Her conversations with others were... infrequent. She and Jack only travelled with each other, except on occasions such as these. Her knowledge of the wider world was admittedly lacking, in spite of Jacks frequent regurgitation of trivia. She couldn't claim to have seen one of these entities before.
For its part, the thing didn't seem altogether surprised by the query.
"The humans would call me a gardevoir. Mine calls me Cel, by my own suggestion. You may call me that, should you wish" She was a trainers Pokémon then? Well of course, this was a human town. "What of yourself?"
She told her name, and asked the humanoid about the town. According to her, it was a nice town, with nice people. Cel proved an apt conversationalist. It was a problem she faced with many of her kind; Much as they were not all alike, they were not all equal, though it pained her to admit it. Some were too dull to even speak, some plain odd(A particularly bizarre and unhinged Sableeye came to mind), some too violent to bother. She'd heard that said about her species, that they were prone to bouts of extreme irritability, notions of superiority, and possessiveness. False, of course.
Cel did not have any of these problems. Her mannerisms showed politeness and grace without implying superiority. The dragoness suspected that she could talk with far greater sophistication than she did, but refrained from doing so. It gave her a niggling feeling in her mind, a sort of instinctual suspicion which she could not quite place.
Cel's trainer fixed motorcycles, owned a dealership, apparently. She tended to the flowers for which the town was known, was proud of it, having not much else to do following the conclusion of her and her trainers journey. She accented this statement with a wave to those said flowers, to which she had been tending pre-conversation. The dragoness knew little of flowers, but she guessed these ones had some quality about them that implied a superiority to others. They certainly smelt nice.
That niggling feeling again, brought to clarity by an answer.
Human. She acted human. Wasn't unreasonable, she'd clearly been around them plenty long. It was not as noticeable as it might have been with a different Pokemon, due to the Gardevoir's humanoid features, but still, it seemed uncanny, to see her gesturing and acting like a man-thing.
The dragoness paused. Had she adopted man-thing mannerisms, in her time beside Jack? She shuddered, imagining her waving and flourishing her clawed arms as she spoke, her ivory jaws clicking open and shut as she recounted some pointless fact or dull-edged joke. Goodness no.
A treacherous thought struck her brain. Perhaps - it wasn't a bad thing. The closer to human she acted, perhaps, the more attractive she might seem to him. Maybe. Her more ornery features could be offset, perhaps, were she to displace them with a pleasant and anthropomorphic behavior. Maybe it could make Jack like her.
Her train of thought was disrupted by a slight movement from her conversation partner. Oh goodness, had she been staring into space? The gardevoir looked up at her, almost amusedly.
"You're aware I can hear what you say, aren't you?"
Her neck muscles tensed, and nostrils flared. Everything went so very still, as her mind raced with the type of split second decisions normally reserved for combat.
Arceus. What did she do now? Tear her apart? Too many people around.
Run? What would that solve, this green fuck was clearly plotting something, and doubtless it'd come back to find her, sooner or later.
Maybe she could make a break for Jack, persuade him that they would do well to leave this place. Maybe claim they were sacrificing outsiders, or something similarly sinister? No, no, Jack knew this place too well. Besides, how would she tell him this?
Perhaps she could-
"They're not a Pokémon, are they?"
The question wasn't interrogative nor demanding, merely curious.
She paused furtively, weighing the question in her head. Should she answer? If the gardevoir could read her mind, she could tell if she was lying, most likely. No point trying.
She shook her head grudgingly, eyes bearing down on Cel like sunbeams.
"Who is he, your trainer?"
She couldn't gauge a tone from that telepathic voice, what its angle was, why it had spoken up. It didn't sound surprised, though. Best to answer it. For now. Play along until she could get the humanoid someplace with a few less sets of eyes.
"Not my trainer.". Those red eyes tilted upwards by way of inquiry. "We just- we travel together, have for close enough to a year"
"Well, what's he like?" What was she doing? Was she just trying to make her squirm or something?
"Why?"
"I'm curious. That's all." The thing smiled at her. Good Friend Arceus, the nerve of her.
"He's annoying, and scrawny, and talks far too much." She spat out. The gardevoir continued to stare, unconvinced. "He complains about every little thing, and can't cook burgers without burning them." Still nothing but a patient stare.
She growled, but it transformed into a resigned huff of acceptance. "H-he's nice" She hadn't voiced her feelings aloud before. It brought into perspective just how ludicrous her delusions had been as she spit the words between her lipless jaws. Her head sunk. "No. He's great. Cooks for me, Sings a bit, rubs my back sometimes. So many lovely things. He's a lovely man".
Would he do that anymore, when he learnt what she felt? Cel stood still before her, as still as the statues placed about the garden, even her dress flaps prostrate. Oh, she was enjoying this, wasn't she?
She snapped her head upwards, with a ferocity she had thought she'd left behind in that cave "You enjoy that, eh! You having fun, mocking me? You happy?" She spat it out with vitriol, more snarl than speech. A human couple on a nearby path flinched, took the long way around. They didn't understand what she said, but they knew what it meant.
There wasn't a thing that breathed that didn't know mean when they saw it.
And that was just about all she was, wasn't it? Mean. Cruel. A beast. Thats why she'd never get to be with Jack, oh yes. She was a monster, and thats just about all she'd ever be-
A hand had found its way to her shoulder, its touch soft. The gardevoir had found its way to her, uncaring of her violent outburst, of the tense muscles in her arms and the blades at their ends.
"Be calm, friend"
Something about that voice made her pause. It nearly sung with an energy which rubbed between its words and bounced around her skull, made her pause mid-snarl, stop tasting the bad thoughts. Those wide red eyes, which she’d thought burning with mockery afore, were mellow, thoughtful as they stared upon her. Sympathetic, even. No, that was stupid. For what reason would they be? They’d seen her secrets, scried her soul and seen the pitch which sloshed within its walls, that shameful fantasy which only a beast could entertain.
“I’ve been there, before”. The gardevoir’s voice was clear and crystalline. It could be called sweet, yet it was too powerful and authoritative to warrant the word. Saccharine, then. The dragoness’ brow furrowed. What?
“We were both young, emboldened by the vigours to which that glorious trance of youth held us. For six years we had travelled together, through unsullied wilderness, across bottomless seas and mountains that reached the end of the sky. We had seen all there was, or so it seemed from behind eyes of inexperience. Six years we spent aside each other through all the creator saw fit to put upon us”. She smiled “And so it was we were together to see the changes which the hand of maturity so spurred in the both of us. And so it is, we admire these changes, even now” A flicker of sly humour lit that porcelain-white face as she emphasised those last two words, a stain of nostalgia to her features.
What?
The implications of this were- She very nearly opened her mouth to ask for an elaboration.
The red eyes flashed into seriousness again. She could very nearly taste the static energy they bore.
“Answer me well, now. Would you say that you love him?” She did not deign to telepath her words, asking the question in a physical voice, appropriately melodic, with the trace accent of something distant. It carried a tone of command a being this small and thin should not possess. “Do the strings of devotion guide your path, or is it but airs of infatuation and lust that endear you to this son of man so?”
She pondered this riddle-wrapped question for a second.
Love.
It was a word she disliked, one commonly found between the lips of the deluded and the naive. But for all this, it was the one which worked. No word better spoke to the tightness in her chest as those hands brushed her, or the comforting noise of his pointless, idle chatter as lit up their travels, littered with a thousand useless facts and unfunny jokes.
“I do. I do love him.”. The word felt a stranger to her, unmade to slip between fanged jaws.
Cel smiled, “It is good you admit this. Love finds no greater malady than lies, regardless of whether they are to the other or the self.”. Her hand slid from the Dragoness’ shoulder, the red eyes blinked, and she could have sworn the intensity the gardevoir held previous had vanished.
“To you, fear comes as much as love, to think of him. Why?”
“Because they couldn’t come to be, such thoughts. We’re different, are we not?”
“That is moonshine, and an excuse. Many have found completion in another unalike, myself among them”
She sighed, an act that to her meant exhaling through the nostrils “That is not what I meant. You’re a soft thing. Pleasant to look at, for a human. Myself?” By way of answer, she gestured to her body with an exaggerated, scornful flourish, an emphasis on the sharp spurs that adorned her thighs and arms, and the steep angle of her snout.
“Why is it that you think I asked whether you merely lusted for him?” She stared at the gardevoir, confused. “The arrow which guides true attraction cannot be turned by mere factors of appearance" Hmm. Wasn’t wrong, was she? The things she liked most about Jack, that voice, the optimism, Could he be the same? However-
“It’s not just appearance that makes us alike. He is human of heart. Me? I am a monster, a dragon”
Within seconds of their first meeting, had she not fell upon him, driven his face into the ground? And before that, lay in a predatory wait, considered him prey, nearly gouged his flesh and tore at him? Areus, their first meal had more or less been robbery on her part. No. Brutality tempered her soul as quenching oil did steel, and to let that near Jack, well it was-
“Do you honestly believe these things that you think, or are you simply making excuses again?”
Thats right, talking to a mind reader.
“I saw you together before. Saw the care you show to him. I also saw the apprehension some showed you, how they strayed from your path, your claws. There was nothing of that about him. He trusts you, believe me. I'd know."
The gardevoir paused then, pondering something in its soft, haired head.
“Would you suppose he could love you, too?”. The question came as a surprise. Perhaps. He did love her, in his own friendly way. She was quite certain he at least liked her. But in the way she did him? That was an infinitely more doubtful supposition.
Before she could answer, Cel’s eyes flicked to behind the garchomp and lifted, as if witnessing something. She heard it then, a lopsided, ungainly whistling that got louder with time, one which she didn’t realised she had missed.
Jack.
Startled as she was by this encounter, she resisted the urge to pick him up and hug him, as he ambled his way to them, unawares to the mental conflict she had just been in. Cel gazed at him evenly, as if judging him. He seemed unaware, weighted down by a squadron of bloated paper bags as he was.
His eyes lit up as they gazed into her sharp dashes of pupils. She swore they did. “m’Back. Got some of ‘em protein bars what you like, oh, and the Tamato berries. Dunno why you love ‘em, so bloody hot. Thinking we get something nice from that chip joint for dinner, yeah? (What’s the place called?) Oh yeah, maybe rent a movie or something for the evening, the place has got a telly after all. (Heh, ChipHole, that's what it was.)” He was as insufferably chatty as ever. It was wonderful.
Jack's attention turned to the Gardevoir, at some prompt she didn't hear. “Oh hey, nice to meet you too, how you going?" A pause "That’s good. Oh yeah, I’m fine.”
It was not only Pokemon with which Cel could mentally converse, then. She found that concerning, that they could hold a conversation to which she had no knowledge. The thought of that thing rooting around in Jack's head made her sick, even if she had shown to be a more sympathetic character than expected.
“You met my friend? Oh nah, nah, I’m not her trainer. Oh, we just travel together, I guess. The big girl don’t need nothing like that, she's just letting me stick around.” She didn’t want Cel to learn about her past. Nor did she want this creature near her Jack any longer. Slowly, carefully, she tried to send a pointed look Jack's way, speaking to a wish to leave this encounter. He understood immediately, Arceus bless him. He clumsily steered through the pleasantries she beamed his way, breaching the topic of their departure with his characteristic lack of subtlety.
“Oh well, we gotta run, get the place we’re at ready for the night. Nice meeting you, Cel was it? Yeah, have a good one”
The gardevoir did nothing to stop them, merely watching with an ungaugeable expression as they left, Jack in front of her as she formed a barrier between them.
Yet, as they departed, she felt once more the squirming sensation of a mind-message, a sense of weighted importance borne upon its disconnected, yet compassionate tone.
“Love finds no greater malady than lies”
She walked away at his side, the heavy thump of her footfalls unconsciously matching his sneaker-snuffed steps. The gardevoir watched them go, saw her grumble with laughter as his fast-paced young voice regurgitated some joke. Poor girl, she thought. One could practically taste the airs of anxiety which surrounded her bodice as she had paced about the garden. Hence why she’d mentally imbibed that she come over.
She saw the dragoness offer to take one of the bags, and the man place one precariously onto one of her long, tapering talons. The moment weight was set on it, the paper bags handles were rended, sending it to the ground, its contents scattering as it upended. This seemed to embarrass the garchomp go no end, as she scrambled to retrieve a dented tin, her killing blades only serving to batter the package about. The human comforted her with a stroke to the forearms, his clever digits retrieved the spilled goods as he crouched beneath her, oblivious or uncaring that he was centimeters from some of the more gruesome cutting implements in the Pokemon kingdom.
Clearly, he trusted her a good deal, should he feel weaving beneath her blades.
Or, he might have just been incredibly stupid.
Cel focused on him then, reaching her psychic subconsciousness to filter into his mind. Physically, he could see what the dragon saw in him, what implored those scaly limbs to wrap around and call him theirs. Not her Ricky, by any stretch of the mind, but a lean, healthy lad whose step spoke of pleasant nature and even temperament.
She hoped for the dragon’s sake that he could love her.
She didn't see why not. Fangs and claws aside, she seemed a nice girl, as the draconids went. Aside from mentally pondering whether to kill her, of course. But that was draconids for you.
Her psyche had entered his mind. saw what bubbled and stirred within it. Invasive, perhaps, but she was curious enough to sidestep the morality of such an act. Was love possible, or had she gone about offering her conversatory companion false hope?
She saw thoughts, travelled, as much as one travelled in someone else's mind. Curiosity filled her, her attention caught by a hazy dream. She saw a glimpse of the dragons features, as they growled and panted for some unknown reason. Was her chest moving up and down? Curious. She moved closer.
She tried to stand as still and straight as possible as he wobbled about atop her, arm scrabbling about near the houses roof.. “Yeah, Dad always stuck a spare key in the gutter. Said no one ever looked there. Know the bloody reason now, don’t we?” She heard a clink of something metal, and his corresponding cry of success.
Jack clambered off of her back, and opened the door, a steaming takeaway bag in hand. The air inside the dwelling smelt musty, stale even. The odor of disuse. “I’m sure the folks won’t mind our shacking up here. I mean, we own it after all, right? Well, Dad does.” He waltzed inside with a comfortable familiarity. “Used to come here on the holidays, we did. Not the biggest place, I know. Hot water system was on the fritz every other day, and I'm pretty sure something died in the roof a few years back. But it was ours, and I bloody loved this place as a kid."
“Then Jean got his sponsorship deal, and bought himself his ritzy new joint. Nice bit of modern work, that, big windows out onto his pier, internet connection, spa and sauna, hell, a kitchen done in marble.” He looked around with “Always liked this place though. Memories, y’know?”.
She made an effort to appear understanding.
He chuckled as his attention was diverted, pointed at a stripe of something dark streaked across a living room wall “Arceus, I remember that. Ma had sat us down to do some drawing, and Jean and I decided we’d have ourselves a marker fight. Dunno why. Kids never really do, heh. So, He throws a permanent marker at me, I duck at the right time, and well, the wall doesn’t ”. He patted the marked surface fondly, like a pet. “We’se got made to scrub this wall for an hour at least. Still wouldn’t come out”. A smirk wormed onto his face, oddly melancholic. “Memories, eh?”.
He slung their groceries and dinner onto the counter, a hand reaching out to light the room against the approaching evening. Behind the coat of dust, a cosy, if somewhat cramped house lay about them. Wooden furniture, handmade it seemed, or purchased from a artisan. Throw rugs. Floorboards with gouges in them. It wasn’t expensive nor elaborate, but it wasn’t trying to be. She liked it.
Atop a lacquered cupboard leant a photograph of a younger Jack, massive smile revealing a missing front tooth, with an older boy beside him of a similar appearance. This was Jean, then. Brother of her Jack. Thrower of markers. Master of Pokemon combat. Even as a dust-covered photograph of a 13 year old, she could see the slack pose and mirthful expression that belied confidence in his every fibre.
She was torn from the photo when she heard the sound of cloth sighing. Her partner had acquiesced to the lounge, a spread of hot paper packages splayed over the coffee table before him, leaking tantalising smells. An ocean of static spilled from the television, coating his face in a shifting light. He didn’t say a word for once, just patted the place beside him. And so she went.
Jacques watched his companion as she lounged on the sofa beside him, tail swishing ambiently. Those yellow slits of eyes flicked about the room, surveying it. Did she like it? Probably not. He hated to admit it, but the place wasn’t in the best of nick. Hadn’t ever been, really. You just didn't think about those things as a kid.
Any one of them could be the Ultra Beast, Kurt Russell said to the rest of the cast, as the aging TV churned out their tinny voices amid the sound of Arctic wind.
As a child set free to roam for the holidays, you didn’t notice how low down the ceiling was, nearly enough for a Garchomp to scrape its head on. Or how damnedly stuffy it could get. Nah. You was too focused on the trips to the arcade. The games of backyard footy. Sucking down ice creams. On, well, being a kid.
He bit down on the burger, felt the juice seep into his tongue.. She’d liked those, at least. All four of ‘em, plus chips. Try as he might, he couldn’t get them to taste quite the same as he remembered. The way they’d tasted on those starlit nights, sitting by the beach with his Ma and his Pa and Jean, sand between his toes, watching the wingull play in the waves without a care in the world.
Kurt Russell cried out, swinging his flamethrower to bear on a fluctuating jellyfish creature, which pulsed angrily as it sloughed off the facsimile of a human which it wore. It had been Jean who’d first showed him this movie, hadn’t it?
She didn’t quite understand these picture shows. They weren’t real, it was all just cameras, smoke, mirrors and men in makeup saying lines written on little bits of paper. And yet the humans ate them up. There must have been a million of them, by her reckoning. How typical of them. Time and again they made up these little stories, for no explicable reason. Obsessing after something that wasn’t real. She made an effort to keep watching though, because Jack liked it, and that meant that this one was probably worth watching. Something about a space creature coming to wipe out all of mankind… by pretending to be one? Something about snow, too? Her eyes wandered about the abode, sliding off the walls and furniture. She liked it. When they nested, her kind dug their dens low and squat, to prevent cave-ins. Kept the warmth in well, like this place did. Too many human dwellings were cold, large affairs. If they desired openness, why not go outside? Hmm. Humans. She wondered . This was a good house, it comforted her. It would be optimal to raise young in-. She stopped herself. No. Not going there. Her conversation turned interrogation with Cel still rattled about her skull. Her last words, what had they been? Something of lies and truth, in that lackadaisical whimsy-talk which the gardevoir delighted in wrapping around her speech. Love, too. Stupid, naive love. And yet, she was so very aware of her partner beside her, every shift in his seating. Every rise of his breath. And of his breath, it seemed strange right now, mechanical in its pace. Her heart jumped. Was he uncomfortable beside her? The thought frightened her. She tried to. She didn’t need this, She’d get up, and excuse herself. She would get into bed for the night. Not his bed. And she would not do anything that scared him, anything that would hurt him. And she’d wake up tomorrow, with her head fresh and body controlled, and work to drive this idiotic notion from her brain-
Jack tried to regulate his breathing. In. Out. In. Out. He felt her beside him, her weight, the breathy exhaled that rattled his chest. The idea had come to him a week ago, when he decided he'd come here. Something about this place spurred it within him. His past memories of this place, and places beyond. Him and Jean.
Jean so big and brave. Him? His little crony. The second child. The second best. The one who had to be let win a battle, let get the ball across the line.
He wasn’t like that anymore, couldn’t be. Jack sighed. He wasn’t like that, was he?
Oh he talked. He talked but he said nothing. A thousand words each worth nothing more than their weight in wind. But now, now he had to. He could blither away the rest of his life, but for his soul, he needed to do it. To actually say something for once in his Arceus-damned life.
Jean would say something.
He grabbed that little voice in his mind and squeezed it until it stopped squeaking.
He didn’t need to be Jean. He just had to be himself. Say something that he would say. His true self.
So it was, he took one last breath, steeled his nerves and turned to her, tears nearly in eye, as his heart jumped so hard he felt it was trying to tear from his chest, and as he reached his arm forward, his lips spread-
“We’ve travelled a lot, haven’t we?” She felt his hand on her forearm. There was an odd inflection to his speech. No short cuts or little chuckles. Oh, it was a happy voice, yes, and still bore the weight of seriousness. It was mature. The voice of a man, even. She turned her head to him, uncertain, electricity in her nerves where their skin met. In the background, the beard man with the flamethrower yelled a battle cry into an unanswering blizzard. He was staring at her, no, no, he was staring into her. She nodded her head, growled an agreement to his statement, uncertain of where he was going.
“Heh, yep. Boy, we’ve seen some things huh? The, uh, two of us, that is.”
She saw the look on his face, the way his eyes flicked to hers, then away, then back, like some sandy-haired clock. Oh Arceus, he had noticed, hadn’t he? He was going to say something, tell her that he thought they were friends, but that he didn’t feel that way-
“I, um I like you, you know that, right?”. She froze. Here it came. The bravado which had puffed up his chest thus far seemed to be fading, as his eyes jerked around the room frantically, looking for any other than hers. Did he fear she might react violently to his rejection? That she would hurt him? He saw her as a monster as a beast a freak oh-
“I think it’s more than that, speaking truthfully” He seemed pale, a bead of sweat primed to graze across his temple. And yet courage still armoured his form, steeled his eyes. She daren’t move a muscle. It happened then, the moment stretching before her infinite, and yet ending in an instant. His voice was but a whisper when it came, but it spoke louder than any other could have.
“I think that I love you”
Her jaw nearly dropped open, so great was her shock. He saw that, and his eyes bulged like an animal in a trap, as he took his hand from her arms, rearing into a gesture that seemed apologetic,
She saw then. The truth. Unheeded by shackles of deception and subterfuge. He was trapped. Caught in the twilight between a child. Man-son and man-thing. A shade in sunlight, candle in the dark. He had no idea what he was. A bolt of compassion, of adoration ran through her insides.
She did. He was her Jack.
A part of her mind which had long waited reared its head with a mirthful hiss. He wanted to be a man, did he? Well, she’d make him one, and he'd get to make her a dragoness in full.
She saw him peel back, as if about to apologise for his confession or run out of the room.
Oh, He’d do no such things. He didn’t get to.
He wasn’t going to lie to himself, didn’t get to do that to her or himself any longer. In turn, she wouldn’t either. Her arms reached out behind them both, and pulled him into an enormous hug. She felt the race of his heart, beating overtime in his smooth chest. It excited her.
A look of shock crossed his face, eyes wide. She stared back in turn, golden orbs seeing every bit of him, and loving them. Not a word was spoken, for what was theirs needed none. With a vigour that surprised her, he reached up and wrapped his hands around her neck, a reflection of their first embrace. With a jerking start, as if his body had acted before his mind could restrain it, his head moved forward, and he kissed her.
He tasted like- He felt- like-, like.
Jack.
She uttered his name, though she knew he couldn’t understand. Her tongue found its way into his mouth, met his and wrapped around each other. His arms explored her back, the sensation. So much firmer, more intense than ever before. This wasn’t some fireside carress. This was something else. Those sly hands descended, down, to her waist and then some, stayed there and squeezed. She growled with delight.
He pulled back, breath coming in gasps, face flushed. His hands scrabbled to the collar of his shirt, reaching to pull it over him. She wouldn’t have him be wasting his time like that, oh no. A single swipe from her claw was all it took for the singlet, a cheap cotton thing, to peel from his flesh and reveal the pleasures of his toned flesh. Arceus, he had changed from that skinny boy, hadn’t he? She resettled, climbed atop him, straddling his lap. She felt him then, the stiffness between his legs. She did that to him. He felt that way about her. She felt her mind twitch. Beasts and people. Pokemon and person. Damn all of it, excuses the lot. She wanted this man to make her forget about the world a while. There wasn't a thing outside this room that mattered to her right now.
Her tongue drew down from his mouth, explored the surface of his flesh, filled the hollows of collarbones and neck as her teeth traced across his skin, gentle, so very gentle. Lower, and lower she went. As she devoured the smell, the man-scent which clung to him, she wondered how she hadn’t noticed this before, how she'd resisted it, hadn't done something about it. One of Jack's hands moved from its ministrations of her rear, and massaged the soft skin beneath her horns. She nearly shivered from the sensation. Wasn’t enough. No. Not enough. More. He stopped her before her tongue sunk further down his body, though she very nearly decided to anyway. His eyes flicked across to the bedroom door behind them, their message clear.
Yes. Good. Good boy. There, in his nest. Her. Him. Yes.
Still, it was with reluctance that she slumped from him. He didn’t seem much different, were the flush in his face and crotch of his pants an indicator. His hand found her way to her as they stumbled in unison, her shoulder checking the door awry in her haste.
The dragoness sank onto the foot of the bed, her eyes never once leaving her partner. She steeled herself. With the fog of lust faded somehat from their couchtop passions, she had come to her senses somewhat. She knew that this was a violent and brutal process, one she mightn’t leave entirely intact. But that was okay. If he had to sink his teeth into her neck, as had been the case for her mother before her, or wrap his claws about her waist and dig, she’d bear it. If this was the price to be with him, hell, if the humans had some mating process more brutal than her kind's, she could make peace with it. She grit her teeth in preparation. Then paused. He had kneeled before where she sat, his hands finding supple purchase on each of her thighs. She blushed, imagining he could feel her warmth from there. She could smell his want, and it ate at her.
“You’se tell me if I’m not doin’ this right, ok?”
With that his face went between her legs. Arceus.
Oh. Oh- She swore she saw lights flash behind her eyes. She had thought before was nice. No. This was- this was something else entirely. She hadn’t remembered starting to whimper and growl, and yet she did. Her knees went weak, and she almost involuntarily slumped to the ground, pinning his face beneath her with a thud, He didn’t stop, though, of course he didn’t and she nearly felt shame for how she reacted, as she ground and bucked against him without meaning to, mouth agape as she made sounds unbecoming of such a mighty dragon. She felt the warmth of his breath blow against her, the sensations as he reached inside and tasted her, his hand caressing her waist before settling on her behind. Her breath came in gasps, and she had to stop herself from shivering. Her tail swung in jerks, pendulum-like, over his prone body, occasionally swatting against his member, trapped beneath his pants, each pass eliciting a grunt of his own.
Her attention diverted to his masculinity. That smell, what it did to her. Needed him inside her. She rolled off of him, saw his face soaked in her. Jack scrabbled with his belt and pants, casting them away frantically. The bed lay ignored. No need for such trivialities. She spread her legs, her dripping, hot femininity on display for him and him alone. Hungry for him. She didn’t want to be on top. No. Better for him to come to her, for him to love her, to take her.
Her sweet Jack. All hers. And she was his.
He was all too happy to comply, positioning himself between her thighs with restrained energy. A second lingered in anticipation, filled only by two panting mouths and the drip of sweat and fluids.
It passed. She heard him hiss aloud as he became one with her, his hands vice-like on her waist. Arceus. Oh she had thought things, that his size beside her could mean them. And yet- no, oh no, she felt ready to break. She felt full, completed even.
It felt right. natural. How she should be, with him inside her. Her legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer, so much closer to her, so tight he couldn’t pull away if he’d wanted to, her tail curling around his calves, as much of her closing around him as she could. Only enough slack that he could continue. For his part he held her tight, his hands delighting in seeking out her soft spots and squeezing. No teeth had sunk to her neck, nor claws raked her skin. And yet she felt so very overwhelmed. Oh yes, dizzy, faint, and yet, Arceus, never more such clarity. The pulse of pleasure, like needles of sugar alighting her core. The slide of his length within her, filling her deep as she flexed around him, sought to drag ever more of those precious moans from between his lips.
He moved faster, pretences of gentleness erased as a deeper, more primal side was coaxed out. His mouth plunged to hers once again, his tongue sliding across her teeth, finding the back of her throat. The spots returned to her vision, and her body felt weak, tongue lolling limply from her mouth as she growled and murmured into his neck. And yet she clung to him, her body not willing to release him, as a pressure within her reached a boiling point. It peaked, and she jerked and bucked around him. Then again. Her head spun.
She felt tension arise in his chest, the flexing in his abdominals. A certain hardness to his breathing.
Yes. Good. More. Inside. You.
Her mind felt sanded down to its lesser functions, focused only on him inside her, what he would bring. Breeding, she realised with a faint, drunk giggle, as her head bobbed in tune with him. You silly girl.
His climax was signalled by a sudden inhale, as he cried out in a primal yell, ramming into her. She joined him in vocalisation, a high, euphoric sound. He didn’t try to pull out, couldn't with her holding him for all she was worth. Didn’t think he wanted to, as she ground against him furiously, her insides gripping him tight around his dick. She felt the warmness spread inside her, a part of him soaking into her being. Beautiful. She purred as he flopped feebly onto her chest, sweat cresting his brow, arms around her back. Her legs stayed wrapped around him, keeping him inside until she knew him dry, when he stopped twitching inside of her and painting her with his essence. That part of him, it was hers.
They lay together then, one chest rising as the other fell, and vice versa in a metronome pattern.
She was his. And he was hers.
Her man-thing. Oh, yes. If he was her man-thing, she could be his, too.
Not his Pokémon. Something else, perhaps. She knew the humans had words for these relations. Hah. Humans with their words. What they had right now had no need for such things.
His fingertips traced lazy circles upon her back. She nuzzled against his neck, feeling her throaty purrs reverberate through his body. Her arms crossed over him, their wings nearly eclipsing his torso in entirety.
Behind the cloud of dishevelled straw hair, she saw those eyes, exhaustion doing nothing to strip the adoration within them. He seemed close to sleep, his bare chest finding rest on her cool, scaly underside, even as they both lay on the carpet. He had the right idea, She could feel the draw of oblivion carry her too, such was the strenuousness of their experience and respective ministrations to each other.
She spoke then. It was no less her voice, the one which couldn’t sing, which she’d rued for its inability to whisper her deepest words to him. And yet this time, she knew he’d understand.
“I love you too”
Jacques woke with a start in bed. He stayed there for a second, staring as his sheets flapped above him.
Oh.
Those weren’t sheets. As he blinked the sleep from his eyes, he realised he lay atop Garchomp’s belly, as it gently rose and fell beneath him. Her wings had wrapped about him gently, almost protectively.
Well wasn’t that just something.
Memories flooded back to him. The taste of her tongue as it pushed and writhed against his. The image of her in front of him, gaze inviting, spread legs more so. The feeling of taut muscles around his waist, stronger ones around… other parts of him as a pair of long legs pushed him ever deeper. A voice whispering to him as he faded to rest. Something of love.
Hmm. OK.
Gently, so as to not wake her, he prised himself from her gentle embrace with some effort, stumbling to the bathroom. The shower was cooperative, despite its ageing plumbing groaning in effort, bathing him in steam as he scrubbed away at his bits, trying to wash the remnants of last night from his pubes. Huh. So that’d happened. His heart had just about skipped beats one through ten when he saw her slack jawed expression. He’d been just about to deny everything, maybe claim it was a joke- Then she’d grabbed him, pulled him in so damn tight; he’d kissed her. Well he hadn’t, had he, his body did before he'd had any say in the matter. Had he? Then, …other things happened. He could practically still feel her around him, the pulse of her body, and beat of her heart, the heat of the water reminding him of her.
Fuck.
He licked his lips. Tasted funny.
Jacques slunk through the bathroom back into his bedroom, towel around his waist. She was still passed out on the floor, faint snores coming from her as she lay splayed, tail flicking idly as she dreamed. Cute.
In the kitchen then, the morning sun streaming through the blinds. He rustled through the bag of groceries, producing bread, a carton of eggs, and a jar of instant coffee. He almost wished there was something stronger inside.
No. No, he didn’t regret what had happened. They’d done it together. She’d wanted it. Made that very clear. Oh, had it been great. He spied the torn remnants of his singlet, and chuckled. She wasn’t all spikes, that was clear.
He’d meant it, that he loved her. He talked plenty of nonsense, he knew that, but there wasn’t a soul more serious than his when he said that.
He’d loved her a long time before he even realised he did. The humour those amber eyes hid. How tender and kind that hulking body could be, how gentle. The way she looked at him when he sang, like no one else ever did. How she lay back in his lap by a thousand campsites and a thousand fires, her purrs rocking his chest. It didn’t matter she was six and a half feet of armoured hide and fangs. She was perfect.
He set about splitting eggs into a bowl, as the kettle got to boiling. Tried to do it one-handed, like one of those TV chefs. Other one flicked toast into a dented toaster. Enough for two.
He’d won a battle, made friends, travelled the world, and gotten his dick wet. Did that make him a man?
He guessed it did. Didn’t feel much different. His hips sort of hurt.
He cracked one of the eggs the wrong way. One half of it coated his hand in slime. The other slipped to the floor with a wet thwack.
Damn it.
Her eyes cracked open, witness to the rays of sun that peered in at her. She blinked. There was a weight gone from her chest. Jack. She immediately jerked upwards, the haze of being half asleep driving her to panic. She paused upon hearing the rising tones of Jack’s voice. From the kitchen, only in the kitchen. Like some sort of rooster he was, as he enthusiastically mangled the words to some Kalosian opera. She chuckled. Behind that sound, the din of cookery arose, the clink of dishes backed by the angry hiss of a frying pans contents. She rose, steadying herself with a claw. Last night. She growled warmly to herself. No biting, no scratches.
Love.
So silly, that word.
So right.
She thought with a hint of embarrassment back to her memories of it. She didn’t quite remember her thoughts from then, having been altogether more interested in the event itself, but she knew that in the haze of heat and emotion, she’d forgotten some of her more sophisticated senses.
She sauntered out to the kitchen, her nose picking up the scent of eggs. Jack scrambled about the counters, dishes of buttery toast and scrambled eggs in his arms. One heaped with a good deal more than the other. Her stomach growled.
He felt her presence as he rounded from setting down the meal, his eyes glowing warmly as he set them upon her. Arceus, but did his hair glow gold in the sun. A “Good Morning” slipped from behind his bashful smile, and a blush came to his cheeks when their eyes met, no doubt reminded of last night's debauchery. She thanked her thick hide, that he could not see hers, as she gazed upon this man, with whom she'd just indulged in deepest intimacy.
She hovered above the counter, nervous, unsure how to proceed. How did one, straight after what they’d did?
Pretend nothing had happened?
He paused, reached up to her neck and gave it a soft rub, and motioned towards the steaming breakfast plates that adorned the table.
That worked.
“You, uh, sleep well?” He probed forward. Their breakfast had been unusually quiet. They both knew why. He sipped from a cup of bitter coffee occasionally. It had been a good sleep, one undoubtedly benefited from his presence by her side. She nodded by way of answer.
More silence filled with chewing. He’d put grated cheese into the eggs. He knew she liked that.
“So... last night. That sure was nice, huh?” Not a question really, she knew that. More an expression of his feelings. She knew him like that.
Of her answer, her arm found its way across the table, inviting. He wrapped his hand around it, just below the claw, thumb massaging her skin, just like he always did. Of course he did. Of course.
“I meant that last night, y’know that?” Oh Jack. Of course you did. She had too. "I love you"
And so they sat there, between a breakfast forgotten to the sight of one another's eyes, morning sun cloaking their bodies in a warm glow. To gaze into it, one might see their sun-soaked silhouettes, see the differences which defined them in angle and size and shape. But the shadow which it cast on that hardwood floor, it was but one, their joined hands arching together to form a synthesis of their two forms. That shade it cast, longer than either of them.
The end.