The Friendly Battle & Other Pokemon One-Shots

Shadow

The thing is, he really should have nothing to do with the strange pokemon. But she's gorgeous, in every way and angle: the rich darkness of her thick fur, the steel-cable coils of muscle as she leaps, the diamond glitter of her collar. When she passes through he's helpless but to look. She walks along the top of the rusting fire escape and he wants to apologize to her feet.

He doesn't know what someone like her is doing here.

He's here because he eats from their trash. That's no concern for her. He imagines her sitting prim and perfect on a chair beside her owner, a plate of the choicest cuts set before her.

And yet. She springs from the fire escape to the top of the dumpster and then slides to the bags beside him like she's made of oil. "How's things?" she asks.

"Er," he manages. His eyes are glued to the sacrilege of her pristine paws resting in the crusty tv dinner trays and slimy vegetable goo he's scattered about. There is the smell of flowery shampoo drifting off her and mingling with the musty rot.

She cocks her head, holds out one paw. Her claws spring out, each a perfectly manicured crescent. She swipes at the dented can he's been struggling with, claws removing the top as smoothly as if it's no more than an idle wave in the air. The metal lid falls to their feet and she hooks one of the soggy baby corn from inside. She pops it in her mouth, exposing a flash of polished teeth. "Around here," she says.

It takes him a moment to regain the thread and that only confuses him all over again. "You're not ownerless," he tells her. It's inconceivable. He'd sooner doubt the sun and moon in the sky.

"Mmm," she replies. She tilts her head back a bit, lets the collar shift. "No. Though do you know, these are only rhinestones? The proper quartz kind, he had some sense, but still. If he expects me to settle for imitations I think cubic zirconia is compromise enough. And he could try quite a bit harder on the design, you know, rather than some monochrome glitter." The corners of her broad face move partway into a smile. "Ah, I'm rambling."

"It's beautiful," he tells her.

"Mmm," she says again. "Can't eat it, though."

He finally realizes he still hasn't answered her question. "It's uh, this place is, the humans come round only every few months to sweep people up, and don't try so hard. The humans in the buildings here aren't important enough for more, I mean, real pest control," he manages, tongue tripping over the implication someone like her could ever be a pest.

She doesn't seem to mind, though, just hums agreeably at the information, and he continues, "But, for the same reason, they haven't the money to buy good food, or the time to check and throw it out when it's only on the edge of rotting." He nods to the east. "Best pickings in the city, the apartments there, because the humans have more money than space and they're always buying the best of things and always deciding the next day they don't want after all. But those humans, they can make it real dangerous to get near. If you, uh..." He knows humans, their idea of pretty can be hunger, but he can't conceive of anyone denying her. "I mean, you, wouldn't have to worry I guess. About getting food there." Because she must be a champion, the bulk and strength of her, what danger could worry her?

"I'm more interested in peace." Well, he can't say there is any such thing as peace, not in the city. If there was he thinks it'd be something like whatever house she lives in. She hops back onto the lip of the dumpster, and then over to the other side, the scummy pavement. She glides forward toward the curb and he watches her flow into the filthy storm sewer with a smoothness that'd shame the rainwater, then out again, heedless of the wet murk blasphemously streaking her fur.

.o.

He finds her in the dumpster not long after along with a scrap of a meowth with fur not cream but the same deep color as her own, watching regally as the kitten struggles to bite open one of the garbage bags. Her teeth are sharp enough to puncture but the muscles of her neck too weak to do more then stretch the rest of the plastic when she tugs. The kitten does not smell of flowery soap but of damp and dirt and a hint of gasoline. He sees this all, and he cannot put it together.

When the kitten finally gets a hole big enough, the persian oversees the slow process of pulling each object out for inspection. "Only smells like food," she says of an emptied tuna can. "Don't chew with the plastic in the way," she directs about the heels of a loaf of bread still in their bag. "Just because it's soft in your mouth won't keep it from strangling your guts if you swallow it." There is a saran-wrapped collection of meat, purpled and swelling. The kitten's eager claws rupture it and she ends up drenched in putrefied goo. "Use your nose," the persian says. "If it already smells a bit wrong through a seal, it's best to leave it untouched." And she bends her perfumed face to the dripping kitten's head and begins to lick her clean.

He only works himself up to ask after she's deposited the kitten in the drain and climbed back out onto the street. "Your owner..." he manages. "Did he not...?"

"It's none of his business," she says. "This is the way it is done." There's nothing defensive in the statement, nothing challenging, simply a fact.

He can guess she's from somewhere far away, for he's never seen a persian quite like her. "Around here," he starts, and it's particularly awkward because she must love the human, it's written in muscle and bone, but... "I mean, if that's what he thinks, there's plenty of other humans who would be overjoyed."

"No doubt he would be as well, if he knew of her," she says. "We have always been loved dearly."

There's a clot of meowth a few blocks down, the area with the big grocery store. They raise their children together, passing kittens back and forth so there is always someone. And he knows those who live together with humans instead leave their kittens in their human's dwelling, unless there is too little love between them to think it safe. There is always a risk with trusting someone else, but... "It could rain," he tells her, and means, it will rain, today or next month but it will, it's the nature of the sky.

And she says, so calm, "Plenty of empty bottles roll down there, still capped."

He can't help but see it, that skinny little infant digging her claws into a plastic bottle and clinging to the underside, her head barely above the water. Until her mother returns, or her muscles fail, or the chill takes her.

"You love him," he pleads. "You - you must." The particular shape of her may be an unfamiliar one, but he can still recognize the principle, the same as the umbreon and espeon he's seen. She could not have become what she is if she did not love him, he's sure of it.

She sighs. "It's nothing to do with that."

"Other meowth, then, surely...?"

"They know no better than you, when it comes to love," she says, not particularly cruelly. "I won't claim it a hardship, but it's worth far less than you know. My people, we... Very long ago, we were no different. My ancestors, though, left for distant lands where we caught the fancy of royalty. The kings kept us inside, it's said, too precious for any other to see, and there we soaked up the shadows and the love until we swelled to bursting with them both." She taps a paw against the lovely moon of her face, drags a claw down through the incredible thickness of her fur until it strikes the silver edge of her jeweled collar. "Until one day, the humans decided to cast down those kings, and if there were no longer kings then there could no longer be all the precious things they'd hoarded so long for themselves. A meowth was spared by a wound struck too carelessly to be mortal, and when it was all done she crawled from where she'd been overlooked amid her family's bodies. And she swore her children would not need to be taught such a lesson twice. So until the day the sun dries the shadows from our fur and such oaths from our memory, this is as it shall be."

.o.

It rains. He finds her soaking wet with the bedraggled kitten beneath her, pressed up against the drier underside of her chest as she works to lick away the worst of the water.

But when the gurgling of the drain fades, she picks her child up again. The kitten dangles limply between her jaws, making no protest, as she replaces her beneath the street.