Chapter Text
Structure. Pattern. Predictability.
Back in the Cities it was obvious. The walls were built. Physical and real, keeping those secrets. If you had any sense, you knew where you were at any given time. You were told what a place was; told the rules. Expected to follow them. They birth you into this... structure. They push you through churning gears and stress. Expect you to fall into place. Expect you fit in like clockwork- but then you don't.
Then you end up like me.
Something unique and useless. Only really good at jamming the good works. A hinderance. I spent some time like that. Thinking it was just me before I realized it was them. I'd have never fit into a fine tailored suite. If they put one on me it would tear itself off, knowing damn well it just ain't right.
That time is behind me. All that confusion. All that pain until I got as far away from the structure as possible. Escaped the maze of fine concrete sidewalks and asphalt roads. Mechanical smiles and bubbling, stifling manners.
I often feel vacant now. As if I could peel off my very being and wonder about this place in pure euphoria. Losing all agency and sense of self. No longer a broken cog but another note in the song of nature. The frontier accepts all and it's pure peace.
It was the best decision I could have made. After narrowly dodging some hard jail time for my part in team Plasma’s terrorist antics; a simultaneous blessing and curse had come with the death of my father.
I’d miss the old fool, for as little as I knew him. Now I was living out of the sizable log cabin turned small home. It was in this place that I finally found the freedom I wanted all my life. No-one over my shoulder. No-one to define me. No eyes telling me what to be.
Now it’s just me, some scant neighbors and my main source of company. My Scolipede, Vanis.
She dug her feet into the soft loamy dirt and her whole body tensed. Every muscle from her heels and haunches to her neck rippled with well trained strength. She made a meter, then two before the momentum got the cart she was dragging on a roll. The loud racket of the old cart burdened with hay bales, bricks and whatever other heavy things I could pile in sounded through the tranquil land. The varying straps and bands holding her to the cart stretched under the pressure.
It was hard work but more than worth the price in sweat and pain for our shot at winning grand prize at tomorrow's joust. A few thousand dollars and more importantly, a Translation Crystal.
I grit my teeth and dug my heels in as I went for another set, shoulder pressing my homemade weights. Sweat poured down my brow but the sun and cool breeze kept my body cool and dry.
The joust was something of a joke to me at first. A few neighbors had drunkenly invited me to the event some months ago while cruising on their trucks. There being fuck all else to do out here I went along to watch.
It was about as silly as one could expect. A few dozen country bumpkins and their families who were otherwise bored out of their skulls congregating in a field to knock the shit out of each other.
Screaming kids with Herdier and Purloin; deerling and what have you. Water guns spraying, running and playing. A few fold out tables full of food made by everyone’s wives and grannies. Some of the men cussed loudly over who’s BBQ/Smoking methods were hot shit. Passed down from X generation to Y. The music ranged anywhere from hidden frontier gems to Uncle Joe trying to sell his new CD. All on the backdrop of a steady flow of liquor.
Then it all quieted down for the joust. A spectacle one might point and laugh at, at first glance. One man was mounted on his Sawsbuck. Another on his Farm’s Boufalant. Armored up in their grannie’s cooking pot as helmets, a life jacket, plates of metal and whatever other tough things one could tape to their bodies.
The lances were something else however. Rods of finely polished wood. Less like a lance and more like a column of wood with a bulb of rubber on both ends so everyone can go to work in the morning.
The two men raced down the track, staying on their sides thanks to the long wooden divider (list). House wives, drunk grannies and excitable children screamed and cheered as someone’s father was launched off their Bouffalant and landed mostly unharmed into the grass.
It’s hard not to get swept up in the excitement but I saw something an inch below the silliness. I saw culture, honesty. The real human condition playing out in as close to natural as we could get. I could appreciate that.
The joust changed over the months as the families jury rigged more elaborate set ups and put some spare elbow grease into the affair. The silly family rounds would still play out in the morning, followed by something more competitive. High speed, crashing lances and broken ribs. The images of hard blows and crushing defeats danced through my mind. I shuddered with anticipation.
The years of hard work and strong meals had done well to change me from the skinny, scheming City kid that had come here at first. Now the ultimate prize was right before me. The chance to be able to speak with my prized pony.
I whistled, catching her attention. She slowed in her exertion, heavy slit nostrils at the front of her face huffed warm streams of air as I approached her.
“That’s good for now. Don’t wanna be sore for tomorrow.”, she blew a puff and lowered herself to let me undo the straps.
The moment she was free she sailed off; sprinting ahead before coming around to trot in little circles around me. I smiled at her, letting my hand brush her shoulder and sides as she passed.
Occasionally she’d look back at me. Expressive, slit yellow eyes and tapering lashes batted away. Her body was full. Flowing soft flowing curvature that hid the brick hard muscles beneath. She was healthy, strong. My pride and joy.
She glanced back again, half lidded eyes brimming with girly, playful mischief; hoping I’d get dragged into her giddiness.
I took off, feet gripping soft field grass as I outpaced her with a burst of speed. Only to watch her zip past, down the incline a moment later. It was fun to watch her sprint. Her whole underside was so jiggly when she ran for fun that she’d swing her body in little circles like a Seal.
If she wasn't about to bowl you over, it was cute as hell to watch.
We went to the tree line and our run turned into a slow walk as the darker, less open area called our caution. This place was beautiful, but it was still the Unova frontier. There was no shortage of swooping, running and crawling Pokémon that could make a meal of an unaware human.
I kept watch as she dipped her head down to drink heavily; eyes glancing around at the trunks of trees centuries old. The sound of shifting underbrush and small blurs of movement alerted me to the presence of life.
Then the crack of a termite infested branch. The sight of wood dust falling from above. I stifled a gasp as the creepy glare of a wild Leavanny in the trees above me caught my sight. Deep, orangish brown insectoid eyes staring with perfect, unflinching stillness. So unmoving and so still as to look like a plastic doll.
It wouldn’t make a go at me while Vanis was around. It was either watching us for its own safety or waiting for the moment I was alone.
My skin crawled at that idea. Not sure whether or not to find relief in the way it slipped mechanically behind a few branches meters above us. It was out of my sight now, but what was it doing where I couldn’t see it?
Then Vanis raised her head from her drink and bellied her cry.
Her abdomen rolled and a piercing, rolling call somewhere between the croak of a frog and the chirp of a cricket rang from her maw. I covered my ears as the loud noise scoured the nearby landscape.
Swablu and Pidove sailed away in fright. The shuffling of leaves could be heard as the smaller Pokémon in the area acknowledged the biggest bitch in this neck of the woods. Vanis looked at me with a self satisfied tilt of her head.
Miles and miles away similar calls shot back, echoing the territorial warning. One was a little closer than the rest.
I waved off her show of influence over the forest. “Yeah but I scared off a Leavanny while you drank.”
I didn’t like Leavanny. Old Dad had gotten lax with population control and maybe lax in the brains for coming to the forestry without a Pokémon or a gun on his person. He was too old and too drunk to fight it off and the neighbors found his bones in the trees some days later once the Mandibuzz started circling near his house. Maybe he was an idiot. Maybe he was just alone out here for way too long.
Along with my father’s corpse they found some very fat and very aggressive Leavanny in the area. Couldn’t let any man eaters become commonplace. The ensuing hunt cleared out every Leavanny for miles.
Rifles, herdier and trained Unfezant. It truly only made way for the coming Sewaddle to have free territory but the Pokémon speak. They tell stories. The females would warn their offspring about getting a taste for manflesh meant.
That’s the way it is on the frontier. The wilderness accepts all. We're all playing the same game out here. Eat today, get eaten tomorrow.
I yawned, fishing a cloth from my pocket. I was about to start polishing her armor when I heard the crash of water in the stream and four hundred something pounds of jiggly bug horse sent a torrent of water crashing into me.
“Vanis! Dammit I wasn’t ready to shower.” I made a show of it, throwing my head to get some of the water off my face.
The turbulent splash of water and the sound of struggle in the water eventually revealed Vanis trying to swallow a Basculin whole.
“That’s coming out of your dinner.”, she turned to me with an annoyed look, the tail of the fish still wriggling in her mouth. “If you get any rounder we’ll have to roll you down the jousting lane.”
She huffed with a puff of air, haughtily raising her nose to swallow her snack. The shifting splashes of water sounded as she climbed her way out of the creek. I couldn’t help a mischievous slap on her big swaying rump as she passed by. Right where the armored plates on her hips gave way to the soft black skin of her glutes.
She hopped in place like a startled Purloin. I laughed to myself. Never get tired of doing that.
“Now come here, let me polish you off.” I waved her back towards the tree line.
The minutes flew by near the edge of the forestry. I took the time polish the teardrop marks on her armored plates to perfection. I thought back to my days growing in the City. Always feeling lost and inadequate. Searching desperately for a sense of belonging. Always defining myself by those around me.
Back in those days I could never sit still. Never satisfied with who I was or what I had. Then team Plasma held out their welcoming arms...
Now I could lose an hour just polishing my Scolipede clean while she sat on her haunches in the soft grass.
In the afternoon sun like this, it felt like every minute flowed pleasantly through my fingers. Vanis splayed out on her back, let me reach at the underside of her abdomen with the damp cloth. A sure sign of trust and comfort between us.
I rubbed along her belly, delighting in the huffs of cozy bliss she let off. With her upper legs tucked into her chest she resembled something of a puppy. A giant, armored equine insect doggy. It's a real picture.
I wondered what thoughts went through her head. What was she thinking in a moment like this? Was she so focused on the sensation of the moment like I was? Or were those expressive, half lidded yellow eyes somewhere else entirely.
It didn’t matter, what did matter was the four hundred pounds of soft rolling underbelly that just trapped my legs and began to roll over me. I pulled on my leg but the pile of squish rolled over my knees then up my hips until her soft chest had engulfed me up to my own.
“We really need to start taking that diet seriously,'' I joked. She rolled her eyes and laid her neck next to my own. It was pleasant. Her chest pinned my arms and my feet stuck out from her sides. It felt like laying on a water bed but in reverse. A heavy, comforting blanket.
She closed her eyes and for a moment I wanted to protest that there were all manner of things to get done but who cares in a moment like this. Enveloped in the comfort of my best friend. I reasoned, she wouldn’t let me move even if I wanted to.
So I laid there, watching the wind churn the clouds until my eyes creeped shut. Just the humm of her breathing, the warm comfort of her bosom and the wind on my face.