Venia Silente
Inspectious. Good for napping.
- 1,267
- Posts
- 16
- Years
- on the second floor's nest
- Seen Oct 6, 2024
Hello my fellow GT 2024 participants. This is one of these beautiful days in which I can bring you, why not, a story.
Written for SWC 2024, this is kind of an "extrospection" on what dog / canine Pokémon are like. As per usual it was written with lots of love and anxiety. Enjoy!
" Dogged Existences "
Whoossa good doggo?
Ever since humans and Pokémon first coexisted, the majority of Pokémon had been quick to notice: there was one specific group of them more beloved than the rest. One that was welcomed inside the human abodes, allowed to hunt by their side, to go with them into expeditions without return, or even allowed to be left to the care of the human children.
Of course, it was no surprise that the affinity was mutual: those beloved, canine Pokémon did, certainly, show a marked preference for attaching to humans, compared to the majority of their peers.
"*I* blocked ALL the attacks, even the Die Beam!" roared Zamazenta, while circling around a young human Trainer holding a book.
"Excuse me but," countered Zacian after a snort, "while you were turtling, *I* was the one to slice the monster's arm in half!"
Azelf looked at the scene, hidden behind a statue. Had the goddess of the three fae not known better, she'd have already reported that the two wolves, bearers of crests of legend, were at the verge of each other's throats – just for the attention of some human child. Disregarding their duties and their power that founded nations like that. Said girl simply looked at the two, warbled something in Human and went off, apparently comparing the outside of the temple to some notes in her book.
As for the two wolves of legend, tasked with guarding the realm? Oh, they simply followed after the girl, growling at each other and bumping heads every once in a while.
Azelf blinked at the scene. Sure, the two dogs did save this country filled with losers and isolationists, and with some (some) aid by human kids to count. But as Azelf saw Zacian shove Zamazenta off the side of the human and then sit besides her as if expecting to be complimented for that, she couldn't help but think this was not normal. The two wolves acting like puppies was improper, even if they deserved quite the commendation after stopping yet another human-made apocalypse. The human could not have led them to humiliate themselves that much.
Still, Azelf remembered that Mesprit had warned them several times, that canine Pokémon often were too eager to please. Oh well, Azelf guessed someone had to counter the feline Pokémon.
And how! Some feline Pokémon led by Mew, started complaining that the two guardian dogs and other canines were hogging the attention of humans for too long (attention which, according to Mew, was rightfully theirs).
Uxie would have dismissed such complains and the behaviour of the dog Pokémon as childish nonsense; Azelf's interest on the other hand was piqued by the part where the various canine Pokémon seemed to share this drive.
Azelf decided to take a look into things by herself; Uxie could deal with the whining of the Mew for all Azelf cared, but the blue-headed goddess now wanted to get an idea of what drove canine Pokémon to vie for human affection this way.
For a few days Azelf floated about and around the world, looking at examples of canine Pokémon and their interactions with humans.
The first stop was the foothills before the highlands…
Taking a sip from a fountain early in the morning, before most humans woke up, Azelf looked around a town. She flew to the outskirts, where humans worked with their Pokémon. She had often found amusement in the silly customs of the inhabitants of these mountains, proud people capable of wearing kilts in such an inhospitable climate hosting winds that sometimes threatened to blow even Azelf herself away.
She went to pay a closer look at some groups of humans, mostly elder ones, herding Mareep across the various grassy areas. For this task of theirs, humans had been joined by the canine Yamper, energetic Pokémon who harnessed control over electricity much like Mareep and who showed strong gregarious disposition (again: much like Mareep).
Three Yamper went over to a human who was taking food out of some bags. Azelf observed curiously from the skies, fighting the batting winds. It had gotten so strong that Azelf had decided to tuck her tails and hold them in one of her hands, to prevent them from flailing around that would alert others to her presence.
The human promised the Yampers the food as a treat if they could communicate with the Mareep and round them up. So the Yampers went and did that, without any form of protest. They worked as a pack, splitting and going around the herd and trading sparks with the Mareep at various points, to try and prevent them from going too far away and to keep them within the virtual confines the humans had set for them.
Azelf did a double take as she watched: "we need to have someone walk us around" was, in her eyes, not the sell Mareep seemed to think it was.
This scene was hardly novel for Azelf, and so far it looked to her like the dogs simply pleased the humans for an easy meal. She grasped her tails and narrowed her eyes – she would admit that the dog Pokémon were doing a good job, given the lack of a leading Ampharos among the herd. But Yamper were supposed to at least hunt and catch their food, not to have it simply laid down before them.
Yet… that was not the only thing that felt off. Something about this arrangement felt unsatisfying to Azelf. Certainly, if humans were to want the companionship of dog Pokémon, it would be because of skills and behaviours at which these Pokémon exceeded… right? Like hunting.
What were the attributes that the humans were focused on instead? Maybe submissive behaviour? Dependency on humans providing food?
"It better be a trait these dogs can manifest naturally," Azelf muttered to herself, "or I won't be able to excuse myself from dealing with the Mew and their fellow complainers for long."
Thus she decided to move over somewhere else, somewhere she could see how Pokémon were doing on their own and what attributes they developed naturally. Under normal circumstances she would have just asked Uxie for the rundown on the last twelve thousand years of evolution (which she and her sisters had spent as prisoners, although Uxie had been so quick to catch up), but the last thing Azelf wanted right now was to distract Uxie from being the sole focus of placating the hordes of cat Pokémon whining about loss of attention.
Oh, if it was about avoiding the cats, that would be easy, Azelf thought.
Cats hated water, and she had lots of it before her.
It took crossing over rivers, seas, oceans, continents, prairies and cities, but Azelf finally found herself another observation ground to her liking: a triangular island, close enough to a human settlement in the coast that it could be seen peeking over the horizon, but far enough still that Pokémon lived lives of their own.
For her examination she trailed a pack of Rockruff, a species that usually lived with humans and communed somewhat with the powers of the earth, even gaining some minor armouring on their necks from it.
In this island however they'd have no such advantages: there were no permanent human settlers to be friendly with, and every bit of ground was fiercely contested.
The four Rockruff of the pack had just emerged from under the tree where they nested, and headed off for a prearranged hunt. In Azelf's eyes, they were hardy, had pretty good constitution to navigate the terrain, and seemed to be careful hunters.
But there was one problem, obvious to her eyes. And if it was not obvious to them, too, they'd suffer it shortly.
The pack circled a hill and headed to a particular outcrop, one that overlooked the opening of a cave where Sableye would gather sometimes to dig out shines. Azelf looked over and saw some Pokémon already fighting there: some Zigzagoon had managed to steal a few valuables from one such Sableye troops, and now the Sableye had caught up to the thieves to recover what was theirs.
The Rockruff pack probably saw the chance to fetch themselves an easy meal from whichever Zigzagoon were to fall in battle. Food was not to be let out to waste, after all. Azelf knew however, the Rockruff would not be the only ones with an eye out for easy prey.
The Zigzagoon tried to flee the outcrop but they could not hold off their pursuers for long. A skirmish broke out as soon as one of the Sableye made a successful jump on one of the Zigzagoon carrying the loot.
Azelf watched as the Pokémon fought, and mentally took notes. The fight was nothing out of the ordinary for their species: some clawing, some biting, a failed attempt to drag one of the Sableye to the edge of the outcrop, a tug-of-war for what appeared to be a very hardy piece of bark. Rinse and repeat. All normal behaviour, until one of the Zigzagoon took a heavy slash down to the rear leg and fell to the rocky ground, unable to flee.
That was the moment the Rockruff chose to jump in. Split in two groups, a simplistic pincer attack pattern with no other goal than scaring off some of the Sableye while one of the Rockruff grabbed the fallen prey by its ankle and began to drag it off.
A simple gambit… and an ill-advised one. The Rockruff by themselves did not hold any advantage over the Zigzagoon nor the Sableye other than being fresh for the fight: in every other way, they were outmatched by hardier or more numerous opponents. They barked and threatened wildly, tried to hold the Sableye off, repeatedly failed to pin down the Zigzagoons and stop their quick attacks.
Azelf had seen such scenes play out more successfully with other packs in the past, but in those instances the Rockruffs' willpower was accompanied by an important element this one pack lacked, a pivotal treasure for a canine pack.
Good guidance into the chaos. The trusty support of a pack leader.
A loud roar echoed across the outcrop. Far too close for any of the participants of the skirmish to feel comfortable. It distracted everyone for long enough that one of the Rockruff took a heavy blow to a back leg and fell, unable to move easily. Another one, trying to make the jump on a Zigzagoon, miscalculated and bit the dust, only to be then tackled away by another Zigzagoon.
The Sableye then fell back to the border of the outcrop, huddled together: they hoped to not be the ones on the menu today. The Zigzagoon and the Rockruff knew the fight had turned out to the worse for everyone, and readied their retreats as they could.
A shadow flew up from under the rocky formation and a blue armoured dragon, the one local Salamence, turned to the outcrop and breathed out a stream of flame across it.
The two remaining Rockruff yelped in fear, howled in disarray. Their attack had failed, the pack was now in danger. Azelf knew that fear, knew how the escalating perfection in nature could snuff out the willpower of unprepared prey. Before the winged, armoured beast, neither the Rockruff nor the Zigzagoon had a feasible strategy, any resistance, any means to attack.
The Salamence flew a circle around the outcrop. He decided fly at the Zigzagoon to try and bat them with the wings, and the smaller Pokémon scattered off as they could. The eyes of the Salamence then turned to the Sableye group for a moment, and then turned to fixate on the Rockruff pack. The dragon bat his wings in preparation…
…and then his eyes darted back to the Sableye group and held the stare.
The Sableye had managed to recover some of their shinies, which they now held. The Salamence's intent shifted from the hunt for easy prey, to the hunt for treasure. Not that the dragon couldn't help himself to a meal after.
The very moment the Salamence made landfall and turned to face the Sableye, the Rockruff did what they could to slink off. This was the only opening the Rockruff would have: the only path back from the brink and to life.
With an energy and commitment Azelf had not seen them having before, the two Rockruff still standing went over to their fallen teammates and tried to drag them off the outcrop, back to whichever hole or covering they could find, before the dragon turned his attention back to them. As mere pawns in the playground of nature, it was their lot to flee, to die another day.
This had all been evident to Azelf: the proof was that the two Rockruff would try and help their fallen teammates to safety, without any coordination, with no more cover or distraction than that of chance.
There had been no plan to attack, no plan to steal, no plan to evacuate.
Without a leader to coordinate their movements, without a stronger partner to protect them or even put its life in the line for them, they were no competition against the cave Pokémon who had returned for their valuables, let alone the Salamence.
She knew any of the four dogs of the pack could have evolved, and Rockruff as a species enjoyed good evolutionary paths. But whatever had led to those paths being left untaken, today the pack almost paid full price for it.
Azelf decided to leave the island behind. Flying across the ocean, she focused on picking the next country, the next town, the next field for where to take a look.
She wondered, how did humans identify a leader among Pokémon? Did they even intend for canine Pokémon to be leaders?
«…ignoring me, I know you are there!»
Azelf winced as she felt the psychic call-out. Uxie's presence and know-it-all-ness ringed in her mind. Azelf rolled her eyes, she could sense that Uxie was still preoccupied with the feline Pokémon… what did she want now, then?
«I'm out on a study,» Azelf explained mentally, as she crossed her arms. She was not lying, technically, but she didn't want to pay attention to Uxie or to the felines.
«Well, the Mew are asking Kotora when. Did we ever decide anything about that?»
Azelf let out an audible sigh and gave a long look to the north, to the direction the message was coming from. Why was Uxie bothering her with stuff like this? It's not like Uxie wasn't supposed to kno–
«And don't come at me with that 'you know everything' excuse!» chirped Uxie over the mental intercom. «It does not work like that.»
«Well, Mesprit did warn that any world with humans and both Espurr and Kotora would be too easy mode for felines. As if Mew aren't complaining enough. Anything else?»
«Yes, about those poorly planned paradoxical prospective Pokémon phonies prowling Pa–»
Azelf hung up the mental line and put up some chants she had been hearing in Johto rituals as mental background noise. She zipped straight across the continent. She had stuff to do.
Azelf knew of one place where canine Pokémon were revered, in as much she understood humans would do, thus she went to another region. She had heard commentary that this was a region of brave and dangerous warriors. After all, they had long ago discovered snails were edible, and far longer ago they had built an energy cannon, one so powerful that even today it remained unmatched even by their foray into the power to split atoms.
A land where humans had chosen the small dog Pokémon Furfrou as a kind of symbol and paraded them around.
What she observed, hanging down from a TV antenna in one of their cities, was unfortunately not any flattering to the Furfrou. To make it worse, it was even less flattering when aired on national TV.
Humans would raise Furfrou from youth, train with them and share lives with them. The dogs would be combed, sheared, painted and dressed in a multitude of ways that Azelf could not understand. And then gathered in a huge pack with humans, for some form of competition.
Adorned with arrangements of various colours and with various small artifacts clipped or glued to their fur, these Pokémon would then showcase their abilities by making a spectacle of themselves. A circus of motion, an execution of flashes and explosions, an object and visual lesson in elemental power.
These demonstrations earned applause, howling, praise.
Not for them though, not because of this mockery; for their keepers.
Pokémon like Persian had been right to complain, in Azelf's eyes, that humans would pamper and adorn Furfrou too much instead of paying more attention to Persian. But from what Azelf was seeing today, those feline Pokémon had dodged an Aura Sphere.
Azelf looked down at the humans, at their spectacle. At least Pokémon fighting in arenas was useful to them! In the end, she could clearly understand one thing:
The ones being judged in these competitions were not the Furfrou, but the humans. While some praise went to the Pokémon, the prize went to the trainer, to the coordinator, to the human who accompanied them in life before the cameras. Certainly not much praise was left to the experienced humans who, behind the curtains of spectacle, applied all those decorations and dressings to the Pokémon.
This was a competition between humans, and thus nothing Azelf was interested in. She left this cursed region, and made mental note to check in Uxie's encyclopaedia of the future if the cannon was scheduled to cleanse this region again anytime soon.
She left those people and their games behind, continuing on her search.
Every once in a while, Azelf was reminded that most mortal creatures, as the Six had created them, had to evolve – one way or the other. They didn't just instantly get power.
As such, she was aware they were limited in ways such that their knowledge could not be easily transferred across generations, across geological eras. Like most Pokémon, canine Pokémon still had to learn, on each and every life, how to fight creatures of other kinds or of other Types. It was convenient that humans with their little sport provided a good learning environment for that, but it was – in her eyes – still just that: learning.
Azelf shook her head as she flew over the ocean. Did it look to her like humans were somehow required for Pokémon to reach a great potential?
She could sense marine Pokémon swimming deep below beyond what she could see. One of them, tremendously dangerous and experienced, capable of carrying around even the oceanic currents responsible for storms and global climate, that humans revered his kind as "guardians of the seas".
Yet certainly this marine bird could not have recurrent encounters or long stays with humans so as to learn something significant from them.
Azelf braked for a moment and floated higher up, until she could see the continent in the distance. As far as she knew, Pokémon definitively did not need humans. There were multiple worlds that had evolved without any trace of human presence, such as the Sister Worlds, or worlds that could do with just the one life of human intervention here and there, such as the world plagued by the Dark Matter.
Still, she expected to see more feats. She looked down at a flock of migrating Kilowattrel. These Pokémon were capable of migrating across the world on their own; a Pokémon who had had human aid should be capable of even more notable feats, and if humans liked canine Pokémon so much, it should be easy to find some of them living back in the wild, competing in their old, new environment after depending on humans and showing off what they had learned.
She reoriented herself to head to the southern side of the continent. She knew now what to look for.
Her next stop was a valley in one of the southern continents…
Azelf hovered around, waiting for a battle.
She had tracked down a wolf Pokémon from the prairies, who had once trained alongside a human of record both renowned and feared in their country, and now enjoyed his retirement on an area of the valleys overlooked by a hill, far from the power plant he called a den.
It didn't take long for Azelf to track down the Manectric, creature with a bushy yellow mane, so dense that it could capture some electric charge from other electric Pokémon. All she had to do was to follow the desire of the local creatures to eat, and a highly evolved Pokémon with a larger body and a larger need to eat would be there, too.
She hovered following the river until she saw the sparks signifying the congregation of many Joltik, who followed the Manectric around for safety. Right at the river bank, the Manectric was just arriving, "invited" by the scent of a big catch of fish and shells that a Vaporeon had procured itself.
The Vaporeon was quickly warned to the intruder, too. He had sprayed some bubbles out in the vicinity, and as soon as one of them exploded from the electric charge building up in the air, the Vaporeon readied for a fight, absorbing water from the surroundings and building up a layer of it onto his body.
Both Pokémon stared each other down. They let out a few growls, then a few roars threatening each other. The Vaporeon understandably would not want to part from his earned loot; the Manectric certainly would not have walked down the distance from the power plant to return empty-pawed. They bared their fangs and made biting noises, the last proper warning to be had.
That was as much courtesy as they would afford each other. They stepped aside from the contested foor – ill would it be for both of them if it went damaged during the struggle – and then they went at it.
Azelf's tails swirled behind her. Electrike usually worked in packs and did not fare well hunting alone; this Manectric was to go at it alone and his objective seemed to be to kick the Vaporeon back into his turf.
The Vaporeon breathed in and opened with a beam of concentrated bubbles, with the Manectric answering by hopping aside and darting ahead with a front paw ready to strike. The aquatic Pokémon gracefully avoided the attack and then waited up until the very moment the Manectric charged ahead. Rearing up, he aimed and landed a water jet so strong that after hitting the Manetric in the chest mid-jump it almost knocked the electric wolf over.
Azelf circled around in the sky to see better, just as Manectric turned halfway to regain some footing while the Vaporeon's water beam continued to push, the aquatic Pokémon leaning aside to home the water jet in. Eventually Manectric found enough safe footing to dash aside and unleash two electric shots at the Vaporeon, of which only one found its mark on his shoulder, managing to interrupt his attack.
Both Pokémon lunged at each other fast. Manectric charged with a jump, claws at the ready, and Vaporeon took the blow on the flank with a yelp but managed to slither out of the way with ease and reach a position from which to headbutt the Manectric right on the jaw.
Once again Azelf was forced to circle around as the two Pokémon went for a couple of paw attacks, either charged with their elemental affinities or tossing beachy sand at each other. They didn't stop trying bites at each other.
It was a commotion of two, a means to skip the ceremony that the two Pokémon would have followed when fighting for Trainers. Instead they went then for a difficult grapple in the sandy riverbank: Vaporeon half-coiled around Manectric, freezing his coat of water so as to impair the Electric type's fur, while Manectric tried to dig his claws wherever he could, failing to find the purchase to inject strong electrical pulses past the Vaporeon's skin and barriers.
Azelf pondered this way of fighting. In lower circles either Pokémon would have ended the grip fast, unleashed their ranged beams to take advantage of their elemental advantage – and once again locked themselves out of the range where they could freely bat their opponent.
But this Manectric and this Vaporeon had won lots of days. Azelf didn't need to delve into their minds: they both knew that they had to end the fight in a way that allowed them to fight tomorrow, without the advantage of an easy heal.
Eventually one of them would have to end the grapple decisively: either a full restrain of the opponent, or a kick-off back to a distance safe enough to retreat even from long attacks. Anything less was serious risk for both of them: Manectric could end with his entire fur wet and its charge depleted, or shredded by Vaporeon's ice forming into shards, and thus he would lose his primary asset for future fights; whereas Vaporeon could end with some electric bugs transferred to him and burrowed into his oily skin, difficult to remove, effectively "tagging" him so that Manectric or any other Pokémon with electric power could jolt him remotely – or worse, leave him paralyzed.
Both Pokémon put the best of their strength to subdue each other, but keeping any good footing in the sand was hard and their energy was running low. They knocked each other back, Vaporeon rolled closer to the water, Manectric put some distance with a circling leap.
Azelf turned and flew away as the two Pokémon threatened each other again. She already had what she needed, but the main issue was there was no one to show this to.
Sure, Manectric knew how to fight well, he knew to look beyond the simple type advantage and beyond the immediate satisfaction. But he was fighting alone. He led no pack, he hunted with no partners, and thus his learning, even if well practised, would not be passed down to peers or offspring.
Azelf extended her senses and her awareness of the lands around her, seeking out the nearest city.
«…showed up. I've been CC'ing you the question from the Mew for an hour already!»
Azelf winced; that had been a mistake. She sighed and decided to try and get out of this one quickly.
«What do you want?» she asked.
«The Mew are tallying species, want consultation on why Okidogi counts as a dog.»
Azelf could not help but facepalm, quite physically. She was quick to mentally hang up the connection again.
She wanted to be done with her study soon, but not too soon. She needed to gather her thoughts.
So she extended her senses with more care this time. She found out a nearby town and a nearby road. She decided to go along that road more slowly, and on the way sense around for the nearest city.
The trick, Azelf thought, was in seeing how humans thought of canine Pokémon when it came to them protecting humans outside of a fight. After all, no matter how much of a sport and spectacle humans made of it, it was but a mere moment in a day, a mere day in a year.
There were many instances over the course of a day in which good partnership, good leadership or a sense of community could manifest.
All she had to do, perhaps, was to find humans in need of help.
Azelf wandered about from one alley to the next, hidden in the city. She knew well she could find Pokémon fighting anywhere, and in a multitude of ways; but in a human city, Pokémon lived differently. They fought different kinds of "battles", they had to learn to solve problems in a different way, and perhaps that was something that humans liked about them.
It was in one of the city's hospitals that Azelf found a canine Pokémon to watch. Humans gathered in these buildings to treat their wounded and to report and catalogue the various afflictions they met. Sometimes Pokémon helped in these trials, but most of the time humans were on their own.
Sometimes, once the ill humans went in, they wouldn't be able to walk out easily. Sometimes, they wouldn't walk out ever.
In one of the rooms, third floor of the south wing, rested a pitch black dog Pokémon with rib-like protuberances and with two huge diabolical horns crowning her head. A Houndoom, a possessor of the powers of the dark and of the never-ending flame, comfortably asleep on a chair at the opposite end of a bed.
Azelf took a look at the bed. Whatever affliction the human on it suffered, it forced him to a long stay in the hospital – and the same affliction had befallen other humans in the building. Wires and tubes went in and out of his body at various points, making the creature look frailer than she knew them to already be.
As the goddess approached the human, she could feel how vacant the room felt despite his presence. Or would have been, save for the Houndoom. Other humans were in their rooms alone, but this human had a guardian.
Azelf knew nothing of human medicine, nor what role would the sleeping Houndoom play into it. She left through the window and floated about for a moment, wondering what was there to observe in here.
The human was clearly unconscious. Still, could Azelf extract information from him? She tried to pry into his mind, at a distance. She found but a faint response, a formless dream, a poisonous fog, come from a machine that other humans had used to attack him and the others bedridden all across the aisle rooms.
A snore. Azelf cautiously turned to where she knew the chair to be, from her angle she could see only the curved horns tilting behind the window. Hesitantly, Azelf floated up to see better. The Houndoom stirred, opened an eye to scan the room. Her sight lingered on the human, and after a moment she sniffed a few times.
Azelf knew she would not be detected so easily, but still, it seemed the Houndoom before her was particularly attentive. Was this canine Pokémon somehow able to discern the goddess's presence?
Azelf collected herself. She knew from scanning the surroundings, no Pokémon was alerted to her presence. But the Houndoom was alerted to something: a presence Azelf could also sense, sneaky and hungry, somewhere near the room.
It was a kind of Pokémon said to come from dark, twisted dimensions. Carrying its own flame in a form humans found comfortable, the Lampent would then approach them, hide in plain sight among them, and then sap from them the very force of life without them ever noticing before it was too late.
The chair rocked. The Houndoom had noticed.
Azelf tracked the Pokémon through the walls as she leapt down and went out of the room, rushed to the end of the aisle where there was a small cabin-like structure. Azelf had remained behind, observing the human, and then she senses that the vital force of all the bedridden humans in the aisle was diminishing. Slowly. Minutely.
A lesser Pokémon would not have noticed until this went on for longer, and neither did the various instruments attached to the human in this room.
Azelf's attention snapped back to the end of the aisle. The Houndoom growled and scratched the windows of the cabin, and two humans in uniform came out from the inside, accompanied by an Ariados and a Togekiss.
The Houndoom quickly explained to the Pokémon that she could sense the presence of the Lampent. For whatever reason, she was the only one, but the two Pokémon seemed to already understand the risks of having a Lampent around and they addressed their humans, in that way that Pokémon had found to make themselves easily understood.
The team of humans and Pokémon headed off to the next floor up, following the Houndoom. The humans warbled warnings to some other humans in the staff there, and soon alarms started buzzing.
The Houndoom stopped before a door. It had a message painted on it, which Azelf could not mentally read. But she could read the fear and realization by the Lampent inside. Whatever tear between dimensions the Lampent had used, it was one-way; if the Pokémon wanted the freedom to continue slurping vital energy, it would have to earn it the hard way.
One of the humans gripped the door handle, warbled a command, and the Ariados stationed himself in front of the door, pooling up a globe of poison. The Houndoom stayed behind, snarling.
The human then opened the door.
Azelf did not need to stay. This was not going to be any pretty for the Lampent, even if it managed to flee the Houndoom would track it down. Azelf had read already from the other Pokémon there, that they did not mind the Houndoom staying some more.
Life itself was a contested resource within the confines of these human buildings, and Pokémon like Houndoom had proven well that they were willing to bite into it and not let go.
Azelf hovered in midair, pondering from the distance her last visit. She understood better now how canine Pokémon lived and fought, and what made them trustworthy, beloved companions for humans.
She looked down at a park, where there was a gathering of humans and Pokémon, who had come in to welcome the caravan representing the Legendary guardians of this particular realm. The members of the caravan had introduced themselves to the townspeople, and the adults had arranged ample room in the park so that the children would be able to meet them more closely.
Azelf checked down her mental notes. In this caravan, she had tracked down one more canine Pokémon of note and of marked preference by humans. Noble and strong, Arcanine were renowned to the point they were tallied alongside the birds, beasts or golems of human pantheons. They commanded fire and turned it into warmth, they were followers of the winds and were once beacons for the very dawn of human civilization.
Azelf looked down as the canine representative was surrounded by children, drawn by the mass of fur and the creamy coloured mane and the warmth. The Arcanine looked anxious, somewhat out of his element. He'd rather be out there chasing the Sun than here on "official business".
Azelf felt assured now that he could handle it. They all could.
She would have to report her findings to Uxie… after Uxie was done with the Mew. For now she could sit back and think of where to find more Pokémon to watch over as they played the game.
She was not in a hurry. She knew who would be the winners already.
The children had already chosen the best dog, or the best Pokémon overall… for today. Tonight on the TV, or tomorrow when reading a book, they'd choose another one. Just like Azelf had scanned various scenarios, so would the children.
A few days down the line, inspired and energized, they would tug and yell at their parents that they wanted a Pokémon of their own. Maybe they'd get a doglike one, maybe not.
And once these children stepped outside and went off to meet the world, they would create packs of their own. Packs of which they would have to become leaders, packs for which they would have to provide, and for whose members they would have to care after.
Perhaps the canine drive to persevere was the human drive to persevere, to follow their example and lead a dogged life that they would make of their own.
In the Trainers of the future, Azelf would see.
Author's Notes
This story was submitted to the judges of the SWC 2024 contest and then posted as-is. The evaluations from the judges were given in their SWC result doc. Thanks to Bay, bobandbill, CoolKid575 and gimmepie for the work on this year's event!
Proofreading was provided by AO3's Fobbie, and the infrastructure for posting the story in rich text for the judges by WAAPT's tangent128.
This story is tagged [SWC 2024] - as are others by the other participants! Feeling free to link here some of them
- "Caught in the Middle" by Eleanor
- "Letter to my Sister" by Aquacorde
- "The Great Race" by 5qwerty
Official article: "Dogged Existences" at the Suocéverse wiki - still in construction, and will be updated accordingly.
