HUGE THANKS to Krazyfanfiction1, Seas and Shadows (twice!), Wishfull-star, ultima-owner, LDR, Olaf74, ElementalMaster16, Tristi Lynne, Nayeri, and Story Stalkers for reviewing!
To Krazyfanfiction1: Hehe, whoops, you're right... erm, well, let's pretend that focusing an attack from the paws is a little more difficult than from the mouth, because the mouth is connected directly to the source of power that fuels all pokemon attacks (which, according to my made-up anatomy, is somewhere in the core area). So, beginners find it easier to use a Beam, Pulse, or Ball attack from the jaws. It's easier to control from the paws or other external limbs, simply because of dexterity issues, but... yeah, that's my answer that I literally just pulled out of nowhere after reading your review.(Truth is, I was just too lazy to go back and change it. I know, I'm lame.) Thanks for reviewing!
To Seas and Shadows: Whoa, near-drowning! I'm glad you're okay now! I almost drowned while writing a tube once, except that it was being pulled behind a speedboat on a lake. I now refuse to ever do that with him as the driver again. Thank goodness for lifejackets. XD Thanks for reviewing!
To LDR: Aw, I'd be so flattered! I know, luxray are awesome, right? So cool. I wish I had one. Thanks for reviewing!
To Nayeri: Oh, oops! It must have slipped my mind... shoot. I'll go back and fix it after I post this chapter. Sorry! I'll try not to make the mistake again. Thanks for reviewing!
Note: I'm a little sick right now, and a good chunk of this chapter was written while I was half-asleep and suffering from a cold, so that's why it may seem a little... weird. If you find anything off, please let me know!
Disclaimer: Don't own Pokémon or Harry Potter. Or any combination thereof.
Lightning sparked, white-gold beams of pure energized plasma flying everywhere. The ground shook and shrapnel flew, as two lions roared and grappled.
"I see you've inherited your mother's speed," I grinned as sparks popped and danced over my unsheathed claws.
Strikeclaw grinned back, tail flicking as rubble crunched and shifted beneath his paws. "Dad was right. You really are tough," he complimented in reply.
"Good to know they haven't forgotten about me," I smirked as Strikeclaw leapt with a powerful roar. I hopped to the side, rearing up and turning to slash at him as he went by. He tried to twist away, but didn't quite make it and let out a yowl of pain as my claws raked down his side.
I growled, coming back down to all fours and darting forwards to latch onto his shoulder with a Crunch. Strikeclaw snarled, and I was blasted away by an explosion of lightning. Rolling to my paws, I dashed sideways as a Thunderbolt pulverized the ground in an explosion of dirt and stone- Sparks met and clashed midair, as light flashed in blinding bursts of heated power- his fangs latched onto my tail, and I whirled as my paws swept his legs out from under him-
Thunderbolts crashed in deafening explosions, as I manipulated the charged blasts of power with pinpoint accuracy. Since we were both of the same type, the attacks themselves wouldn't do much, but they did serve as effective distractions. Strikeclaw was forced back, blasts of lightning pulverizing the ground all around him. Even if the attacks didn't hit, the shrapnel did, and that was effective in itself.
Then the luxio's eyes narrowed, and he paused for a moment before-
Damien's voice somehow managed to cut through the sounds of explosions and battle. "Wild Charge!"
Strikeclaw grinned, fangs bared as his entire body began to glow. I paused for a moment, briefly confused. I hadn't heard of this attack before-
Suddenly, my nephew kicked off the ground and began to sprint across the arena towards me. A glowing aura of electricity enveloped him, sparking and crackling as his paws moved so fast they were little more than blurs. Eyes widening in surprise, I couldn't react fast enough to dodge as he tackled me head-on. We went sprawling, and I winced as I felt my body flare with pain. The static made a valiant attempt at seizing up my muscles, but I forced it away with a burst of my own electricity and rolled to my paws.
"What," I groaned, trying to ignore the protesting twinge of my ribs as they throbbed dully, "in the name of Arceus was that?"
Strikeclaw smirked, muzzle curling in satisfaction. "Wild Charge," he answered. "It's my latest attack. Like it?"
"Felt like you smashed Take Down and Discharge together into one move," I informed him as I rolled one shoulder to make sure it still had a full range of movement. There was some pain as I stretched it back, but nothing too bad.
"Yeah, well, that's pretty much what it is," Strikeclaw admitted. His tail lashed as he crouched, preparing to spring again.
I eyed him carefully, gauging whether or not he would be able to pull that off again. Perhaps, but it was unlikely. That seemed like an extremely power-draining, if quite devastating, attack.
I really, really wanted to learn it.
As if by some unspoken signal, we both rose up on our hind paws and swiped with heavy paws like a couple of boxers. Strikeclaw connected more often than not, finding it easier to balance with his lighter form. But I leaned in and used my forepaws to push down on his shoulders, taking advantage of my greater height. I yanked my paws to the side with a twist- he stumbled, falling heavily on his side- then he managed to drag me down, and we wrestled together on the dirt.
The two of us broke apart for a moment, then attacked again. At this point, I was winning. I was older, bigger, and more experienced. I knew how to use my size to my advantage, and although my nephew was fast- well, so was I.
Lightning clashed again, sparks flying as white claws crackled with static. Strikeclaw tried to get in close, to duck under and then ram his head up into my soft underbelly, but I whirled- jaws snapped- and he yowled, ripping his ear away from my teeth.
I spat out a chunk of torn fur, snarling as I launched myself at my nephew. He tried to move aside, but I had anticipated that and landed on my toes- spun sideways- and leapt into him. We went sprawling, a fierce tumble of claws and teeth and electrically-charged fur.
Golden-white bolts were snapping off of both of us now, wild and uncontrolled as adrenaline and static coalesced into pure energy. By some unspoken agreement, we tried to rein it in; keep it confined, but if there was one thing about lightning, it was that it was power. It fought and bucked like it had a life of its own, and as the thunder boomed deafeningly it was all we could do to ensure it stayed away from the crowd.
Damien yelled something, and Cub yelled back, but neither of us heard it over the explosions and the ringing in our ears. Strikeclaw bit down on my leg, and I dug my claws into his side, and-
Suddenly the world was flipping, upside-down and then right side-up and then-
Then I had him pinned, standing over the luxio as my claws rested atop his throat. Both of us were panting hard, and I could feel my body tingling with exhilaration as the adrenaline began to ebb away. Oh, by Arceus, that had been fun!
"Ow," Strikeclaw gasped, tongue lolling out as he panted. "Okay. Okay. I give."
I grinned, and roared in victory as the crowd rose and bellowed alongside.
"Aw, how cute," Draca cooed as she gazed fondly at the young teddiursa that Neville had just caught. Two days after the Tournament, and all four Trainers- Cub, Hermione, Neville, and Damien -had taken to hanging out whenever they weren't with their respective adult guardians.
Damien and Cub's two magical friends had taken to each other fairly well. Obviously, Damien couldn't know that they were from another world, but that hadn't impacted their bonding. Upon learning that Hermione and Neville had never owned or caught another pokemon, however, Damien had immediately made it his goal to "teach" the pair how to be "real Trainers".
It had only taken about half an hour and two short battles for Hermione and Neville to be the proud Trainer of a young pidgey and teddiursa respectively. Cub and Damien were now helping them to bond with the new additions to their teams, and were telling them about how best to care for them. Neville had nicknamed his female teddiursa Ursa, and Hermione had nicknamed her male pidgey Avis.
Ursa was shy and unassuming, but had put up a surprisingly large fight before being captured. She had spirit, that one. And guts. It took a lot to stand up to a fully-grown, rather intimidating torterra like Root. Especially since Root was a good five or six times her size. Yes, Ursa was a spitfire. She just seemed to have trouble showing it. But we could work on that.
By contrast, Avis seemed to no trouble crowing his fighting spirit to the world. He clearly had great confidence in his abilities, and loved to battle with a sort of eager aggression that could become dangerous if he got cocky or overconfident. He hadn't been intimidated by Amethyst at all- though, granted, the size difference wasn't nearly so great as it had been between Ursa and Root. He hadn't been intimidated by the Pride, either, when he had been introduced.
A side-effect of that confidence, however, meant that he could get annoying.
I growled as he fluttered around my head, ears flattening with irritation. I was trying to nap, and he wasn't letting me! If he interrupted my sleeping time again, I was going to snap.
"I swear to Arceus, if you don't got away I will eat you," I snarled as brown wings fluttered peskily in front of my muzzle.
A few inches away, Strikeclaw lifted his head from the grass and groaned in a long-suffering voice, "Please do, Uncle. But if you don't, I will. I want to sleep, Arceus-d***it!"
Devil, stretched out on the ground a couple feet away, rolled his eyes and snorted. "Lazybones."
Roselia, sitting daintily in a particularly lush patch of grass, nodded. "I agree. You two should be more active! Otherwise you're going to get fat and lazy lying around all the time!" she scolded.
I lifted my head, growling once at Avis to scare him away. It worked, and he hopped back a few steps before fluttering over to perch on Hermione.
Roselia huffed. "Aren't you listening?" she cried indignantly.
Strikeclaw's only response was to flick one ear dismissively. I was inclined to follow his example, and promptly decided to go back to sleep.
After all, it wasn't often you managed to find a warm, snow-free place to nap in the wintertime. I planned on taking full advantage of it.
"Great Merlin, Harry, you're a local legend?" Neville asked blankly, eyes wide with surprise.
Cub chuckled sheepishly, shuffling his feet a bit. "Eh, well, a few people may have caught a glimpse or two of my ninetails form a few times..." he admitted with a slight flush of embarrassment. "Well, okay, maybe more than a few times, but hey, you try being stealthy when you have nine giant tails to lug around and very little experience on four paws! I kept getting my tails stuck in bushes and snagged on stuff!" he pointed out defensively.
Spike snickered at the memory. "Oh, yeah. It was actually really funny," he laughed. "Cub was trying to walk and stuff, but he kept tripping over his own feet and flailing around. And then he went out to explore and got two of his tails stuck in-"
"Hey, you promised never to mention that again!" Cub yelped indignantly. His cheeks flushed with embarrassment, as his friends exchanged puzzled looks.
"Okay… well, for those of us who don't understand pokemon speech, would you care to translate?" Hermione asked, looking pointedly at Cub.
"No, it's nothing," he replied quickly. "You don't need to worry about it."
Spike laughed, then turned to face the young wizard's two magical friends. Damien wasn't there at the moment, having been dragged off to some family function by his relatives Switching to human speech, Spike then began to eagerly wax eloquent upon Cub's various misadventures. Cub, for his part, simply groaned, buried his head in his hands, and retreated far, far, away.
A few seconds later, distant explosions sounded from the direction of the dojo. A flock of pidgey took flight, chattering angrily as smoke rose lazily from the treetops. I sighed. Sounded like Cub was provoking the electrode and voltorb again. Arceus-d***it, he clearly hadn't learned from last time. Did he want to blow up half the forest or something?
Then again, I reflected as Spike took a great deal of mischievous glee in expounding in great detail all of Cub's various embarrassing exploits, maybe some mass destruction is exactly what he's trying to achieve.
As a column of fire roared into the sky, I only sighed and shook my head wearily. At least Flare, Koga, and Aya were over there to keep an eye on him if things got too out of hand.
Cub furrowed his brow as he sat by the hearth, twisting fire and magic together into an intricate lattice of… something. I honestly didn't know what he was doing, and I'm not even sure that he knew it either. But as the sparks flew and dancing flames glowed bright, he suddenly seemed to have some sort of breakthrough.
"Ah!" he cried, a grin breaking out across his face as the fire cradled between his palms suddenly went out. "I get it now!"
"Get what?" Hermione asked as she looked up from her book, a monstrous novel of epic proportions that made my brain hurt to even think about reading. Yet, even though she had only gotten it a few hours ago, she was already halfway through. Great Arceus.
It was midafternoon on Christmas Day, and the entire dojo had been engulfed in a quiet little bubble of peace. There was a calm lull in the air, as people settled down from the initial craziness of gift-opening and gift-giving and gift-exchanging and actually went to use the presents they'd been presented with.
Honestly, though, I'd slept through most of it. The Pride had spent Christmas Eve just hanging out, trying to convince Cub to actually sleep instead of staying up to wait for Santa, who was really just Koga in a red and white suit- but for some reason, Cub had developed a tradition of staying up to try and catch him in the act. He hadn't succeeded yet, but it did make for some very entertaining fights. After all, how often did you see Ninja Santa fighting a short kid with a sword?
This year in particular had been quite memorable, I reflected as I mentally reviewed the events of the previous night. By some unspoken agreement, the two had never once used pokemon, magic, or any skills other than their own ninjutsu during that time. So, Cub had instead resorted to increasingly elaborate traps that he could spend days at a time rigging.
These traps ranged from a veritable minefield of flashbombs hidden under pressure-activated mats (which Koga had circumvented by crawling across the ceiling) to a maze and net of ninja wire (unfortunately, he had wire cutters). And those were just a couple of the early attempts.
Then a strangely sharp and high-pitched bark sounded, breaking me out of my thoughts. I swung my head around to look at the source, and found-
Wait, what? What on Earth were those?
Cub laughed, the loud noise attracting the attention of everybody else as he leaned back, examining his creations with a sort of satisfied pride. "That's what I was missing," he crowed triumphantly. "A spark!"
Draca, coiled in a wide loop of sapphire scales, tilted her head to the side and blinked. "Are those... rapidash? Magmar? Weird sort of bizarre hybrid things?"
Cub grinned. "No, no, and yes," he replied.
On the floor in front of him, Cub had created a small group of six-inch tall, flaming, rapidash-magmar hybrid creatures. They had the general body structure of a rapidash, but were covered in a combination of red and yellow-orange scale-like things and the shingle-shaped parts from a magmar's arms. A flame pattern was spread across the creatures' flanks, but it flickered and moved so much that it actually looked like real fire.
Their heads, however, looked like a magmar's- if, however, it had been stretched out into a vaguely horse head-like shape and had a gleaming unicorn horn stuck between the two fiery lumps found on a magmar. They had the hooves, mane, and tail of a rapidash, flickering and dancing wildly in the light. But, honestly, I wasn't entirely sure how to describe them. They were... strange, to say the least.
"Erm… Harry? What are those?" Hermione enquired, lowering her book as the creatures began to gallop in little circles around the floor. Everywhere they touched immediately burst into flames, so Cub- ever the problem solver -created a small flood that encompassed a large circular area roughly a yard or so in diameter. The things were confined to the circle, so instead of scorching the floor with every step, they simply created a lot of hot steam.
Cub looked up, grinning widely as he responded. "Heliopaths," he informed us. "According to Luna, the Ministry's got an army of them. I only really have her description to go on, though, so they may not be very accurate…" he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, looking for all the world like a philosopher pondering the meaning of life.
Neville blinked, gazing cautiously at the heliopaths as the steam began to fill the room with a slight haze. "Sorry, but- why? Those creatures Luna talks about, you actually made models of one? Why?"
Cub looked a bit self-conscious, as the steam grew thick enough to start obscuring his body in an opaque white cloud. One of the heliopaths made a sort of neighing-bellowing-quacking sound, like a cross between a whinnying equine, an angry monster-thing, and a constipated duck.
I honestly felt torn over whether I should have broken out in hysterical laughter or simply stared in horrified fascination.
"They're Luna's Christmas present," Cub told us. "I couldn't figure out what to get her at school, and then the break came and I didn't have a way to reach her, but now I've finally got it. Scale models, of one of the coolest things ever- heliopaths! All I have to do is put them in a fire-proof tank, renew the charms and such to make them all permanent, and voila!" The young wizard swept out his hand in a grand fashion, grinning like a loon.
We all blinked. Stared at him in utter confusion. Realized he was serious. And came to the same, vaguely disturbing and/or sweet-in-a-kinda-sorta-maybe-really-weird-way conclusion at roughly the same time:
Luna's gonna love it.