Master Of Balls: A Pokémon Satire
Repent Thy Sinnoh
Long ago, there was nothing, and all was quiet and peaceful.
Then, as if by destiny, the egg appeared, and from its shell, the Original One emerged.
With its one thousand arms, the Original One shaped the universe, gracing it with stars, planets… and life.
To assist it in governing over existence, the Original One created three dragons, each one tasked with embodying and maintaining a different aspect of the fabric of reality.
There was the steel dragon, who would govern time…
The water dragon, who would govern space…
And the phantom dragon, who would govern anti-matter.
However, the phantom dragon had no desire to abide by the Original One's ideals, and expressed its distaste for its assigned role through violent acts.
The Original One, not wanting the universe to suffer the phantom dragon's wrath, had no choice but to banish its renegade creation to an alternate world, where the violent draconic spectre would spend countless eons seething with anger, hate and an unmatched thirst for vengeance.
The Original One, its work done, left the universe in the care of the dragons of space and time, as well as those lifeforms that would come after.
Perhaps one day, the Original One will grace us with its presence once more…
Or perhaps in the Original One's continued absence, the fearsome phantom dragon will rear its head once more, and unleash its vengeful wrath upon an unprepared universe…
"Yeah, somehow, I don't think that's going to happen," Lucas mused knowingly as he set down the book he was reading, reaching for a Pokéball at his belt. A purple and white Pokéball with the letter 'M' emblazoned on it. "The so-called 'phantom dragon' is just another Pokémon. Throw the right Pokéball at it and, well, the end of this story has already been written… by me."
"Ugh. Ever since you caught that thing, you've been twice as cocky as Barry," Dawn complained, looking up from her own book to eye him disapprovingly from the opposite side of the table she and the boy were seated at. "Don't you dare let it out of its ball in here," she went on, glancing around the Canalave Library, taking note of the people browsing the bookshelves and reading historical tomes. "You'll cause a mass panic worse than that explosion at Lake Valor did."
"Hmm, if I didn't know you better, I'd say you were jelly," Lucas taunted, holding up the Master Ball and giving it a gentle shake. "I've got a world-destroying dragon and all you've got is a little Turtwig to snuggle up with on cold nights."
Dawn spluttered in mortified outrage. "It is a fully evolved Torterra and you know it!" she stated firmly. "And we do not snuggle! Not in any sense of the word! Besides," she went on, a sly smirk forming on her face, "I seem to remember finding you at home, crying onto your Infernape's shoulder after Maylene turned down your request for a date."
"I told you, she was the one who asked me!" Lucas insisted, his cocky grin turning into an embarrassed scowl, his cheeks reddening slightly. "And I was crying because…" He racked his brains. "Because I lost my Amulet Coin!" he managed at last.
"You're wearing it around your neck!" Dawn pointed out, chuckling. "You never take it off. Personally, I think it's immoral, carrying something like that around, waving it in front of people's faces to hypnotise them into giving you more money than they otherwise would after you best them in a Pokémon battle. Thank goodness it only induces a very mild trance; I'd hate to see what you'd do to them if you could take full control of their minds. Knowing you, you'd probably make the girls strip down to their underwear and pose next to you for a selfie!"
"Oh, give me a little credit, will you, Dawn?" Lucas exclaimed, exasperated. His cocky grin then crept back onto his face. "Who says I'd stop at their underwear?"
"Oh, go and get trampled by a heard of Rapidash," Dawn declared, and Lucas laughed.
Meanwhile, at a nearby table, a young woman in her mid-twenties peeked over the top of the book she was reading, or rather, pretending to read, her eyes narrowed, her meticulously styled crimson hair shimmering with an almost metallic gleam in the late afternoon sunlight that filtered into the library through the arch-like window.
"There he is," former Team Galactic Commander Mars murmured quietly to herself. "The uppity brat himself. Ooh, how I would love to wipe that stupid, overconfident smirk off his face..."
"Excuse me, ma'am, but are you almost done with that book?" a young man said from behind Mars, making her jump slightly at his quiet, smooth voice; she hadn't heard the man approach. "I only ask because that particular book would totally help me with my college studies. I'm, like, studying Sinnoh's history and stuff, y'know?"
Mars turned her head slowly to meet the young man's gaze. Eerily slowly, a deranged look in her eye. "Did you just call me... ma'am?" she asked in a hushed voice. A dangerously hushed voice.
"Uh... maybe?" the young man said, his cheerful expression faltering, a hint of apprehension in his voice now.
Mars raised the book over her head, her eyes psychotically wide, her crimson pupils having shrunken considerably. "Nobody... calls me... MA'AM!" she roared, leaping out of her chair in a single frame of animation, the library fading away behind her to be momentarily replaced by an orange and yellow background filled with flickering lines meant to emphasise an 'action moment'. She brought the book down hard on the young man's head with both hands, causing his form to instantaneously invert, his legs in the air like those of a dead bug while his torso lay on the ground, the poor fellow's eyes having turned to motionless swirls. He groaned weakly, his mouth hanging open, an odd apparition of a white mushroom floating out of his mouth in time with the vocal sound and vanishing.
Mars stood there on the table, panting heavily, looking crazed and positively primal. Everyone in the library was staring at her, including Lucas and Dawn.
"...Commander Mars?" Lucas said after a long moment, finally breaking the extremely awkward silence.
Mars whipped her head around at the boy's words, taking one hand off the book she was still holding and brandishing an accusatory finger at the boy, her arm shaking wildly. "YOU! SAW! NOTHING!" she cried dramatically, and then she took off so fast that she left a silhouette of herself in the form of a cloud of grey smoke in her wake.
"Yikes. What was that about?" Lucas exclaimed, straightening his red scarf as he sat there, staring in bewilderment at the spot where Mars had been, the smoke silhouette fading into nothingness even as he watched.
"Oh, it probably has something to do with how you messed up her plan to take over the Valley Windworks, how you drove her omnicidal boss and mentor to disappear into the unknown, how you foiled her and her cohorts in their attempt to steal the Magma Stone from Stark Mountain and basically ruined her life for all intents and purposes. You know, nothing major," Dawn finished in a sarcastic tone.
"Touché, Dawn," Lucas said, his tone devoid of any amusement and his eyes narrowed. "Hell, maybe I should go and apologise to her for all that. After all, it's not like she and the rest of Team Galactic were trying to destroy the universe or anything!" he snapped. "I'm sure that if I had just tried to talk it out with someone as maniacal as that, she and I would've been frolicking with Growlithe puppies, putting flowers in each other's hair and eating ice cream under a rainbow!"
"Alright, alright, you've proved your point!" Dawn exclaimed, exasperated. "I was just poking fun at the matter! No need to get all crotchety on me!"
"C-Crotchety?! Oh, that is it! GIRATINA, I CHOOSE YOU!" Lucas shouted, tossing the Master Ball into the air. There was a flash of light as the ball opened, an enormous silhouette emerging from the purple and white capsule, and then-
"GAROOOOOOOHHHH!" Giratina roared, spreading the great shadowy wings of its Altered Forme as it stood there in the centre of the room. The other patrons of the library began to scream and run for the exits, knocking books everywhere in their panic.
"Well, that's just great!" Dawn snapped as she got to her feet, glaring daggers at Lucas. "I hope you're proud of yourself, Mister Saviour Of The Universe! You probably just got us both banned from this place for life!" With that, she picked up her bright red bag and stormed off, her nose in the air.
"Heh. Now look who's crotchety," Lucas murmured, allowing himself a satisfied smirk. He then glanced at Giratina in time to see the Renegade Pokémon chewing on the corners of a book that rested on a nearby bookcase shelf. "Hey, hey, hey!" the Trainer barked. "Don't eat that! It's not food! That's...! Oh, for the love of...!" he exclaimed as the towering Ghost/Dragon type ended up clumsily tearing the book in two with its enormous, sharp fangs. "You see, this is why Mom won't let you sleep in the living room! Oh, Poké my life..."
Well, this is officially the most random thing I've ever written... and this is only the first entry, chapter, whatever you want to call it. Stay tuned for more... if you think you've got the Pokéballs for it.
