1. A Xanadu Pawshake

1.1 - The Pawshake


Get a load of this: Linoone, fur royal purple, steps off a ship into future-land, on a hunt for party-land. Winds up becoming a whole new term they've made called 'homeless'–I make a den out of the snow, they still call me homeless. Linoone, tongue a popsicle in his own mouth from the cold, ducks into an alley, 'home,' after three straight days of scrounging, as if it were wartime for him all over again. Linoone, a mind-everybody's-own-business animal, sits in an alley with star patterns around each eye, and he doesn't feel starry at all. All he wants to do is have fun, and he isn't.

Suddenly, one pokémon becomes two: a salandit and a linoone. That's two thirds of a crowd.

They look at each other. And there's raw emotion dumping out of their eyes at each other. The alley's flooding in angst; both of these fellas were having pretty bad days. Linoone, poor guy, pricks his ears. Something profound and motivational is right around the corner, ready to pour out of one of their frowns. It'll be his first friend in the big city.

So the Salandit rights herself and talks first…

"Despite carrying the same toxic metals as human blood, ours helps plant life flourish. It's a fact of life that Battle is a key aspect of the Pokémon ecosystem."

And that was how the slithery weirdo introduced herself to me. I swear!

The Salandit wore a thin gray coat over lizard-hide, and underneath the coat I glimpsed what the showbiz kids called tattoos. I sorta had tattoos too, but what I got was a Recolor, and in my humble opinion: it hurt a lot less, looked a ton better... meant a lot more.

I had a jacket on, myself, and my jacket was also kickass, being made out of, well, that's an uncomfortable subject. Let's go with fake leather.

The creep defrosted me with her eyes. I shimmied up along the wall, politely scooting towards freedom. Just a couple feet to the alley's end.

Meanwhile–my reply to her boiled down to:

"Are you doing okay, buddy?" I imagined farms out in the Grass Continent spritzing blood-rain on the crop, and how a world like that would probably make this lizard's day.

She turned to face me with an 'all business' scowl. "Well," she said, "cities like Xanadu cannot naturally prosper. It requires its uncivilized beasts. And you shouldn't have crossed the line if you weren't ready for the consequences."

"Oh. Wait, what consequences?"

Anyway, she stabbed her claws into my gut.

Luckily, I got lots of good qualities. Type Energy, muscles, fat-slash-padding, so those darkened clawtips left only a flesh wound. But the lady, phew, she was asking what I had for dinner with how she was raking me!

I shot backward, except I was up against a wall. So I knocked my head against the brick like a dumbass, unable to say left from right. Meanwhile Miss Crazy had made it her life's goal to rip me apart. Just shank, shank, shank. Won't lie, the spilled blood warmed me up finally.

I felt a fever of fear coming on. Being tossed into a Battle you don't want is painful, you know? It should be something two fellas do after yelling the Pretty Words at each other on the street. Take it from an idiot who survived the frontlines: feeling unsafe sucks.

I fell back, and funniest thing, she slipped on my red stuff, and we both struck a sloppy scramble towards the exit of the alleyway. I'm a scurrying lad, being a Linoone and all, with good snow-plowing claws. I won the race out of the alley, just as her throat clicked-the beginnings of a fire attack.

"Ow?!" I shouted back. "Just use fertilizer, weirdo!"

I weaved around the corner and broke for the nearest gaggle of 'mons moseying the snow-covered street. "All… most of my blood's staying inside my body," I mumbled to myself. "Not the sort of party I wanted…"

"Too bad," she snarled into my ear. "Like I said, you should have known better."

She had followed me into the crowd, no hesitation, at blinding speed. We looked like two friendly folk on their way to buy groceries. Except for my wound, and her claw-tips primed on my back.

I spun around to walk backward–couldn't have her mess up my jacket–and knocked a Flaafy into the snow. He raised a furious paw up to me.

"Watch where you're…"

The poor bastard saw my friend and quietly laid there in the snow. Couple seconds longer, and his frightened face became lost in a sea of color and bodies, fur and hide. His "s-s-sorry, Quil," petered quietly through the flab of a passing Nidoqueen. She glanced–probably wondering why a trembling Flaafy called her 'Quil.'

Then she looked over at us, and beelined for a nearby ice fishing shop. Its Sharpedo-shaped sign shook from how hard she slammed the door shut.

So, that made things worse. I already thought my predicament sucked. According to all these witnesses, it sucked super hard.

The streets filtered out. Quil shot the rubberneckers glares, like a play director pissed her actors weren't following marks. Meanwhile, she kept saying creepy stuff–a true multitasker.

"I'm not trying to kill you," she informed me. "Your freedom and health are in my claws, however, until you correct your mistakes."

"Mistakes, plural?" I huffed. My voice was all shaky, so I spoke in bursts of breath. "I can't even name one. And there's… several?"

My breaths left smoke in front of my maw, steam and life splitting from my body.

"Oh by the way," I added. "Did you poison me?"

"Yeah."

What a prick! No wonder this frozen wasteland felt piping hot–like a reheated cup of days-old coffee slip-sliding through my guts.

Quil finished clearing out the entire busy Xanadu street, with naught save her pure spit and ire. And to think! When I arrived just three days earlier, I never imagined this city and emptiness blending together.

(I'd learn later, of course, that there was plenty of emptiness in Xanadu. Lots of it. Just squint your eyes.)

Quil shoved. I smartly accepted her offer to fall over. A Poison Type's natural venom was one thing. Judging from my swirling vision and the stunning amount of pain, she had coated her claws in some pretty nasty chemicals. The kind where the secret ingredient was pure, unfiltered hate.

"The Smeargle. Now," she ordered. "Where is she?"

"Smeargle?" I asked, trying hard to push down my surprise. "Smeargle sounds like… a, uh, bagel with too much cream cheese, so you gotta really try to smear the–"

She kicked me in the head for that.

"Ow. You know if you kick my moneymaker, I can't talk?"

She kicked me in the head for that.

"You know–"

I threw myself away from the next kick and stared at Quil real hard. So hard that I forced her eyes to meet mine, so she would actually listen for a dang second.

"You know," I said again. "You know this is stupid. I've got no idea where she is, and I hope you stupid fuckin' kidnappers or whatever waste your whole lives looking for the splended lady. I hope you get so manic you start checking the inside of cookie jars, you loser. You waste of space. I hope you turn eighty one day and spot her walking down the street, and you limp after her–and, and she flips you off as you fall over in the snow and die gently of old age. I hope… hey, are you listening?! I've only got a minute or two, and I've got plenty more."

Quil retreated a couple steps. "You… aren't the one."

The whole killer act melted away. I was looking up at a defeated creature, all her motivation out the window. She shot me a frightened look–look of someone who Missed their Boat. She was so out of it, her question floated directionless into the pale Xanadu air.

"Then, who has her?"

Sickness pulsated from my cut. I couldn't pack my tongue back in my maw to answer (not that I would have, anyway). Whatever Quil used, it was real, real potent.

So, she looked at me. I looked up at her. And we both racked our brain over it, who has Lora? Who stole the sweet Smeargle who'd given me my new color?

I slumped over in the snow before we arrived at an answer. Last thing I knew was that the Salandit had grabbed me by a foreleg. The fancy buildings of Xanadu stretched into a black void, and then that blackness swallowed me up.