Beryl awoke to find the world outside thawing, and the confines of his clothing far, far warmer than they were when he fell asleep. He looked down and, forgetting his sleeping situation, immediately began to panic. The blue and white head of the Dratini rested far too close to his eyes, and he let out a high-pitched, girlish shriek. The serpentine creature's large, purple eyes opened wide in shock, and followed the human's example.
That sat there, for somewhere between ten and thirty seconds, screaming.
When they realized what had happened, Beryl opened his jacket and overalls and let the rested Pokémon out. They sat there, for a few moments, catching their breath after the screamfest a few seconds prior. After a little while, they both looked at each other and started chuckling. Beryl wasn't certain that the Dratini was chuckling, but its body language suggested something close to laughter.
Beryl let out a loud exhale, accompanied by a "Whoo…" noise. He looked over at the Dratini, its tail circled around itself in what he assumed to be a sitting position. He eyed the little thing, not realizing that the creature was eyeing him in that same moment. Apparently the Dratini came to the same conclusion that he had—it was a nice enough creature, but their time together had passed. Also, thank God it didn't kill me.
"So, um…" Beryl began, at the same time that the Dratini began squeaking something in its own language, "Oh, you go ahead," Beryl then told it.
The Dratini squeaked something elaborate, and then motioned toward the exit to the cave.
"You want to go outside?" the young man asked. The Pokémon nodded. "Do you have a family out there? Do you know where they are?" The first question was met with a nod, and the second a shake of the head.
"Well, we should probably see to looking for your parents, right?" The Dratini nodded.
Beryl stood up, and took his jacket off, having grown a little too warm for comfort. He started walking out the cave, and stopped at the exit to look around. He carried the coat in his hands, and the tiny, snakelike dragon followed after him.
"Does anything around here look familiar?" Beryl asked. The little Dratini shook its head. "Great…" he muttered.
He tried to see if he could tell where he was, based on any of the landmarks around. No such luck. There was thawing snow and green, exposed grass to both sides, and the lake in front of him. Behind him was nothing but cave wall. He looked to the Dratini. "What do you think, right or left?"
The light blue Pokémon squeaked in its high-pitched voice that Beryl knew would someday turn into a ferocious, Dragonite roar, and cocked its head to the right.
"Right it is, then," Beryl told it.
He walked along to the right, waiting for the Dratini to catch up. He found that the little creature had difficulty wading through the slushy remnants of snowfall. It seemed that the Pokémon's weakness to ice affected every aspect of its life. It was fortunate to have found a cave to sleep in for the night, even if it did have to be kept alive by the warmth of a human.
Beryl stopped momentarily, then bent down at the knee to address the Dratini. "Hey, listen, little guy…"
The Dratini growled.
"Sorry… Um… Little lady?" It (she?) nodded at this. "Anyway, um… If you want, I can carry you along here. I mean, it's not hard for me to get through this snow, and I can tell you're having a heck of a time with—"
He was cut off by the Dratini's squeaks. She was shaking her head vehemently, and had an angry look in her violet eyes.
"Okay, I'm sorry!" Beryl said, holding his palms out in front of him and standing up, "I just thought I'd let you know that it's not nearly as hard for me as it is for you, and we might be able to move faster if I carried you."
The Dratini eyed Beryl suspiciously, then looked around at the boy's belt. No pokéballs? What was this kid playing at?
Beryl saw the Dratini eyeing his belt, then looked at her confusedly. Could she be thinking? No…
"I'm not a Pokémon trainer, if that's what you were wondering," he said. She looked up at him with a mixture of suspicious disbelief and apology. She wasn't sure if he was telling the truth, but if he was, she was sorry for it.
"I don't want to carry you around in a pokéball. I was saying I could carry you around in my arms, and we could make this trip at least a little quicker." He bent down again, and opened his palms facing her, "See? No pokéball."
She looked him up and down with narrowed eyes, and slithered over to him. She crawled into his arms, then, and slithered around to rest behind his neck. "Whoa… Well that works too," he shuddered, smiling weakly.
They resumed their trek in what they could only assume was the "right direction." Of course, their definitions of "right direction" were both completely different, but if Beryl ended up getting the Pokémon to its parents first, all the better. He could just head in the opposite direction afterword, right?
Then they heard the noise.
They both turned their heads to the side and saw something large, hairy and angry coming toward them. Beryl wasn't totally sure what it was, but his Dratini companion recognized a Piloswine when she saw one, and this one didn't look particularly pleased. It took both of them a few seconds to realize that the creature was not only making a big ruckus, but it was bringing its ruckus toward them with astonishing speed.
Beryl made a movement to run away, but his dragon companion would have nothing of the sort, and slid off of his shoulders to face the beast. She squeaked loudly at the eight-foot-tall quadruped, and it halted upon reaching her.
She talked to it, then, in the sort of language that Pokémon all seem to understand. Beryl never quite grasped how all Pokémon tended to understand each other when the sounds they made didn't seem anything alike, but he chalked it up to one of those unexplained, magical aspects that the creatures all carried. He never questioned how some were able to shoot beams of ice out of their mouth; why should he question their ability to communicate?
The Piloswine reared up on its haunches, and the Dratini's eyes widened in fear. She was barely able to escape the massive, hairy monster's stomp as it attempted to unleash a rarely-seen rage. "What's this Pokémon's deal?" Beryl asked, jogging over to the Dratini's side. She looked at him incredulously, lacking explanation.
Then the Piloswine began to charge again.
Beryl and the Dratini ran (or, in the Dratini's case, slithered) out of the way as quickly as possible, but Beryl looked behind to see his companion moving sluggishly through the slush. "Dammit…" he muttered, running over to grab her. Unfortunately, the amount of time it took him to reach the Dratini was equal to the amount of time it took for the Piloswine to reach the Dratini. Beryl grabbed his serpentine companion and rolled. He rolled and rolled and rolled, and he soon he was a good ten feet to the right of the Piloswine and barely ten feet away from the waters of Lake Blackthorn.
Beryl started thinking, thinking hard and fast. He wasn't very good in a fight against a massive, tusked Pokémon. That didn't mean that his friend couldn't do some good though, right? Pokémon battle each other all the time in the wild, and this was for survival. Beryl didn't want to die, and he was certain that his little dragon friend didn't want to, either. He knew that he'd hate himself for this later on, though… Resorting to forcing a Pokémon to fight another.
Then he locked eyes with the Dratini, and saw in her eyes the drive to live that had kept dragon Pokémon at the height of existence for years. Groups of Pokémon whispered amongst themselves that you didn't mess with the dragon-types. It's just not something that you do, unless you know you can take them. Even then, though, their family connections were strong enough that you might find yourself faced with a hoard of Dragonites the next morning.
Beryl stood, shakily, letting the Dratini go as he did. He looked to her, and she nodded soothingly, before slithering out to face the Piloswine. Both she and her new friend realized that this might be their last day on this earth, but fighting seemed like the only option at this point. The Piloswine was fast—surprisingly fast, considering its size.
The Dratini looked to her human companion for guidance, and he looked back at her dumbly. Then she remembered—no pokéballs… Likely never having used a Pokémon in battle… She swore in her squeaking, Pokémon language, and was forced to dodge a blast of concentrated blizzard that was sent her way. It touched the tip of her tail, though, and she shivered in pain, shrieking in agony.
She threw herself to the side, and thought, for a moment, that she'd have to figure her way through it by herself. But, unbeknownst to her, Beryl was thinking, hard. What kind of attacks to these "Dratini" things know? That's what you do in a Pokémon battle, right? You tell it what moves to use? Think, Beryl, think!
He remembered when he was very, very young, probably around nine or ten years old. Some friends of his had invited him to watch a Pokémon battle at the Indigo Plateau. After all, Lance was there, and every boy in Blackthorn idolized Lance at the time. He was their town hero, the trainer who proved himself to be above all the rest and became a member of the Elite Four.
He remembered the battle there fuzzily. There was some move that his Pokémon knew… "Dragon" something… It was something about anger. He focused in on the fight in front of him, and saw the Dratini running in circles, wearing the Piloswine down. Lines of worry creased around her fear-filled eyes.
"Dratini!" Beryl yelled, his lips seeming to move of their own volition, "Use… Dragon's Rage!"
The Dratini's eyes widened then, with understanding, and she circled around to stare the Piloswine in the face. It attempted to headbutt her, but with a force she didn't realize she had, she leapt above him and turned around to face his behind.
As the lumbering beast attempted to turn around, the blue, serpentine Pokémon opened her mouth, and a blast of purple fire shot forth, a ball of mystical flames at its center. The Piloswine was knocked back, reeling with the sheer force of the hit. It shook its head, attempting to clear the spots out of its vision.
"Now, Dratini… Um… Hit it! Like… Slam against it really hard!" All of the Pokémon had physical attacks, right?
Whether they did or not wasn't an issue at this point, and luckly "slam" was something that registered in the Dratini's mind. She spun her tail around, smacking the whole of her body against the creature's face, right above the left eye.
Unfortunately, that only seemed to aggravate the situation, as the Piloswine then lifted its tusks and threw the far-smaller Pokémon further than she was comfortable with. She skidded in the slush, trying to come to a halt that just wouldn't come, and soon found herself in the thawing waters of Lake Blackthorn.
"Dratini!" Beryl screamed. The Piloswine reared its head toward him, and Beryl swore immediately.
A squeak from the shoreline, however, announced that the fight wasn't over. The Dratini was dripping water that thawed the snow as she slid along it. The temperature really was raising quickly, Beryl realized. The Piloswine was realizing this too, and it made him uneasy.
The Dratini's eyes were glinting with the kind of haughtiness that comes with the knowledge of impending victory, and Beryl quickly yelled the first thing he knew to yell: "Dratini, use Dragon's Rage! Now!"
The Piloswine's eyes widened in fright underneath its shaggy mane of hair, and it felt the hot, stinging flames of the Dratini's "Dragon Rage" attack. He was pushed back against the stone wall by its force, and the hard, stone wall smacked against his head. He slipped, then, into the peaceful, loving arms of unconsciousness.
The Dratini looked to her friend, then, wondering if he knew what to do with the unconscious Piloswine. He looked at her, unsure as to what her question was, then looking to the giant, hairy beast that now rested against the stone of the mountainside.
"What do you think we should do with him?" he asked the Dratini, walking over to the Piloswine. He had a friend whose mom worked at the Pokémon Center back in Blackthorn. If he ever found a way back, maybe he could—
His thoughts were interrupted by the flapping of wings, and a loud roaring from above. He looked up in terror, thinking "Not again…"
Descending from the sky came a Dragonite, her bronze scales glistening in the sun. She was looking at Beryl angrily, with a ferocity he'd only seen before in his mother. He once wandered off, when he was younger, onto Route 45, and found himself accosted by a particularly frightening Gligar (as if they weren't all frightening), and his mother took it upon herself to frighten the flying scorpion away. One look from her, and the purple Pokémon made tracks.
Beryl felt, in the moment he saw that Dragonite, exactly what that Gligar had felt when his mother had come to rescue him, and he didn't like it.
The Dragonite roared, and Beryl found himself running for cover. Just as fire began to pool in the creature's mouth, his new friend gave a squeak. Immediately, the flames were quenched. The Dragonite looked down at her daughter, then, floating down to greet her child.
The Dratini squeaked to her, telling her mother, then, of the human. He wasn't a threat, she was trying to tell her mother. It was he who had kept her warm the previous night, after all, when she was cold and alone. And it seemed that he was just as lost as she was, hungry to find a way back home. He didn't face his surroundings like a man longing for adventure so much as a child who didn't know where he was, and just wanted to get home.
The Dragonite mother growled to her daughter, disbelieving. Could this be true? The Dratini told her of the boy's refusal to use a pokéball, and lack thereof. He wasn't a trainer, and he didn't seem to know much at all about Pokémon battles themselves. He wasn't someone who they should fear.
The mother looked down at the human, who was, at this point, cowering near the rock wall of the mountain. She looked to her daughter, and asked a question that they had both feared facing. The Dratini nodded, hesitantly, knowing that it was better him than someone who would underappreciate her. He didn't seem particularly smart, but he knew how to use what he was given, which was something that many Pokémon trainers lacked far too often.
The Dragonite stepped forward, and Beryl's eyes widened in terror. He tried to back away further, only to find himself unable to burrow into the stone. He was resigning himself to death now. This is what you get for helping the needy, he realized. He should have listened to his mother and stayed inside yesterday. Just as he was beginning his prayers, however, the Dratini he'd recently grown attached to nuzzled his cheek. Its nose was still wet and cold from the lakewater it had coated itself in earlier, and he looked up to see the Dragonite standing over him in an expression that was trying so very hard to be benevolent.
Beryl looked up, confused. The Dragonite extended her hand—however clawed it may be—to the young human, and helped him to his feet. She grumbled, then, in that allusive language of Pokémon. He wasn't entirely sure what he was saying, but he could pick out bits and pieces through her body language. He shook his head, though. She shouldn't be asking that.
"You want me to take your daughter?" he asked. She nodded. "I'm not a Pokémon trainer, though. I've never even had a Pokémon of my own. My family has a pet Delibird, but that's really about it. I'm not prepared for—" the Dragonite cut him off with a gesture. She motioned toward her back, telling him that she could take him home, with her daughter. He saved her daughter from almost certain death, she was trying to tell him. The Dragonite would love to know that her daughter is in the hands of a capable human instead of off on her own, getting herself killed.
Of course, Beryl didn't understand most of this. What he did understand, though, was that this big dragon thing was the Dratini's mom or dad or something like that. He also understood that the big scary thing wanted him to take her daughter, and she didn't seem keen on taking "No" for an answer. Plus, she was offering him a ride home.
"I've never ridden on a Pokémon before, though…" he tried to explain. The Dragonite responded to this with a dismissive wave. Surely he'd catch on, right? Most humans took to it like a fish to water.
She turned around, and knelt down to offer Beryl access to her back. The Dratini slid up and wrapped around her mother's neck, to demonstrate that it wasn't nearly as scary as Beryl was afraid it would be.
The young teenager sighed in resignation. "I don't have much of a choice here, do I?" The Dratini shook her head cheerfully, and he slowly worked his way onto the Dragonite's scaly back. He wrapped his hands around the neck, trying to find a place to rest them. The Dragonite chuckled to herself, then took his hands in her claws, and held them tightly, but not so tightly as to dig into his skin. She groaned something to him, then, and he said, "Um… I live in Blackthorn, on West Street. It's a blue house with a gray roof, with some lawn gnomes out front. You might see a Delibird outside."
She nodded, and took flight.
Beryl soon realized that his inexperience with flying on pokémon was probably for the best