Yoshi closed his mouth.

The profuse bleeding and the demonic narration stopped, but its visible effects lingered well outside the realm of Yoshi's mouth. He wore a messy apron of red upon his white chest and belly, and it appeared as though he was wearing gloves made by a second-rate designer with an eye for ugly clashes of chartreuse and burgundy.

The agony burned him, tore at him, made him want to roll around in the snow and punch, kick, find something to sink his teeth into and chomp down, hard, until all the pain that was savaging the remaining stump of his tongue was channeled away from his existence.

Instead he calmed down, flaring his nostrils wider than ever in an effort to inflate his lungs with as much oxygen as possible.

First thing's first.

The antidote.

Yoshi grabbed the bottle and, after a moment's hesitation, popped the whole thing into his mouth, bottle and all. He gulped it down with a salty, rusty wash of blood, temporarily draining the cavern of his mouth. He felt a splash against the back of his lips as the hose of his tongue spurted harder than ever to replenish the depleted pool.

With the poison now taken care of, only four items remained on Yoshi's list of immediate things to do:

1. Get tongue off pole
2. Bring tongue to Dr. Mario for emergency surgery
3. ? ? ?
4. Profit!

Tongue off pole… Tongue off pole… Well, that was simple enough: Water, as long as it was at a warm temperature relative to the pole, would unstick his tongue immediately.

Without a moment's second to lose, Yoshi turned his legs into a blurred wheel of green and scurried through the snow.

Greninja stood upright, spine stretched straight, balancing only on one leg, tongue swaying like an alluring scarf in the breeze, arms slightly bent at her elbows as she held them to her sides with webbed hands turned to the sky. Graceful fountains of water, shaped like a long, slender trees topped with a rich canvas of wide, slightly-dipping leaves, sprayed gently, quietly, from her palms. Though her body temperature was beginning to drop well below freezing point, she remained still, strong, silent, eeking not a squeak of discomfort or swaying the slightest to relieve some of the burning soreness developing in her thighs. Even the water that poured continuously from her hands refused to yield to the frigid breath of winter, as she maintained it at a warm, pleasurable temperature of eighty degrees – something that siphoned a great deal of concentration and strength and warmth from her already-taxed body. But this was the way of the neenja – to remain in the shadows for interminable hours to come, forced into a single unpleasant position for the entirety of the mission for the sake of stealth, a precarious situation in which even the slightest movement was all it took to deliver a message of presence to the anticipating enemy.

She detected vibrations in the air behind her, mere molecules of snow shifting around her leg, and knew who it was before she swiveled the pupil of her eyes to glance behind her right shoulder – refusing, even then, to grant her body the freedom of motion.

"Sharizahrd," she muttered, with just a hint of distaste inflecting her verbal notice of her fellow Pokémon Smasher.

The draconian Pokémon glared back with orbs of blazing fire replacing the pupils. Vicious teeth, flecked with evil black and brooding red, curled down from a snout scrunched with ugly wrinkles. Snarls and growls of pugnacious intent rumbled forth from the chasm of the bulbous heaving belly, and savage claws were poised into merciless stances, ready to shred through flesh and bone and unleash all desire to rape, to destroy, to murder brutally without a single potion of remorse to diffuse even a single drop of restraint. Wisps of hellfire spewed from the bloodthirsty mouth in superabundant streams, trailing off from the sides of the muzzle and melting all the snow within a mile radius. A grating roar that would cause anyone's skin to crawl resounded from deep within Charizard's neck as it twisted all the way back. Too late to even try to avoid the incoming whip of pernicious evil, Greninja stayed still, silently eying the very manifestation of perverted deleterious desires as Charizard's neck sprung forth –

"Like, how does this necklace look on me and stuff?" Charizard asked in a thick Valley girl accent as she snapped her neck back into place, pointing with all six digits to the latest jewelry to adorn her body. Charizard batted her eyes, attempting to look coy and attractive with the feminine grace and long eyelashes that currently took hold of her eyelids.

"Bonjour to you, too," Greninja grumbled as she brushed off some of the melted slush off her lifted thigh. She took a closer look, and saw that the pendant was in the shape of a sleek Dratini, twisted into an elegant 'S' shape as it shone a splendid silver in the sun and gazed into some far-off distance with cold blood-garnet eyes. The chain, made of interlinking diamonds in a precise box pattern, looped around Charizard's thick neck. With no disagreeable notion rising to her lips regarding Charizard's fashion choice, Greninja sighed, "Eet ees looking very beau-tee-fool, Sharizahrd. But, right now, you are –"

"I knew it!" Charizard squealed, hugging Greninja tightly and causing her eyes to bulge like inflated balloons from her head. "Like, I wanted to get something that would pop against my chest, ya know? So I got something silver, because, like, my chest is red and stuff, and silver toooooo~tally looks classy with red! Like, no duh, right? But I just asked Jigglypuff, and she was like, 'That looks dumb on you, guuurrl!' And I was like, 'Uck! What are you talking about, this is, like, fashion statement of the year, guuurrl!' And she was like, being such a betch about it, and was totally barfing me out, so I was like, whatever and junk, 'kay? So then I thought about it, and I was like, 'Wait, Grejayjay's from Kalos! She totally knows all about fashion!' And that's why I came to ask you, and you like, just totally agreed with me, so Jiggly's a stupid puff-betch and I'm totally the winner, so like, Charizard and whatever and stuff!"

Greninja pulled away from Charizard's constricting grasp and took a few deep breaths, gulping air as she recovered from the near-fatal asphyxiation of Charizard's penchant to be a little too physical with her affection. Then, fighting to maintain her neenja composure, Greninja growled, "I sought I told you, nevair to call me Grejayjay! Eet sounds very uncousse and I do not like eet!"

"Like, come on girl, I don't get on your tail for calling me Shari~zahrd," Charizard laughed, dismissing Greninja's anger with a wavy motion of her claw. Before Greninja could snap back with a heated reply about how it really wasn't her fault, that the Kalos accent imparted upon her speech slight inflections that were beyond her control, and besides, the romantic, charismatic, graceful, elegant, mellifluous French language was obviously so much more superior to the bastard child English, anyway, Charizard added in, "Besides, what are you doing in this snow and junk? You'll totally get freezebite and stuff like you were hit by Antarcticuno's Freeze Beam!"

"Frostbite. Arcticuno. Ice Beam," Greninja corrected with a huff, surrendering the brief urge of anger within the recesses of her controlled emotions as she noted the spacey look dawning on Charizard's face – clearly, nothing she said would reach through that thick skull of hers. She brushed more of the snow off her shoulder and struck the same pose as before, this time balancing on her left leg. "And I am doing moi watair neenja training, wheech you 'ave so rudely eenteruppted me from – so now eef you are not minding, I would very mooch like to be –"

At that moment, a green streaking blur skidded towards the two Pokémon ladies and came to a halt right in front of them. With a whoosh and a sploosh, a massive wave of sleet and slush descended upon Greninja and Charizard. The latter, with her naturally-hot body and the sphere of radiating heat it summoned, automatically melted away the projectile of snow and was kept relatively dry, but Greninja was completely soaked with various mounds of wetness dripping from her head and shoulders and arms and thighs.

" – alone," Greninja grumbled, as the green blur took on the physical form of Yoshi finally coming to a halt. Before either of the two could even open their mouths to greet the flying wonder of a dinosaur, whether in welcome or in hostility, Yoshi bounded forward, grabbed Greninja by her arm, and dragged her in the direction from whence he came.

"Sacrébleu, Yoshi!" Greninja cried, blowing madly like a flag in the wind as Yoshi bodily lifted her into the air, such was the strength and speed granted by adrenaline. "What ees ze meaning of zis?! Stop right now – now, Yosshh – eek!"

Stop he did, as he once again skidded in his tracks and slammed Greninja down with such brute force that she was buried waste-down in the snow, as though she was a particularly rebellious tent pole. As a fellow cold-blooded creature, she could already feel the icy chill slowing the flow of blood in her legs, and she glared at Yoshi and murmured, quite vehemently, "I am not 'appy right now."

She popped herself out of the snow, looked at Yoshi and noticed that he was acting quite… Strange, to put it mildly. Mute with his mouth clammed tightly shut, Yoshi appeared to try and explain the reasoning behind his weird abduction not by words, but by frantic movements of his arms and head. First he pointed to Greninja repeatedly, finger jabbing, almost accusingly, in the direction of her gentle snout. Then he made a series of waving, rolling motion with his arms and hands right in front of his mouth, which he still kept firmly shut. Finally, he pointed to a nearby telephone pole, the surface of which seemed to be wrapped around by some pink, thick ribbon, or perhaps a flatter-than-usual rope.

He did three sets of this, and was in the middle of his fourth when Charizard flew towards Greninja's side.

"Like, is Yoshi doing any weird stuff to your junk?" Charizard asked in a flurried huff as she beat her wings in the opposite direction to stop her forward momentum. Then she said, "Oops. I meant, like, is Yoshi doing any weird stuff and junk?"

"Non," Greninja muttered, not even looking at Charizard as she squinted her eyes at Yoshi's continued antics of silence. Charizard's jaw dropped as she, too, watched Yoshi try to relay some kind of message to his doubled audience, and Greninja, seeing this, hastily added, "Zough, eet ees seeming like he ees channeling ze rogue spirit of some Monsieur Mime, no? Per'aps we shall bring 'im to le 'ospeetal?"

"Silly Grejayjay, he's not trying to be a mime," Charizard grinned as she adjusted the pendant of her necklace so that it rested more centrally on her chest, "he wants to play charades! Like, oh, my Arceus. This ain't Kalos, girl!" She sat her bottom down and watched intently as Yoshi, for the briefest second, hesitated in his motions, unsure of whether to stop and shake his head to say that no, he was not playing a game, he was trying to tell them something that spelled the difference between life and death here – but it was a heck of a lot closer to the truth than Greninja's initial guess of putting on a mime freak show for them, and so Yoshi started over his routine, in the hopes that two heads would be better than one.

He pointed repeatedly to Greninja.

"Ooh! Ooh! I know!" Charizard spoke up immediately, waving an outstretched arm in the air. Yoshi turned to her. "Like, you're totally talking about Shulk, because you're pointing to Grejayjay, and she's like, all blue, and Shulk has an alternate costume which is blue, so yeah, he's totally referring to Shulk right now!"

Yoshi frowned, shook his head, and strained his eyes at Greninja.

"I – I sink –" Greninja hesitated, before continuing, "I sink 'e ees talking about moi."

Yoshi nodded his head enthusiastically. Alright, so far so good. Time for charade no. 2…

Again, he repeated the rolling, fluid motion of his arms and hands in front of his shut mouth.

"Ooh, I totally got it this time!" Charizard cried happily, bouncing up and down again as she waved her arm even more frantically in the air. Yoshi paused for a second before nodding his head in her direction. "Like, you totally want to be able to surf like Grejayjay can, because that means you can go, like, almost anywhere in the wor~ld! And the world is like, 7.8/10 too much water or something, so like, you can totally go to every Pokémall that the universe of Nintendo has to offer! Like, that's soooooooooooooo smart, Yoshi!"

Yoshi rolled his eyes before taking, from out of nowhere, a huge sign that read in red paint: WRONG!, and shoved it into Charizard's snout. Then he turned to look expectantly at Greninja, twiddling his thumbs as he swallowed what was essentially his third bowl of blood soup.

Greninja frowned as she looked confusedly at Yoshi's strange demeanor. "You – you want us to speet?" Greninja guessed.

First try! Yoshi rang a bell ecstatically, chiming ding-ding-ding-ding-ding! in celebration of the correct answer. The hardest part was over! He was almost there – almost there! And it was the easiest of them all… Wasting no further time, Yoshi hurriedly pointed to the pole, where his now-frozen tongue still coiled around, like a particularly affectionate snake squeezing the life out of its partner in a true, if not fatal, showing of courtship.

Greninja narrowed her eyes. What was so special about the pole? Well, other than that… Pink ribbon that someone had probably tied around it as a practical joke. Greninja rolled the previous two answers in her mind. Her… Spit… Could Yoshi really be referring to the pole, in relation to her sophisticated form and one of her primary methods of offense? No, no; there had to a deeper, more spiritual meaning than that. To muster all her concentration for this one crucial answer that Yoshi was so desperate to communicate, Greninja closed her eyes, while Yoshi's were positively bursting from his sockets. Just one word, Greninja! Just one word, and it was so easy, too… As Yoshi tapped his boot impatiently against the ground, Charizard, who had remained silent all the while, suddenly sprang up to her feet. "OOH! I totally got it this time, Yoshi! Pick me, pick me, pick me, pick me!"

Yoshi tried his hardest to not look her way, training his eyes to float away from the visual zone which the ditzy Valley dragon inhabited. He focused his gaze on some trees in the distance, scrutinized the head of a gray boulder barely poking out of the snowy earth, directed his attention on the Ice Climbers who were engaged in a snowball scuffle near the entrance of the mansion. He cast one more hopeful look at Greninja; then, seeing that the graceful watair neenja was still obsessing over an answer even a simpleton could get, Yoshi dropped his head, almost let out a sigh, stopped himself just in time, and, with a quality that hinted at indifferent lethargy, nodded curtly to Charizard to speak.

"Like, what I totally think is the answer –" Charizard began, and then, quite suddenly she was wearing a monocle sporting golden rim and chain and a black top hat. A stack of books was tucked in between her left arm and the sides of her torso. When she next spoke, the Valley girl accent was all but gone, replaced instead by the stiff, posh, well-articulated enunciation of the English language: "What I think, perhaps, this charming dinosaur is trying to impress upon us, is that Trump's supremacy relative to his fellow Republican candidates is symbolic of the widening income gap and rising unemployment rate plaguing our nation. Should we delve into a deep analysis of the current socioeconomic status, we find that it is largely the voters making a meager $45,000 or less per annum who currently cast their vote to Trump. This is, of course, a direct result of his proposed tax plan, which, to entail briefly, eliminates any imposed tax on those who fall within the income bracket of less than $25,000, or $50,000 if you are married and with a significant other. This creates an even more skewed representation of our current progressive tax, in which the gross income of those in the higher bracket are now liable to even greater charges to make up for the loss in government income from the lower-and-middle class. Such a transformation of the exponential curve, of course, will never work, and –"

At that moment, Yoshi hurriedly took out another giant sign, this time one that read POKéMALL and a giant red arrow pointing to some general direction. That was all it took for Charizard to switch out of scholar mode – she screamed, "Oh. Em. A. The mall!", threw off the monocle and the hat and the books, and, before you could say "like, totally radical and bag your face and junk", she was gone.

Yoshi's right eye twitched as he stared, with an expression only a twinge away from being that of insanity, at Greninja.

Her mind blank to all possible answers, she stuttered, "You – you want us to speet at ze pole?"

Prrrrmmmmppp! A victory fanfare played in the background as the nonexistent ceiling exploded to release a raining flurry of multi-colored confetti and streamers. Yoshi jumped for joy, the prospect of his tongue being freed from the pole ever nearer. Greninja let out a sigh of relief, and Ness, decked out in smart black suit and red tie, walked forward, shook Greninja's hand, and handed her a golden fold of paper that read 100,000 Smash Coins, in large, triumphant, black letters, before quickly sauntering off, having already made his second cameo for the story.

"Sharizahrd, Yoshi just wanted us to speet on ze pole!" Greninja exclaimed in a rare outburst of jubilation, as Charizard flew back with several bags of merchandise tucked under her arms.

"Like, you go girl!" Charizard cried happily in congratulations, dropping the bags and frantically clapping her claws together. "And like, ya know what? I think I'll totally go first!"

By the time Yoshi registered the meaning behind Charizard's words, it was too late.

Nooooooooo! he wanted to scream – but of course, all he could unleash from his mouth was –

– a torrential downpour of blistering red, the source of which lies in the verdant variety of sliced veins and severed arteries. Yoshi gags and sputters, spitting incomprehensible garbles of insidious meaning as he celebrates the demonic rebirth of gore and bloodlust. So, too, does the celebration arise from Charizard's own devilish snout, for, not too differently from Yoshi, she offers to the ritual a spurt of red of her own, a blazing, eternal fire that devastates all it feeds upon. The pole, a singular symbolism of hope and recovery, is engulfed in flames, flames that lick the very surface upon which they are bound to, and they burn ever brighter, rise ever higher, for provided unto them is an ample feast of carbon and fuel that, perhaps in the forgotten times of light, was formerly known as the tongue of Yoshi.