Feebas and Tentacool

It was all brown. Brown grass, brown dirt, brown trees, brown rocks, and even brown water filled the area. A freak drought had stuck around for three summers, and this month was particularly unbearable. Many of the lake Pokemon had scattered to safety in other bodies of water. But not the Feebas.

They were brown too, a muddy tan that blended in remarkably well in the dirty water. They continued swimming around the steadily lowering lake, even when they had to slither through some sections. Glad to eat and survive on anything, the school had survived thus far.

On one baking hot afternoon, a young Feebas was sliding along a muddy surface to another part of the pond when he encountered a stranger. The stranger was pale, like a glob of gelatin with red and black fruits mixed in. She looked at him suspiciously and weakly raised a tentacle. "Watch yourself. I can make you sicker than you've ever felt in your life."

Feebas blinked. "Watch myself? How? Every time I turn to look at myself, I lose sight of me."

She looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"I do!" He turned around to look at his tail, but it spun with him and kept just out of sight. When he faced the stranger again, he said, "I can't get me to sit still."

"Oh... never mind." She dropped her tentacle. "Wouldn't do me any good to make threats even if you did understand them. I'm drying up fast."

"But there's water all around us." He hopped up and splashed, making the mud squelch. "See? Plenty of it!"

She cringed. "I'm a Tentacool. I can't handle this horrid dirty mudhole. If I took this in, it would kill me."

"It's not that bad. A little harder to get around in, so I hear."

"So when is it bad? When the lake is completely dry and you're on land instead of in a lake?"

"That won't happen. It won't be a lake if it were dry."

"Of course it won't be," she grumbled. "Then what? Is fresh water just going to magically appear? It hasn't rained for months."

"It'll happen sometime. Just you wait."

"It won't. Someone must have angered Mother Nature." Tentacool shuddered. "I'll dry up into an ugly scrap before I ever manage to return to the sea. What a terrible fate."

"What's terrible about being ugly?"

"Are you kidding me? What's terrible about being ugly? Everything's terrible about being ugly."

Feebas shrugged his fins. "But that's just how you look, and that doesn't matter. I'm happy, so I don't care about how I look."

"How can you be happy? Your lake is a giant pit of mud now."

"It makes funny noises!" He splashed again, making squelches and smooshes. "And if you get going as fast as you can, you can slide really far on the high parts!"

"You're such an idiot." She closed her eyes.

"Well, I'm happy, so it don't matter." He waited, but got no response. "Tentacool?"

She was silent.

The sunlight was bright. The sunlight was strong.

The young Feebas slid back and forth between the diminishing pools of water. All the while, he kept an eye on Tentacool. She no longer looked like gelatin, being more like a dead leaf. He had nosed a rock onto her back to make sure that she didn't get blown away. Like his peers, he still wasn't concerned about the drying lake. It didn't occur to him that it could stop being a lake and start being land.

And then one day, the sky was pierced by a shrieking whistle. The sunlight faded to be replaced with dense clouds. The rain was thick. The rain was strong.

At the lake, the resident Feebas group was stricken by a sudden change from thick muddy water to a gushing wall of water. They struggled to keep from being washed away. The young male bit onto the Tentacool's main body and dragged her down into a hole. The incoming flood rushed past him. It grabbed weakened trees, boulders, other Feebas, mud, and a few metal signs to take along its journey.

He fought against the deluge. He pushed his body and fins against the flow as hard as he could in an attempt to stay within the hole. But it only took a momentary lapse into weakness for the water to take him and Tantacool on its journey as well.

With the influx of water, Tentacool took in enough water to revive herself. Bewildered by the drastic change of scenery from mudpit to mudflow, she wrapped her tentacles around Feebas and held on. They traveled many miles in this manner.

When the water settled down, she let go. "Sorry, I panicked. Did you get poisoned?"

"Mmm," he closed one eye and thought. "I don't think so."

"Good."

"That was a rush! That water just came and washed everything away. It was a lot of fun. Too bad it doesn't happen that often."

"Fun? I was scared."

"But it's like I told you: the water came right back when it wanted to. Now the lake's probably full, even though we're not there to see it."

Tentacool rubbed her tentacles over her main body, checking herself for injuries. "I'm surprised that I didn't get eaten when I was dry."

"I looked out for you. There was this Skarmory that wanted to eat you, but I splashed around and made a lot of noise. It got annoyed and tried to eat me, but then slipped in the mud. That was funny. He didn't even try to get you again when he was all muddy."

"Pardon me for asking but, why? If I remember right, I was really cranky then and I probably insulted you."

"Did you? I don't think you did. It gave me something to do other than sliding across the mud. Now that you're all better, you can find your way to the sea."

She looked around at the wide expanse of water before them. "I think we got dragged all the way to the sea. Since you protected me... thank you."

"No problem. I'm gonna go back to my lake." Feebas turned to the river, but it was still going strong. "Whenever I can, of course."

Tentacool rubbed two tentacles together, thinking. "I could show you around the seabed, if you like."

He smiled. "Sure, sounds fun!"

…

Ruby entry: Tentacool's body is largely composed of water. If it is removed from the sea, it dries up like parchment. If this Pokemon happens to become dehydrated, put it back into the sea.

Feebas Platinum entry: It is a shabby and ugly Pokemon. However, it is very hardy and can survive on little water.

Another Feebas entry notes that it's dull, in terms of being dumb. It and Magikarp have insulting entries, but amusing ones at the same time. There's a hidden war behind this story if you care to look...