Joshua
#426 Drifblim
Borealis migrator
Typology: Ghost/Flying (Frazer-Edricson classification)
Junior morph: Drifloon (Borealis perambulatus)
Drifblim are primary Ghost-types within the Order Subnumina. Their closest relatives are thought to be the Middle Kingdom wraiths (See also: Gastly, Haunter, Gengar). Traditionally considered to be native to the Sinnoh region, their native range extends across the Sunset Isles and northern Kalos, and may migrate as far as the Unova region. Drifblim can be found at heights from 1,000 – 3,000m where they feed on aerial plankton.
Large migrations of drifblim, called blooms, occur in response to changing conditions. High population density, scarce food supply, and changes in the strength or direction of prevailing winds may all trigger a migration. The distribution of blooms are thus strongly correlated to changing weather patterns (See also: Breeding).
The Melkfold Downs spread out north and west as far as the human eye could see, green hills rolling into the blue distance.
The landscape sweltered under the June sun. Melkfold Downs was meadow-and-chalkland, a land of wide skies and little rivers and miltank ice creams so thick you had to eat them with a chisel. Farmsteads and spinneys dotted the downland, while miltank mottled pink-and-black pastured in fields bordered with hawthorn hedges. The River Elfwell flowed lazily along its gentle valley, the grey water glimmering in the morning, through the town of Kesport in the middle distance. To the east, the downlands climbed up to the Beacon Hills. That was coal-mining country. The hills rose out of the downland like a rumpled duvet. Thick belts of woodland on the lower slopes gave way to stretches of heath on the heights. From there, with good eyes, you could just see the span of Kesport Bridge, the brightly-painted narrowboats at the marina.
Nobody mined coal there now. Nobody lived there now. People had left their mark behind in old roads, old canals, and abandoned villages inhabited only by pokémon. Josh squinted up into the sky. There, barely visible against the charcoal grey of a cloud, was the pear-shaped outline of a drifblim.
Not only drifblim, either. There was also Gail, soaring awkwardly on a thermal. It had been markedly startling to see her again. She'd gone from being a sleek, manic lightning-bolt of a hawk, to a majestic, powerful eagle, an empress of the clouds. She wouldn't stop growing, even after evolving. Josh was sure her wingspan had been about twenty feet last week. She'd put at least another three onto that since then.
Gail wheeled across the sun, her shadow rippling over his head. Josh wondered how big she would get.
They summitted the hill by eleven o'clock, to a heathery field rough with bilberry and yellow-flowering gorse, silverweed colonising the edges of the paths. The wind blew steadily from the north-east, down from far distant Misho. The hill was almost as high up as you could get around here short of flying, and in theory would be the obvious landing place for any drifblim. If the weather reports were accurate, this is where they'd be.
There was no point in trying to be stealthy. Every diurnal pokémon on the heath would have spotted them already.
"Eye, eye," Josh said. There was something drifting across the heather about a hundred yards away. The drifblim realised it had been spotted and tried to Minimise to lower its profile, shrinking itself down to the size of a watmel. That trick might have worked, if it hadn't got caught on a sprig of gorse.
Eve was already racing through the heather like a hungry pyroar and bowling a Poké Ball overarm. "Lyra! Thunderpunch!"
Lyra emerged flying and raring for the attack, despite her midday lethargy. She was visibly sluggish in charging her Thunderpunch. For a moment Josh wondered whether Gail might not fare better -
She never got there anyway. The drifblim blasted a Gust into the heather, propelling itself wildly into the sky till it disappeared into a cloud.
"Bastard!" Eve screamed.
A speckled wood butterfly skittered from the path, glowing chocolate and rust-yellow as it fluttered through shimmering noonlight and shade. Spots of sun danced as the breeze stirred the leaves of the overhanging trees. Butterfree ignored these high tangled woods, full of the little flowers of herb robert, buttercup, and Holostea stellaria, whose common name he could never remember. Some late harebells peeped out among the tree roots, pale violet, tissue-paper translucent.
Josh delicately stepped over an old rail, onto the sleeper. The soil was dark, ashy, full of chunks of blue-black rock. Intervening years had scattered much of the ballast, but it would still crunch underfoot like a gravel path. The tracks emerged from a tangle of holly and bramble and disappeared into a mine shaft. The rail was flaked and splintered where a skarmory had been at it for nesting material. He wasn't looking for anything so much as just looking. Any drifblim should, in theory, be sluggish and sleepy at this time of day.
The hair on his arms prickled. He looked round, without moving his feet. There was something watching him from the deeps of the mine. It was the glower of a gastly. In the dark of the adit, it was hardly more than hungry eyes and fangs.
Not intimidated by the likes of you.
There was a crack and a curse behind him. Eve was busy tripping over brambles. Josh ignored her. He watched a paras crawling up a crab leppa – there was a semi-corporeal drifblim roosting in the branches.
He beckoned over his shoulder, carefully, trying not to alarm the drifblim. Eve must have noticed, because a Poké Ball whizzed past his head.
"Bailey!" she yelled. "Take Down that tree! Knock it the fuck down!"
Bailey slammed herself into the base of the tree – the shock of the impact cracked it nearly in two. It heeled over with a piteous creak, branches snagging on its neighbours. The drifblim spilled out of its roost, bouncing gently into some nettles. It blinked sleepily at them as if entirely unconcerned by the appearance of two humans.
"Right," Eve said. "Meowth, it's your turn."
Josh suddenly felt a terrible compulsion to sleep. His eyelids felt leaden-heavy. Eve yawned hugely. There was only one logical reason why either of them would feel that way.
"Oh, bloody hell," Josh managed before Hypnosis took hold.
"This time we're ganging up on it," Josh grumbled, his head throbbing. He must have banged it against a sleeper when he passed out.
This drifblim was floating fifty feet above the meadow and had already seen them. Its outline was hazy and wan in the late afternoon sun.
"No," Eve flatly refused. She took a run-up and flung a Ball. "Gail! You have the honour!"
She unfolded her great wings almost luxuriously. The coffee-and-cream span of her plumage was like a small airplane, her long crest shining scarlet and gold.
"Twister!"
The vortex formed reluctantly, cobalt flashes leaping from the translucent cloud and earthing themselves on the grass, vaporising individual blades. Drifblim slipped out of it using Phantom Force, lashing madly at Gail with its tentacles. Momentum lost, Gail hammered awkwardly at the air, trying to ascend with the same easy speed she had as a pidgeotto. Drifblim sailed off west in an attempt to make a break for it.
There was nothing awkward about her dive. She easily caught up with it, wrestling in mid-air as she tried to crush it in her talons. Drifblim flailed back at her with its tentacles, repeatedly blasting out useless Shock Waves. Gail screeched with frustration and powered up into the air. The downdraft of her wingbeats drove the drifblim into the grass. Eve watched her proudly, Fast Ball held loosely in her fingers.
Drifblim started to bloat and smoulder ominously. Fuck. Josh just knew what was going to happen. Breaking into a run Josh grabbed the first empty Ball he could find and threw it. The whoosh-snap of the Ball deploying sounded off to his left.
A few second's grace, he thought, and tackled Eve into a ditch.
There was a tremendous detonation behind them. Shards of Ultra Ball whickered into the grass. A piece of scorched plastic bounced off his shoulder blade. Josh frowned down at Eve lying beneath him.
"That's twice now you've almost been blown up by a pokémon," he told her.
Eve was looking up at him with an intense sort of expression, as if she didn't appreciate being tumbled onto a ditch. He hurriedly pushed himself off.
"I wouldn't have had to if you'd paid attention," he said defensively.
The village had been called Holcombe. Perhaps it was still, but no-one had lived here since the Olivineshire coal-mining industry collapsed. It was empty, at least as far as humans were concerned, a ghost town. The village was sited in the midst of a valley, woodland hemming it in on either side. The branch canal flowed right through the middle, a chain of locks and basins zig-zagging the valley floor. Holcombe was a village of long streets of identical terraced houses slowly being reclaimed by the Beacons.
They pitched up in the garden of the abandoned inn on the eastern side of the valley. There was a very small hot spring behind a low hedge of a feral privet. Josh felt quite pleased about that after they'd been sweating into their clothes for the past few days – he was getting fed-up of girl-sweat.
Josh was sat idly whittling at a holly stave, as much to keep his hands busy as anything else, half-watching Meg playing with Bullet Seed. The other pokémon were lounging around. Screwball was hovering with the patiently blank expression of a magneton with nothing in particular to do. Meowth was lurking in the shade, too hot to make a villain of himself.
"Meg, knock it off." She'd just fired off a spray of Bullet Seed buckshot at Ivysaur. He swatted her away with his Vine Whips.
Eve emerged from the relative shade of her tent, plucking at her shirt in a vain attempt to aerate it. She playfully flicked her towel at Gail, who clacked her beak reproachfully.
"Give me your towel after your bath, I'll have Gail Defog-dry them both," she said, picking her way through the privet.
"How exactly are you going to cover up with that travel towel?" Josh said, mock-serious.
"I told you, you're allowed to see my tits," Eve said over her shoulder, in what Josh was now thinking of as her Imogen tone.
"When do I get to see your arse, then?" he called after her.
Eve's giggle sounded more like a snigger. "I'm not bending over for you."
The smile faded from his face once she was out of sight. While it was somewhat forced, bantering did make things less … less … uncomfortable. That wasn't the word he was looking for. He'd reluctantly decided, somewhere in the middle of a blazing afternoon, that he was being childish about her – though he would rather eat his own boots than admit it.
Josh looked up, and looked around. Meg had disappeared. "Where's the babby gone?"
Megaera practically jogged along the cracked and weathered asphalt, determined to explore before Ivysaur caught up with her. Meadows were thriving in long-abandoned front gardens, grass and weeds were breaking apart the road surface in the gutters. Rich scarlet poppies were flowering from between the cracks at the base of street furniture.
Swinging her left stem dramatically, Meg blasted a spray of Bullet Seed into the thicket of ragweed growing in the mouth of a garage. The weeds shredded most satisfactorily. She blasted again, feeling rather like she could do this all evening.
A long, yellow and purple leg reached delicately from the thicket, followed by a ruddy, fanged head, peering at her with interest.
Meg squeaked uncertainly. Ariados' eyes shone darkly. She defiantly fired a volley of pale Solar Beams. The bolts spattered off its chitin armour to no noticeable effect. Ariados paused thoughtfully for a moment, fangs twitching. It seemed to come to a decision, starting to advance purposefully -
Ariados screeched like a buzzsaw. A chunk of brick ricocheted violently off his head, spinning end-over-end till it shattered a roof tile somewhere.
Josh tossed the sling aside and hefted his holly stave into both hands.
"Back off," he said, "or I'll smash you into paste."
Ariados raised a foreleg, tapping uncertainly at the air. Josh stood almost motionless. Then Ariados made a fatal mistake.
It took a step forward.
Josh howled in fury. He raced past Meg in a red rage, bringing his weapon whistling round two-handed. One strike was not enough. He attacked again and again and again, raining down blows in an earnest attempt to smash its exoskeleton. Ariados lunged, trying to Poison Sting him to keep him quiet – Josh danced out of reach and brought his stick down hand on its knee joint. It flailed reflexively in pain, so he stabbed it in the mandibles.
His weapon suddenly felt absurdly heavy – Ariados had latched onto it with String Shot and was trying to drag it out of his hands. Josh hauled back, snarling, too marinated in fury to register he'd been effectively disarmed. The tug-of-war forcibly wound out more String Shot from its spinnerets. Josh's arms started to ache savagely with exertion.
There was a whistling, rushing noise overhead. The String Shot broke – Ariados skittered away in panic.
Gail came rocketing out of the clear sky. She arrested her misaimed Quick Attack with one huge sweep of her wings, her involuntary Gust bowling Ariados down the street like a tumbleweed.
Gail took off with a shriek of frustrated bloodlust, leaving Josh shaking with rage and adrenaline that now had no outlet.
"You stupid bastard!" Eve yelled.
She'd found out what had happened when Gail refused to eat anything, seeing as she'd already finished half an ariados. It hadn't taken long for her to start shouting at him.
"It was threatening Meg," he said sulkily.
"You have pokémon," Eve retorted derisively. "You have a magneton! Half a Thunderwave would have been enough! Fighting a pokémon personally – gods, do you know what that venom could do to you? Did it never occur to you to simply recall Meg -"
Like you wouldn't go completely Mama Bear if she was yours.
"As for you," Eve snapped, rounding on Gail, "- I'm not done with you yet, Joshua Cook – if I ever catch you eating shit again -"
Josh tuned her out while she kept on shouting at Gail. He considered going for a quiet soak in the spring, but he had a shrewd feeling she'd actually follow him into the bath to finish telling him off. He considered Meg instead. She could plainly charge and fire Solar Beams with little apparent effort. Curious. He pondered what tactics would open up if she could charge those beams to a consistent power -
"Are you listening?"
Maybe he'd think about it after Eve started to get hoarse.