Grunt

Spoiler

Target Pokemon: Houndour
Target CC: Medium (10-20k)
Character Count: 11072

It’s not our fault. You get that, right?

I don’t fight for his insane cause. I fight for her.

***​

This is how we met: me lying defenseless on my back, one leg ripped and ruined after an encounter with a particularly savage Manectric, the metal plate on my forehead dented, and deep gashes carved down my side. There were already Murkrow and Mandibuzz circling overhead, impatiently waiting for me to die.

I knew that if I took long enough, eventually they’d stop waiting. There was a pitiful whine rising in the back of my throat, but I choked it back. It would only attract more predators, and while I had no illusions about getting out of this alive, I also had no desire to hasten my end.

By the time she came by, I was fading badly. I distantly heard someone crashing clumsily through the underbrush over the raucous cawing of the Mandibuzz, and could only manage a weak, halfhearted growl. There was a gasp, running feet, and then someone was bending over me, obscuring the cloudy sky with their worried face.

“Oh no, oh no, hold on,” she muttered, fishing around in her bag for something, murmuring softly the whole time. “Don’t die, don’t die, please don’t die…”

She eventually seemingly gave up on her search, instead unexpectedly hefting me in her arms. I snarled in protest and tried to claw at her arms, but my wounded leg screamed in protest and pain shot up my spine, leaving me a limp and quivering mess.

Through a veil of cotton clouding my ears, I could vaguely hear the flock of Mandibuzz shriek in fury as one as they finally realized that someone was stealing their meal away. I saw the girl start running, fear and worry writ large across her face, the Mandibuzz streaking across the sky, and then my vision went cloudy and dark and I didn’t see anything.

***​

When I woke up, I didn’t hurt. I just felt… warm. My eyes opened slowly, vision still blurry, and therefore it took me a few minutes to realize I wasn’t looking up at the sky, but instead at a ceiling. I was inside a building, then. I whimpered, and a moment later the girl was at my side.

“Are you alright?” she asked. She sounded… worried. “Nurse Joy said you’d be okay, except there might be some nerve damage in your leg, but we wouldn’t know for sure until you woke up, and-”

I managed a nod, and all of the tension came out of her shoulders. “Oh, good. Thank god. I was so worried.”

I cocked my head quizzically. Why? Why should she care? She didn’t answer my unspoken question, and I was left to think it over. I was distracted and still woozy enough that I almost missed the next thing she said.

“So… I was wondering,” she said, her voice dropping down to a lower volume, eyes staring at the floor, “if you’d like to… travel with me? As… my Pokemon?”

I stared. She was about the right age to be a trainer, now that I could see her properly, probably about twelve or thirteen with an earnest face, even though her hair was a mess and there was a bandaged claw mark raked across one shoulder. From the Mandibuzz, I realized. She’d been hurt saving me.

I barely had to give it another thought. I licked her outstretched hand and yipped, tail wagging, and her face lit up with a happy smile, pulling me into a hug.

***​

Melissa was crying. I hated it when she cried. She sat down hard on the grass outside of the gym, legs practically crumpling beneath her. I rested a paw on her knee and whined worriedly. She sniffled, moving a hand to rub the metal plate on my forehead.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, her voice thick with tears, and it made me want to cry, too, because Melissa wasn’t supposed to be like this, she was supposed to be happy and loving and kind and my best friend. “You deserve a better trainer. One who won’t let you get hurt.”

No. No no no no no. I growled in objection, but I didn’t even think she heard me.

This was the seventh time she’d challenged this gym, and the seventh time she’d left defeated, cradling my unconscious body in her arms. I crawled into her lap and curled up, hoping my presence would comfort her at least somewhat, but she was still crying. She couldn’t seem to stop.

It’ll be okay, I wanted to say. I’m here, and I don’t care if you’re not a good battler, you’re the best trainer I could have, please don’t cry. I'll stay with you, whatever happens.

She didn’t hear.

***​

“No, please, I need to buy potions, my Houndour is hurt and there’s no Pokemon Center around for miles, please!”

“I’m sorry, little lady. Rules is rules. If you can’t pay, I can’t sell,” the clerk standing behind the counter said, clearly apologetic.

“But if I run into another wild Pokemon, and Houndour can’t handle it…”

“Look, it’s my job if I don’t get the proper payment from you, I really am sorry,” the clerk said, unyielding.

Melissa sighed and turned to go, glancing down at me from where I was laying in the floor, too weak to stand. “I’m sorry.”

The clerk hesitated, then hurriedly pressed a Super Potion into her hand. “Make the most of it.”

Melissa stared up at him, eyes wide. “Thank you,” she whispered.

***​

“That’ll be a hundred and fifty pokedollars,” the ace trainer said smugly, holding out an expectant hand, and Melissa flinched, one hand moving expertly over my barely conscious form, checking that I was alright. She always thought of me first.

“I don’t,” she muttered. “I don’t have any money.”

The ace trainer snorted derisively. “Are you for real? You know the rules, loser pays winner. Hundred and fifty pokedollars, hand em over. Or…” he trailed off, a cruel smile on his face. “I guess I could take your mutt there, instead.”

No, no, no, please no.

“No!” Melissa shrieked, and I loved her in that moment. “No! How could you say that?”

“Well, I want to get paid,” he said stubbornly. “What else you got?”

She hesitated, then slowly reached into a specific pocket in her bag. I realized what she was reaching for a second before she pulled it out and tried to bark in protest, but I was still hovering on the edge of unconsciousness and it came out as a rough whisper.

“A Pokedex?” the ace trainer asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise and grinning triumphantly. “Yeah, I guess that’ll do.”

He snatched it from her hand and winked. “Carry on.”

***​

Melissa was sleeping in a Lumiose alley, and everything about this situation was wrong. She was too good for this. It wasn’t fair. That awful ace trainer who’d stolen her Pokedex and called it fair should be the one who couldn’t afford a hotel room, not Melissa, who was the best and sweetest person I’d ever met. I was standing guard over her prone form, snarling threateningly at anyone who wandered too close.

Melissa blinked slowly awake, yawning and scrubbing at her eyes, and I turned to greet her, barking happily.

Her eyes widened, looking at something behind me, and I whipped around with a snarl, angry at myself for not paying attention and at the newcomer for scaring Melly.

It was a tall human, at least six feet, wearing a fur-lined coat and with a ridiculous explosion of spiky orange hair coming out from his skull. I hated him already, and my snarl intensified, baring my teeth and trying to look as threatening as I could.

He looked straight past me at Melissa. “Hello. I have a job for you, if you’re interested.”

Melly only hesitated for a second before she picked herself up from the ground, gesturing for me to stand down. I didn’t like it, but I did as she asked, still eying the strange man suspisciously.

“My name is Lysandre,” he said smoothly. “I’m the owner of Lysandre Labs, and I represent a group known as Team Flare that wishes to make to world a more beautiful place. Should you accept my offer, you will be provided food and lodging, a uniform, and healthcare for both you and your Pokemon.”

Melissa glanced down at me. I was still glaring at the man, but he continued to ignore my existence. I was tempted to just bite him and make him pay attention, but… this was the first stroke of luck for my beloved trainer in years. I wouldn’t be the one to ruin it for her. Then she might hate me, and I don’t know what I would do then.

“When do I start?”

***​

I came to hate orange.

Everything in the place he brought us was bright, eye-searing red, which was bad enough, but that wasn’t why I hated it. It was because Melly dyed her hair.

This was part of the ‘uniform,’ apparently. Her wonderful messy blonde hair was bleached out, cut short, dyed that violent orange and twisted into painful-looking knots on the sides of her head. I couldn’t look at it.

She traded in the sneakers, jeans and tank top for a nasty, stifling costume, and hid her pretty green eyes away from the world behind opaque orange sunglasses.

She wasn’t Melly anymore. She was just another Team Flare grunt.

I hated what she’d become.

She talked to me less and less. After a few months, she started regularly sending me back to my Pokeball, something she’d never done before. I’d always been standing proud at her side, but now I was locked away in a ball on her belt.

After two months, she only rarely let me out except for battles.

***​

One of the few times she didn’t send me back immediately after a battle (beating a kid, Arceus, when did my Melly become that ruthless?), I was free to wander the base.

I met a Purrloin, curled in a window and watching the flow of passers-by emotionlessly. She cast a lazy, considering look down at me before she edged over, leaving enough room for me to sit next to her.

“Who’s your trainer?” she asked after a moment, half-sounding like she couldn’t care less, but didn’t have anything better to do than make conversation with me.

“Melly,” I replied, then corrected myself, “Melissa Saunders.”

“Oh,” the Purrloin replied. “The newbie, yeah? How’s she doing?”

“...I don’t know what happened to her,” I admitted after a moment. “She’s… different now, and I hate it, and she never even lets me out of my Pokeball.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “That’s the way it goes. At least your trainer still uses you.”

“Doesn’t yours?”

“He used to,” she said, a little wistfully. “But then he came to work here, and soon enough he got better Pokemon, until he didn’t need a weak little Purrloin that couldn’t take a hit.”

Her laugh was harsh and brittle, and a little bit deranged, and all of a sudden I was eager to leave the conversation. I thanked her and hopped down from the windowsill. I started to pad away, but froze briefly in my tracks when she addressed a final comment to my retreating back.

“I’m sorry about your trainer, though. It’s always the worst with the young ones.”

***​

Something big is happening, something huge, the thing that Mr. Lysandre has been working towards all this time. Melly kept talking about it on the way here, letting me out to walk by her side for the first time in months. I imagined her eyes shining with excitement behind the sunglasses as she spoke.

There was a smile on her face and a laugh in her voice for a second as she looked at me, and for that precious moment I could see her the way she used to be, before it was gone again and my heart sank.

I miss her so much.

I glanced up as we walked over the boundary, staring at the towering stone monoliths.

Geosenge Town.

Whatever happens, it’s going to end here.

 

new phone who dis
thx
claim

 

THE BEGINNING STUFF

I’m a sucker for dramatic sentences, and you gave me like five of them in a row. Personally, I thought it was a strong beginning: you hinted at the final conflict and piqued my interest, and you set the tone for the rest of the story really well in the first three paragraphs.

One thing I’d caution you against, which is more of a stylistic thing than concrete advice: the first four sentences of your story (the ones before the first break) are good, but they also don’t feel necessary. It’s almost like having two first chapters, except the second first chapter fits better as a first first chapter, and the first first chapter could be a prologue but also isn’t really necessary. The words themselves are strong here, but I’d argue that they don’t really have the full weight behind them (“I fight for her”, in particular) this early in the story than they would if you brought them in later. Just a little pacing tidbit you might want to consider.

THE STORY STUFF

Overall, I liked it a lot. This was a fast-paced read that hit really hard near the end, and you picked up a lot of steam somewhere near the middle. The timing of your scene breaks was perfect and the pacing was done pretty well: somewhere in the middle, you picked up a ton of momentum and never really slowed down.

The moments in the middle were particularly sweet. I liked that your narrator was so affectionate/dramatic/exuberant sometimes—it felt very much like a dog, and that was an awesome touch. You sketched out the relationship between your narrator and Melissa really, really well while simultaneously setting up the reasons for their downfall. This made your scenes hit twice as hard: for instance, in that scene where they lose a battle to that idiot, you get the character interaction between Melissa and your houndour while also setting up that Melissa low-key really needs a job, which ends up being the undoing of them both.

One thing that’s definitely too high for this level of story, but you seem to know your way around: your structure between each break was pretty repetitive, which ends up being both good and bad. Each section basically took the form [dramatic opening line]/[plot]/[heavy closing line]. It worked really well here, I think, because your scenes were so short and followed so well with each other, but do bear in mind in the future that structure is an important nuance in storytelling. After a while, the same structures wear out—it’d be like if a crime show only had the team catching bank robbers every week.

THE DESCRIPTION STUFF

I really loved how you left certain things implied but still obvious. To me, the set-up for Melissa joining Team Flare was executed almost perfectly: the trainers in your universe are superjerks, Melissa clearly isn’t going to make money by battling, and Lysandre comes in like an angel to save them both. It filled a lot of plotholes that the games leave when it comes to grunts joining these villainous teams, and I think overall you pulled things off really, really well. This applied doubly for the ending line—we know that things are going to fall to shit at Geosenge because we’ve played the games, but the houndour’s determined optimism makes it even more tragic.

That being said, because you’re so good at juggling the subtle stuff, when you do flat-out say some of your details, it turns out kinda awkward. Lines like “She’d been hurt trying to save me” and “I hated what she’d become” feel redundant when you’ve already described those things perfectly well in the previous paragraphs, so these sentences end up feeling a bit unnecessary.

THE MECHANICAL STUFF

I think you spelled the word “suspiciously” wrong, like, once. Otherwise, yeah, you rocked this.

THE OVERALL STUFF

This was an awesome story for a medium-ranked mon. I didn’t want to go too ham on a story for this rank, but hopefully there’s still some useful stuff here for you. Houndour is captured, definitely—this was a great story that hit fast and hard where it needed to. Congrats on your hard work, and we look forward to seeing more from you!