Surprise, It’s Snorunt!

Target Pokémon: Snorunt

Pokémon Rank: Medium

MCR: 10-20k

Total Character Count: 10, 425

Surprise, It’s Snorunt!​

Spoiler

Rubbing his dry eyes with the palm of his hand, Kyle Lowe grimaced at the beams of sunlight shining through the gaps of the blinds in his bedroom. Deeply inhaling the delicious coffee aroma filling the house from the kitchen, he struggled to focus his eyes on the foot of the bed to promptly deduce the whereabouts of his Mime Jr., Harry. Relieved to see his mischievous partner still resting face down on his favorite fluffy but tattered old Zigzagoon cushion, Kyle carefully slid his feet out of the covers and onto the floor with moderate confidence it was booby-trap free. Taking a few steps to his desk, Kyle donned his glasses, selected the closest sweater from the bedroom floor, and picked up Frannie’s pokéball before sneaking out the door.

Lazily dragging himself towards the kitchen, halfway feeling his way down the hall, Kyle stopped by the front door to step into some house shoes while he pulled the sweater over his head. Pouring a quick cup of coffee from his new programmable coffee maker (an expensive replacement after some of Harry’s recent levitation experiments involving kitchen sinks and electronics) he took a sip and quietly walked through his living room towards the back patio. Pausing only to turn on the television and tune it to his favorite local Snowpoint City morning news program, he sipped his coffee while walking down the small set of steps to the patio. He noticed the snowfall had still been rather heavy for the time of year, and knowing how she liked it he wasted no time in tossing Frannie’s pokéball toward her favorite empty stretch of the backyard. The quiet Phanpy burst forward with uncharacteristic exuberance upon seeing the wide mounds and drifts of fresh, undisturbed powder around her.

Hesitating for a moment she looked back towards the patio and her trainer. The moment Kyle gave a discreet nod towards the little pokémon, a great puff of white was thrown back towards the house as Frannie tucked into a ball and began rolling through the yard in huge overlapping circles. Though lonely and quite by nature, two things could rev the little Phanpy’s engines; seeing Kyle haplessly fall prey to one of Harry’s original booby traps, and her private playground of a backyard buried in fresh layers of snow. Distracted for a moment by some noisy Spearow fighting over what must have been either a pinecone or a rather displeased Pineco in the trees around the yard, Kyle was surprised to hear Frannie suddenly let out a surprised snort from her trunk and see her fly past the patio a few feet in the air.

“Snoooooooo-RUUUNT!!!” echoed across the frozen yard as three shards of ice promptly soared through the air in pursuit of Frannie and Kyle stumbled, losing his footing. Picking himself up and turning around, he saw an uncommonly large Snorunt standing at the end of Frannie’s most recent trail through the fresh snow in the yard. Before he could more than barely recognize what he was seeing, the Snorunt let out a great sigh and shivered to knock the powder off of its body before leaping toward the direction Frannie was last seen soaring in. A bang on the window woke Kyle from his shocked stupor.

“Mime, MIME MIME MIME!!” was presumably Harry’s rain of insults towards Kyle to either wake-up and open the door, or get ready for more impromptu “home improvements” after using his telekinesis to rip it off the hinges. Kyle threw the door open, and he and Harry dashed from the patio into the yard just in time to see two flashes, one blue and one orange, engaged in a chase around the back of the house. Kyle shouldered his Mime Jr. and ran after them.

“Frannie, use Defense Curl!” he yelled through the wind. Circling the corner of the house he saw the wild Snorunt launch a headbutt into Frannie’s braced body, only to glance off. Though quiet and shy, Frannie’s obedience and trust in her trainer meant that she was not the nervous or unsteady pokémon she might otherwise have been. Quick and confident reactions to her trainer’s commands was one of her greatest strengths.

Seeing the Snorunt dazed from the shock of bouncing off the Phanpy’s suddenly toughened hide, Harry launched himself from upon his trainer’s shoulder into the air.

“Harry, hit it with Fake Out!” Kyle shouted after him.

“Miiiiiiime!” Harry grumbled as he put all his momentum and strength into a blow straight to the reeling Snorunt’s chest. The toothy miscreant, caught off guard, stumbled backward. However, despite the force with which Harry squarely struck his opponent the wild Snorunt maintained its focus and did not flinch, now glowing with a bright aura as it attempted to channel what must have been a powerful ice attack.

“Frannie Rollout! Harry, put up a barrier!”

The hardy little blue ball of pokémon quickly spun herself up to a terrifying speed and lurched across the snow coverd grass towards her former assailant. Harry, out of breath from exerting his frail body, focused his mind and erected a small but sturdy wall of energy on one side of the grounded Snorunt. A painful THUD flatly fell across the conflict as Frannie collided with the wild Snorunt at full speed and drove its body straight into the barrier. Bouncing away from the collision Frannie unrolled and collapsed for a moment, catching her breath during her first moment of rest since the beginning of the sudden backyard encounter. Her rest only lasted for a brief moment, and...

“PIIIIIIII!” Frannie sharply eked as a burst of Powder Snow enveloped the area.

“Frannie, Harry, return!” shouted Kyle. The Phanpy swiftly but gently rolled to his side, easily finding the source of his voice using her sensitive ears. Immediately after, a somewhat winded but unharmed Mime Jr. found his way to the other two through the lingering could of sparkling flakes. Frannie and Harry quickly took up close but well-spaced positions infront of their trainer to await his next instructions.

“Harry use Copycat, Frannie help him out and blow this snow away.”

The quick-witted Mime Jr. let out a focused blast of snow while Frannie took a deep breath, then exhaled with all her might through her snout. The two blasts carved through the middle of the cloud of shimmering flakes and it quickly dissipated.

“Harry put some Light Screens around us,” Kyle ordered, “its fast and crafty.” Harry again focused his mind and then threw up his hands, spontaneously erecting five shimmering walls around the trio. Kyle had lost all sight of the large but cunning Snorunt after the burst of snow, and now scanning the yard he could spot no trace of its bright orange coat. Searching in all directions from within the ring of shields, the trainer hesitated for a moment. “Let’s go inside for now.” Harry briefly raised his arms and dispersed the shields. Kyle returned Frannie to her pokéball and hoisted Harry onto his shoulder again, then briskly made his way back into the house.

Back inside the living room, he kicked off the house shoes and put Harry down on the couch to begin digging through the bureau next to the television. Grabbing a purple bottle with one hand and a Lava Cookie in the other, he handed the cookie to Harry and released Frannie from her pokéball.

“Close your eyes.” he instructed Frannie, and she squeezed them shut while he sprayed the bottle over her. Harry chewed on the Lava Cookie while watching his trainer open the bottom drawer of the bureau to lift out a plain black backpack, made out of sturdy canvas with a buckle arcos the chest. Kyle unzipped a small pouch on the back of the pack and held up one compact pokéball. Flicking the button on its front with his thumb, the ball popped into its full size and Kyle looked back over his shoulder towards Harry.

“What do you think?” he asked his partner in a half mocking tone.

“Mime,” Harry retorted, furrowing his brow so his hat-shaped head leaned forward. He finished the last bite of the cookie and with renewed energy hopped onto the floor, patting Frannie on the trunk as he ran by towards the other end of the house. Kyle followed, and a moment later the two emerged back into the living room where Frannie had taken a seat on the floor. Dressed in warmer clothes with boots and a thicker sweater, Kyle poured most of the coffee left warming in the new coffee maker into a thermos. Harry, attired with a puffy black insulated vest appropriately sized for him, walked over and gave Frannie a knowing look while extending an arm. Frannie bumped the outstretched hand with the end of her snout while Kyle pulled on the backpack and the three were once again out onto the yard.

Going back behind the house Kyle began looking around the yard for any sign that may have led in the direction of the fleeing Snorunt, who now had a head start of a few minutes in making good its escape from a fight that had decidedly become unfavorable. Harry, peering around the yard from the perch of Kyle’s shoulder, watched Frannie wave her snout back and forth over the disturbed snow piles searching for clues to the Snorunt’s direction. Spotting an uneven line of rounded divots in the snow between two lines of trees leading away from the house, Kyle noticed Frannie following her nose towards the same area. Returning her to her pokéball and pointing Harry to his backpack, Kyle ran between the line of trees with his Phanpy’s pokéball clenched in his hand and his Mime Jr. poking out of his open backpack.

The line of trees quickly separated into a somewhat sparse but noticeable thicket, and Kyle eased his pace. Knowing that Frannie and Harry’s execution of the Rollout/Barrier combo must have done some critical damage to drive off such an aggressive wild Snorunt, he wanted to get the drop on it for round two so they could land one more decisive blow and end the struggle with the ice pokémon. Lifting Harry from his pack to the ground, Kyle quietly released Frannie from her pokéball and readied himself with the only empty pokéball he had. Holding a finger up to his lips, Kyle led the trio slowly through the frosty thicket.

Except for the occasional cries of a Fearow circling overhead, the only sound among the trees was the crunching of fresh snow under Kyle’s boots. The sparse thicket was giving way and merging into a more densely populated wood on the outskirts of Snowpoint City. Kyle had been in and out of Snowpoint with Harry and Frannie on many occasions, but never had they wandered through these thick woods on the way to their destination. The trees were closing in on each other more and more the deeper the trio ventured. Kyle began contemplating turning around as the snow covering the floor of the forest thinned out more and more.

At last, he noticed more divots in the thinning blanket of snow, similar in shape to the ones he noticed closer to home though these were also accompanied by long but shallow straight scratches as if something had been dragged over them. Following the odd trail, Kyle, Harry, and Frannie stopped at a tree a few dozen yards away from another recently downed pine. Probably fallen sometime in past week’s snow storms, the tree rested in an area strewn with the litter of what remained of its pine limbs. Carefully approaching closer, the three again laid eyes on the large Snorunt. Kneeling next to the trunk, the snow hat pokémon was piling and arranging some larger pieces of needle covered pine limbs for what looked to be makeshift bedding. Probably intending to rest and regain its energy after sustaining some injuries in the earlier fight, Kyle intended to interrupt the Snorunt’s plans. Waving his palm toward a direction parallel with the bedding area, he silently instructed Frannie on which direction to approach from. Frannie carefully walked her way out, in-between the fallen bits of pine and the standing trees. Kyle then signaled to Harry an area between themselves and the wild pokémon, forcefully pointing two fingers toward the specific spot. Checking the other direction to make sure Frannie was ready, Kyle nodded to Harry then extended his arms and brought them quickly to his chest.

Turning around, the wild Snorunt saw a vest clad Mime Jr. exuding its psychic aura while standing between some trees only a few yards away. Lowering its head, the Snorunt leapt toward Harry with a swift Headbutt. In reaction Harry forcefully swung his arms toward the ground, bringing a rapidly spinning Phanpy enveloped in the same psychic aura down into the dead-center of the wild pokémon’s back. Slamming into the ground before Harry, Frannie bounced away as Kyle emerged from behind another tree and hurled his only pokéball at the wild Snorunt……

Hope your morning starts better than it did for Kyle and Phanpy! :3

Any and all feedback is of course welcomed. If you liked it why not add to the scene? Was that a pinecone or a Pineco?! And I'd love to know what that Snorunt was doing in my yard, so if you have some ideas why not write it!

 

Claiming~

 

General Overview & Plot:

So the basic plot of the story is that your main character has just awoken, started to get his things in order, let his Pokémon go play in the snow and so on, when he meets a Snorunt and start battling it.

I can see this kind of thing happening in the Pokémon world, random Pokémon appearing in your lawn and you having to battle it out to shoo them away, which is a funny picture in itself – especially when it’s in a situation like “Ugh, this? I just wanted to come out and have a good time in the snow and then flippin’ ice troll has to come along”.

That being said, we don’t really get much of a reaction from Kyle, is he happy that he found a new Pokémon? Is he annoyed he has to battle now? Is he angry that this will hurt his friends and sour the rest of the day? Is this just routine by now? I mean, he was obviously worried when his friends were hurt and took care of them, but what were his initial feelings at the beginning of the encounter?

Also, while not necessarily being something bad, it is a bit of a pitfall – if you can even call it that – that some of our newer writers do, your stories don’t need to represent you or a character representing you that has only your Pokémon, nor does it need to have a battle ending in the “will it work?” cliffhanger (it doesn’t even need to have a battle at all!); anything’s fair game as long as the Pokémon you want is in the story at some point or another.

It might be useful to remember this for future stories, as in higher ranks this kind of plot starts to get marked down, so to speak.

And maybe it was just something stylistic, I’m not sure, but you can think of battling in stories more like battling in the Park; you have more free reign, attacks don’t need to happen in strict turn order, can happen at the same time and you can even use “non-conventional” attacks.

As for the length, s’okay for a Medium.

Introduction:

So this passage called my attention after rereading because saying Kyle’s full name sounds a bit awkward, maybe this is somewhat stylistic of me or of those I tend to read, but when someone writes the full name of a character or a compound name in the narrative proper it seems to implies that the character prefers to go around by that name, except in some situations, like:

In here it works because the full name is used to give the character importance, he’s not any boy, he’s not any Kyle and he’s not any Lowe, he’s Kyle Lowe and he’s important. While the way written seems to me that Kyle’s the kind of person that would get miffed if someone called him only Kyle instead of Kyle Lowe, or that habitually goes by Kyle Lowe. Kinda like Darth Vader, actually.

Moving along, the aroma of coffee, also seemed a bit off to me, because throughout the story we don’t see any other character; while a programmable coffee maker it seems odd that there’s coffee makers that would know when to make coffee; I mean there’s no guarantee you’ll necessarily wake up at a given time (at least without an alarm clock, and a lot of times, even with one) to make the coffee so time programming won’t always work, although this might be me just rambling a bit.

Pokéballs as well as other Pokémon related terms are generally capitalized, but as long as you’re consistent it isn’t much of a problem (the same thing applies with the accent). And it came across a little weird that Frannie gets the Pokeball treatment while Harry doesn’t – since they’re both small Pokémon and Frannie’s described as quiet creature.

You probably meant lonely and quiet up there.

Well, firstly, this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, so I might be a bit biased but using Pokémon’s cries as dialogue is a bit awkward because, really, it doesn’t anything, not to mention that for example using certain typographical devices like repeating letters for dragging on the sound, and capitalizing for shouting isn’t exactly something you’d see in a book for example.

Using words like cry, whine, snigger, shout and some (but not too many) adverbs can paint a picture better than just saying something over and over. For example, when Harry speaks in that snippet by simply saying he let loose a flurry of insults or something like that you tell us the same thing you told us without needing to use what basically amounts to gibberish, as all Pokémon names really are.

Climax:

All in all, the battle scene flows quite well; there are some things that drew my attention but those are only minor detractions.

“Only to glance off”, isn’t quite grammatical in this case it seems to imply that Snorunt was the agent in the glancing off when context tells us that it’s the patient. Something like “to have it glanced off” would work better. Proper grammar also says you can’t quite finish a sentence with a preposition, but it’s something so common that’s not a big issue nowadays and is in fact even debated. Also, this particular use of glance off isn’t really common, so it might confuse some readers; I’d recommend maybe something like “bounce off” or maybe “shrug it off”.

The “upon” and “into the air” are a bit superfluous here.

Eked doesn’t seem to work here, unless Frannie grew because of the Powder Snow. Did you mean shrieked?

From there on, it flows pretty nicely, we get a nice view into how Kyle is feeling, and there’s a nice pacing.

Final Considerations:

Seems pretty solid, there’s some things that could be worked on, and we’d have benefited a bit more with some views into how our main character is feeling throughout the story; but other than that, it’s pretty good.

You may go ahead and claim this Snorunt as yours.