Kaizul's mind felt… hazy.
After finishing with his system, he had spoken the word and found his mind fading to black. Now, he lay floating in a warm liquid of some kind. The wind howled a hollow melody of solitude around him.
Goosebumps rose across his skin, and he winced as freezing water tapped onto his face. He opened his eyes and found himself in a glacial cavern.
He leaned up from his position and took in the surroundings. Behind him, a massive stone petroglyph depicted Arceus with the stars surrounding him. Energy flowed from him and coalesced into a human baby at the base of the formation.
There was a massive opening thirty feet from where he rested and tunnels all around him that dug into walls leading down. He stood, and just as he stepped onto the frozen floor of the cavern, he almost leaped back into the pond.
"So cold," he said while rubbing his feet.
Solid ice formed the walls and floor, and stalactites of ice hung above, which was the source of the water now sliding down his robe. With a deep, foggy exhale, he stepped back out onto the ice.
For a moment, his face contorted in discomfort, before his expression steeled and he wandered over to the opening. He drew a sharp breath when he saw what was out there. Colors. A massive array of colors danced across the sky in his vision as if alive. It ebbed back and forth as if to its own rhythm and tune.
Kaizul was standing at the peak of a gargantuan mountain. A quick glance down revealed a fall of at least three hundred feet, and at its base? Chunks of ice bigger than his head, and a variety of strange animals he didn't recognize. A massive wall of fog loomed on the horizon, preventing him from seeing further out into the world.
There was a blizzard outside, but despite it, the boy didn't move.
"It's beautiful," he said.
Soon, pain shot through the child's ligaments as frostbite set in. Quickly, he moved back to the water he had awakened in and stepped inside. A sigh of relief escaped him.
"Well, it's colder than isolation in here." He said. "I need to figure out some way to keep warm before long or I just might freeze to death."
Deciding to take the easiest option he could think of, he opened his system and navigated to the crafting panel for his robe. Spending a hundred points, reducing his total to 1,788, he tried to transmute the material to incorporate a silk gland from the Caterpie he had slain.
He then used another forty-five points to first change its style from robes, which he had learned could be difficult to move in, and shifted it into something far more comfortable and with more coverage. He jumped through several iterations of the ensemble in his head before the chill helped him settle on a simple pair of black silk pants, boots, shirt, and gloves. Over the top of it, he made a white cloak with a mask built into the hood, then enchanted the whole thing with auto repair.
It still wasn't great at keeping the cold out, but it did a hell of a lot more than the open robe he had before. Also, the addition of silk to the material the system had used in his robe made it extremely comfortable.
And even if the cold still got to him, just having this layer of cloth was enough to make an enormous difference as his frostbite died down.
"Well, now that just leaves how I'm going to dry my clothes." Kaizul said.
He didn't understand the exact science behind it, but he knew that being wet in this frigid environment wasn't just going to make him cold. It would downright kill him. He was lucky to have this small pond to help him warm up, but what if that wouldn't remain the case?
He was admittedly still new to this world, but he understood that water didn't normally stay so warm, especially in an environment as cold as this. And all this was not even considering what he would eat and drink.
He didn't know how he knew it, but it just felt instinctive. He knew what water was, and at the most basic level, what it was for. Knew that drinking water fresh from melted ice in a cave was a terrible idea, and that he should find a source of heat as soon as possible. He had meat stored in his system. Enough to last for who knows how long, but without a method of cooking it, it probably wasn't safe.
So, he worked on a solution.
"I need fire, but there's nothing around here to burn. I can't scale the edge of the mountain, so I guess I need to go into the tunnels to find something. But first, how am I going to dry my clothes?" He muttered.
Eventually, he decided it wouldn't do any good for them to remain in the pool with him, so he took them off and hung them on a chunk of ice attached to the wall of the cavern. He then promptly returned to his birthplace.
He sat there waiting for his clothes to dry. With how cold it was, he was worried they might freeze instead, but he didn't really have a choice.
It was that or go out in wet clothes and hope he found something to start a fire. And if he was going to do that anyway, he might as well wait and see if his clothes would freeze.
So, he waited. As time passed, Kaizul found himself thinking.
'Huh, this is the first time since my creation that I've really taken a moment to think with no immediate thoughts pressing down on me, isn't it?'
He found his mind wandering, and the longer it did, the more lost he felt. Why was he even here? What exactly did that strange statue bring him here for? The longer he thought, the more questions followed.
And as time went on, a lingering dread built. It started as a pit in his stomach, an ever-present reminder. He recalled what his system had told him at the beginning. He had to sleep every night, or nightmares would break through into reality.
That meant that with each passing second, he was getting closer to going back. Back to the endless fighting. The endless deaths where he would throw himself at impossible odds, just hoping to become proficient enough to survive.
Alone, surrounded by enemies, in a painful struggle. That no one would see. Before he knew it, he rubbed his arm. He stood and began pacing back and forth through the pond. His skin grew cold, and he lay down again to get warm, only to get up moments later and continue pacing.
He got out of the water and checked his clothes. Still wet, they hadn't even changed all that much. He got back into the pond again. This repeated three times before something shifted.
'I'm wasting time,' he thought.
With each passing second, he was getting closer to his next nightmare. And he couldn't take it anymore.
Freezing cold or not, he needed to make progress. If he didn't, then what had he fought so hard to get here for? So, with a will honed through thousands of deaths where he had kept pushing through pain and suffering, he ignored the frostbite nipping at his body and wandered into the icy tunnels.
----- * -----
Kaizul walked down the sloping ice. It had only been minutes since he had left the cavern, yet already his feet had stopped feeling pain, and now only felt fuzzy.
For whatever reason, he didn't think that was good, but he ignored the feeling. He wanted to push just a little further. He wanted to find something.
"Is anyone there!" he shouted.
His words echoed through the air of the tunnels. Their cadence mocked him as no voices responded.
"Please, I-I think I need help!" he called, stuttering as he shivered from the cold.
Yet again, there was no response. Forget other people, he couldn't even find any other signs of life in these tunnels. Though he hadn't really explored them all that much yet. Still, he pressed forward.
And then, as if answering his prayer, he heard something. It was a deep sound, like wind blowing into a furnace.
It sounded soft and distant, but still he clung to it. There was at least something. Desperate for anything, any other signs of life, he followed the sound. He had to squeeze into a small crevice and through two more tunnels, but finally he found something.
It was a massive cavern, much like the one he woke in. But unlike his own, this cavern had a large opening at the center of the ceiling. Snow fell in from the side of the mountain and filled the cavern, and there, resting in the snow, was a bird.
'It's huge,' Kaizul thought.
The thing was easily a foot taller than he was, and every time it let out a breath, he could see frost build on the ground near it.
'What is that?'
In answer to his question, his power tugged on its own.
Articuno: The Bird of Ice
Potential: Legendary
Strength: Champion
Moves:
[Agility] [Ancient Power] [Aerial Ace] [Avalanche] [Air Cutter] [Blizzard] [Defog] [Double Team] [Double-edge] [Endure] [Facade] [Fly] [Freeze-Dry] [Frost Breath] [Giga Impact] [Gust] [Hail] [Hidden Power] [Hurricane] [Hyper Beam] [Ice Beam] [Ice Shard] [Icy Wind] [Mist] [Mud-slap] [Natural Gift] [Ominous Wind] [Pluck] [Powder Snow] [Protect] [Rain Dance] [Reflect] [Rest] [Roar] [Rock Smash] [Roost] [Sandstorm] [Secret Power] [Sheer Cold] [Signal Beam] [Sky Attack] [Sky Drop] [Steel Wing] [Sunny Day] [Swift] [Tailwind] [Toxic] [Twister] [Water Pulse]
Even as the notification appeared for him, Kaizul focused on something else. There in a corner of the cavern were bones. A pile of them at least twelve feet high. Bones of creatures Kaizul had never even seen before, some of them far larger than Kaizul knew of and certainly larger than he could take in a fight. Then there was the creature's potential.
'And what does that strength section mean, and why didn't the Caterpie have it?'
For once, his system had no answer ready for him.
Kaizul stood frozen. Then slowly he backed up. He didn't even make any extra sounds. Yet something he had done must have given him away. As soon as he stepped back, the bird's eyes snapped open and immediately locked onto him.
He stared into its golden eyes, and it stared back. Its eyes board into him, and his blood ran cold. It moved to stand, and before it was even off the ground, Kaizul bolted back through the tunnels to the crevice. He had barely cleared the first tunnel when the legendary bird came into view.
And it was fast. The thing was moving at least three times the speed he was. And as soon as he came into view, it opened its beak, and large shards of ice appeared in the air in front of it. They didn't even form from its beak, and tens of them shot forward to impale him.
He dashed so fast around the corner that he slid across the ice, only keeping his balance with years of practice from climbing treetops and sheer luck. Without a doubt, he had never moved so fast before in his life.
By the time he was nearing the crevice, the Articuno had appeared in the tunnel behind him. This time, it let loose a breath of frost that rapidly ate up the ground between them.
"Go go go go go!" he screamed as he rushed through the crevice, a small shard of ice tearing a deep laceration across his arm on his way through. He then dived behind the ice. The frosty breath pushed through the small gap, and it clipped his arm on his way down.
He felt a sharp sting of pain and yelled. After opening his eyes, he glanced at his arm. The blood from his cut had frozen instantly from the attack, forming a spike of blood that hung off his arm, pointing forward and defying gravity.
'Keep running,' he thought.
He dashed through the tunnels, and the Articuno elected not to follow him through the crevice that was too small for it to fit through. It took him less than three minutes to return to the cavern he had come from.
He dashed forward and dove into the pond, moving to hide behind the large stone that depicted his creation.
His heart roared in his ears like thunder, and his entire body had gone numb. He didn't cry, nor did he make a sound. He just continued panting as he let himself rest against the stone.
His mind raced a thousand miles a minute, but holding onto the thoughts was like trying to grasp an eel. An undetermined amount of time later, after his heart had calmed, Kaizul slowly glanced at the spike of blood hanging from his arm.
Reaching out and ripping it free, he held it in the air in front of him. It thawed and dripped into the pond. It melted in his hands and left them stained with red proof of his latest excursion.
His arm pulsed in time with his heartbeat, pain reverberating through him. And as it did, he found his thoughts once more.
'First the Caterpie and now this strange Articuno? In a world like this, how am I even supposed to survive?' he thought.
He then glanced over to the opening that showed the strange rainbow-colored lights in the sky. Now blurred by a great blizzard.
'That thing had wings.' He realized.
That presented him with two choices: he could either rest on one side of the stone, which would leave him vulnerable to the cave, or rest on the other, which would leave him vulnerable to the sky.
He hid himself from the cliff edge and glanced with dread toward the cave entrance.
"I guess I'm probably gonna die here, huh?" he said, speaking to the depiction of Arceus.
Yet, as always, he found no answer.
----- * -----
The boy had fled. Like all humans inevitably did before its might.
She let a piercing cry echo across the mountain as Pokémon closer to the base retreated into their nests and tunnels.
Articuno winced in pain before glancing down at her leg. It still burned from the ridiculously strong Raichu she had fought, and even here the humans continued to hunt her. Those men and women dressed in black, who would gang up on her twenty on one just so they could trap her in those red spheres and use her for their own greedy ends.
She thought back to that young man and his Raichu, as well as the fifteen other humans and Pokémon that had assisted them. She had finally defeated them only to come back to her nest and find another human waiting here?
Had she not been so weak and resting, and the boy's instincts so good, she would have caught him before he even reached the first tunnel. But still it was of no matter. She didn't know how the child had come this far up the mountain, nor did she know why he was here.
He certainly couldn't capture her even in her weakened state, and he had been just as surprised to see her as she had him. But he didn't have any clothes or armor on, and if there was one thing she knew about humans, it was how squishy and delicate they are.
He couldn't survive on the mountain like that. He would die a lonely death from the peak's unforgiving cold. She was safe again, and so was her home.
She returned to her nest and once more lay on the ground in preparation to rest. She needed to conserve her energy so that she could fulfill her mission. And nothing, human or Pokémon, would get in her way.
----- * -----
A strange tingling sensation wrapped around his arm after he washed it in the pool. The pain faded, and Kaizul was able to witness the visual shift in his body. The water was healing him, slowly. That was good news at least, and yet despite it, he now stood once more by the cliff.
Night had fallen, and the blizzard had broken. The fog wall still loomed in the distance, but now, the light he had seen was gone. Instead, as he looked down, he saw only a sheer cliff face that fell into darkness.
"Hey, magic screen or whatever I should call you, can I ask you a question?"
Notice!
What do you need, Master Kaizul?
"Do I have to go back to sleep again? And if I do, can I choose not to experience those nightmares?" he asked.
Notice!
Yes, Master Kaizul, you need to sleep again, and you will experience the same nightmares.
"Then tell me, what would happen to us if I were to die in the real world and not the dream one?" he asked. "Would I still come back to life the same way? Will I just wake up in a pool of water again? To give it all another shot?"
Notice!
No, Master Kaizul, if you succumb in the waking world, then you will die permanently. There will be no additional attempts.
Kaizul continued to stare into the dark abyss below. "Would that make a difference at all? Would that even have any effect on this world?"
Notice!
Yes, it would, Master Kaizul. You have been granted great power, and with it, responsibility. Should you fail in that task, the world will be affected.
"I'm not a hero, you know," he said.
Notice!
That has not been decided yet, Master.
But why do you bring this up now?
The screech of Articuno echoed through the air, and Kaizul scanned the sky before taking one last look over the edge.
"No reason, I guess. No reason at all." He said.
With those words, Kaizul returned to the pond, an entire day having gone by. His clothes had frozen, not having dried at all. His arm had scabbed over from the deep laceration he had received in his rush from death. The only neighbor he'd met was a carnivorous legendary bird.
He had yet to eat anything or even find the materials to start a fire, and to top it all off, he had made absolutely zero progress in finding out how to get off the mountain.
But hey, at least if he was lucky, the wound on his arm might have healed by morning with the help of the water.
Silver Lining
[Author's Note]
Hi guys!
I apologize, this chapter took longer than expected. I had to do some research on Pokémon lore I missed out on over the years.
And I have come to an interesting question that I need to answer.
In the lore of the Pokémon universe, there are legendary and mythical Pokémon, right?
Well, I personally am more inclined toward the idea that there is only one of each of those Pokémon. Unfortunately, that is just not accurate in either the games or the visual series. There are also plot holes that exist in both the anime and games throughout the Pokémon universe.
So I guess I have a question for those that care.
Would you prefer that I go the route of rewriting a lot of the Pokémon lore to try and patch the plot holes and potentially make a world where Legendary and Mythical Pokémon are exactly that? Or do you all think I should stick as close to canon as I can?
I'm curious to hear what all your thoughts on that would be.