The Pokemon Philosophy

[Isabelle]

Continued from: The Price of Freedom

As soon as Lopunny stepped through the cloud of smoke bellowing from the gate’s entrance, she’s immediately blasted with a wall of heat. Against her fur, it was almost unbearable. Lungs filled with smoke, which taste of sulfur. She violently coughs out a lung as she cleared the smoke and steps into the blood red glow of the Ashen Steppes.
The skies burnt red with smoke and ash as a compliment. The ground was scorched, and pools of lava dot the land. Monsters of different shapes and sizes could be seen in the distance, but very sparse. Outside of them, it was a very lonely, hellish place. Lopunny felt the fear creep into her heart, and every bone and muscle of her body was telling her to turn back and go somewhere else, but she knew she had to go forward. This was the only thing that made sense to her. She scanned the horizon. She could see a long mountain range, but the one that stood out the most, the tallest of the bunch, looked more like a really tall plateau with a circle of smoke hovering over it’s ceiling. She guessed that must be Death Mountain. Her destination in check, her obstacles noted, all that was left was to take that first step…
Her knee keeled over and she fell flat on her face. Her nerves were probably out to sabotage her again. Climbing back on her feet, she started the long walk to Death Mountain.

She walked at an incredibly slow speed. Even though she knew she could run like the wind, her mind still felt safer going at a snail’s pace. She was constantly scanning her surroundings, head jolting towards every sound that would be made. But one sound made her stop in her tracks.
‘Foot steps?’ She thought.
She flopped her ears around, hoping to sense the direction of the source; footsteps, four of them, to the right of her. She heard it give off a snort. She turned slowly towards the origin of the sound.
It was a hyena of sorts, but twice the size and with giant spikes instead of fur. Upon noticing that Lopunny has sensed its presence, it gives out a huge roar and starts moving into a full out run in her general direction. Suddenly, snail’s pace didn’t seem safe anymore.
With a kick, she starts running at full speed, not even looking back, she’s just focusing on getting away from her predator as fast as possible. Upon making a good distance, she looks over her shoulder. The hyena was far in the distance, already giving up.
‘Am I really that fast?’

But that moment of introspection was a moment not looking at where she’s going and promptly trips on a rock. She’s thrown forward, making several hard hits against the ground before rolling down what has turned out to be a slope. She grasps around for something to grab onto as she continues to slide down towards what is quickly being identified as a cliff, but there is nothing but dirt and pebbles in front of her to grasps. She continues to claw at the ground, until she slips over the side of the cliff.
However, just as she’s about to plummet, she caught onto a dead tree, which is rooted in a 90-degree angle. The tree bends to her weight as she dangles at the end of the tree. The dead plant was oddly durable considering it’s condition. Considering she could recover pretty well from a fall thanks to her bounce ability, she looked down hoping there was a surface to land on, but just her luck, she was dangling 80 ft above a pool of lava. With nowhere to go, she struggles to climb up the tree.

But then she heard something flapping. Looking around, she sees what looks like a tiny dragon flying her direction. Dangling, helpless, she realized she was at this thing’s mercy. It flew up to her feet. She barely moved out of the way as it tries to nip at her toes with those big sharp teeth it had. It flew up to look her in the face. She could have sworn it was grinning at her. It started to fly away up towards the top of the cliff, and for a second, she thought it was going to leave her alone. But then it spat a tiny fireball at the trunk of the tree.
‘Oh Arceus, why?’
Thinking fast, she swung the now on fire tree towards the inner wall of the cliff. She swung back and forth until her feet touched. And just as she heard the trunk of the tree snap, she jumped against the surface of the wall with all her might, launching her through the air. She couldn’t see where her body was hurtling towards, but she readjusted herself to land on her legs, hoping she wasn’t landing in lava.
After a long airtime, she felt her feet touched what felt like dirt. She did her best to control the momentum of the landing. However she could only cut her momentum in half before she tumbled forward. She would roll to a stop, back against the ground. Miraculously, nothing was broken, but she could feel bruises all over her body, as well as a few cuts. Her pain was stupendous. She slowly drifted into unconsciousness as she succumbed to her agony.

But before her vision faded to black, she saw three indiscernible figures standing over her; accompanied by a voice.
“Aww, you poor thing!” She heard the voice say.