A Pokemon Parable

By bugmaniacbob. Art by bugmaniacbob.

Once upon a time, on an island more or less indistinguishable from all those other islands around it, there lived a young and adventurous Scrafty, who was not learned in the ways of the world, and was a source of much anxiety to his mother, who was not quite so young or adventurous, and to be quite honest wasn't exactly learned in the ways of the world either, but is pretty much irrelevant to the story so we'll pretend she doesn't exist.

Anyway, this Scrafty. One day, it being a particularly fine day, our friend decided it would be a particularly nice day to take a short walk outside. However, as he stepped outside his den, the skies appeared to cloud over ominously. But the foolish Scrafty was not unduly perturbed by this, and continued his nonchalant stroll, until he heard a voice from the den calling him back. This voice belonged to his father, the Haxorus. The Scrafty's mother, you see, being a mistress of the Theory of Natural Selection, held rather high aspirations for her offspring, and had thus endeavoured to find for her life's companion one that knew the move Dragon Dance. Having failed to find such a creature among her own species, she had eventually come across a creature that, while twice the size of her, did at least satisfy her requirements, and as the laws concerning bestiality were rarely followed amongst desert lizards, the net result of this unholy pairing was the slightly gormless hoodie that this tale concerns. But we are straying from the point again.

"Son of mine, wherefore dost thou forsake thine abode?" quoth the Haxorus gently.

"Jaz goin' dahn' da road, dja' git meh, like, blad?" reproached the Scrafty hotly, not entirely understanding what he had said but knowing from experience that people ran away if he said it to them in the street.

"My son, whatever you just said, I'm sure it cannot be so important that you would venture out into such an unholy tempest!" cried the Haxorus passionately, gesticulating madly at the mildly cloudy sky. "Dare ye go out so woefully unprepared against the elements? Why, in this day and age, 'tis tantamount to suicide!"

"Wha'evvah," replied the Scrafty distractedly, and wandered off, leaving his distraught father behind him.

Now, it just so happened that on that very same day, three djinns were flying by the Scrafty's home, and were arguing quite a bit. They were really quite matey, you know, when they weren't arguing… which was pretty much all the time, alas.

"Now, look here, I'm telling you that we're clearly Arabian deities. I mean, look at us, we're flying in clouds, we've got silly cloud hair; heck, we've even got these stupidly massive moustaches that look like they're eating our faces," said the Tornadus. It should be noted here that the Tornadus was 'Barry' to his friends, and the Thundurus was 'Paul'. Why this was the case is impossible to say.

"But that's simply ignoring the facts," countered Paul the Thundurus. "It's quite clear that we represent the Japanese kami of wind, thunder, and fertility, respectively. I mean, since when did genies ever have such clearly definable roles?"

"Aha!" cried Barry the Tornadus triumphantly. "But Rudyard Kipling described a multitude of genies in his tale of how the camel got his hump, specifically mentioning the Djinn of All Deserts as being nicer than the other Djinns, which is true, because Landorus makes things and we break things, you see, and what's more, the cover of the Just So Stories has a picture of the Djinn with a huge moustache, just like ours. So that proves it."

"Be quiet, you two," rumbled the Landorus. He was called Winston, you see, but for some reason he didn't like the others using that name, and if anybody ever used it they got rather badly hurt. Hence why the name slipped out of use. Just at that point, Barry noticed the Scrafty strutting across the grassy plains without a care in the world. He rubbed his hands together gleefully.

"Oho," he chuckled, "I spy a wee little moron who hasn't kitted up properly for the weather."

"I say," agreed Paul. "I do believe my Prankster ability is starting to tingle."

"Hang on just a second," said the Landorus, who had been thinking to himself for a few seconds and not really paying attention. "Aren't I supposed to be the one who stops you two from doing your evil deeds? Why am I flying about with you discussing existential philosophy?"

"Aha!" cried Paul, turning to Barry with a smile. "The kami of fertility was a Shinto deity, whereas the other two were originally evil demons! So that proves it."

At last Landorus had lost patience, and with a snort, flew away, all the while planning his revenge. The two evil genies giggled as he flew away.

"Ha!" shouted Paul. "Go off and play Okami, then, you silly old legless combine harvester. The Playstation version, not the Wii remake."

"Yeah!" cried Barry. "Who'd want to be a god of fertility, anyway?"

The genies pondered this exciting prospect for a few minutes, and then, remembering that they were supposed to be traumatising a retarded little child, put their fantasies on temporary hold and flew off towards the estuary. Arriving by the estuary, our wicked friends met with a Politoed, who was sitting in the slow river looking rather bored.

"So, how are you, my dear?" prompted Barry.

"Oh, I'm ahl righ' and ahl tha'," said the Politoed musingly, in a drawling voice of dubious origin. "The wa'er's nice and kewl, isn' i'?"

"So it seems," said Paul. "But we desperately require your assistance."

"Mine? Wha'eveh faw?"

"We need some rain," said Barry. "And we need it now."

The Politoed thought, and thought, and thought a bit more. Then, slowly, it raised its head and said quizzically, "bu' ain' yew the god of thunduh oh something? Why do yew need me?"

"God Freak works in mysterious ways," replied Paul, with no little bitterness. "But we are running out of time. We must be on our way. Hurry, hurry!"

And so it was that the daft little Scrafty was waddling its way through the fields, and thinking how clever it was to have ignored its silly old father and gone for a walk, was in quite a merry mood. Suddenly, the heavens opened up and it began to rain. Irritated, the Scrafty looked up at the clouds, his ego somewhat punctured. But what he saw up there startled him.

Hurtling towards him were two massive creatures swathed in white cloud, fire in their eyes and gel in their moustaches. Trailing from the hand of one were white-hot sparks of lightning, the embers scattering across the ground like meteorites, the light echoing in the raindrops and surrounding the creature with an aura of malice. From the hand of the other was a ball of swirling winds, a great maelstrom that twisted the very air within it and skewed the world around it. Their great oily bodies glistened as the rainwater rolled down their chests, and the power in their tails fueled the flames in their hearts. I could probably go on, but you get the picture.

There was also a silly green frog running just behind them, but to be quite honest, in terms of the Scrafty's immediate problems, the Politoed was quite low down on the list.

Paul unleashed the full fury of his Thunder, striking the wet grass and burning it to a cinder before the rain had a chance to douse it. Barry followed this up with a roaring Hurricane that tore up the trees that the Scrafty had just been contemplating hiding behind. The Scrafty tried to run, but unfortunately was to learn the dire consequences of not wearing a belt. Its trousers collapsed around its ankles, and it fell to the ground with an almighty crash, where it lay quaking in terror as the thunder and wind raged all around it. Paul and Barry circled the poor creature, roaring with laughter.

Suddenly, the rain began to slow, and a howling wind swept through the field, blowing the rain backwards, buffeting everything in its path, tearing up the surviving foliage, and knocking the genie twins to the earth.

"What the hell did you do that for?" spluttered Paul angrily, picking the leaves out of his moustache. "What makes you think I did it?" replied Barry, spitting out a mouthful of sand.

"You're the ruddy god of wind, aren't you?" retorted Paul. "It wouldn't work from a continuity perspective if there was a way to summon a wind-based power that you were weak to. That would just be ridiculous!"

Just then there was a renewed onslaught of wind and ire from the south. Squinting dimly, the two genies spotted Landorus, flanked by a Tyranitar and a Hippowdon, their blood raging and their hearts thirsty for vengeance. A sandstorm swirled all around them, and the earthen legions advanced. Their sky-bearing adversaries howled and moaned and gnashed their teeth, their very skin seeming ablaze as they flew to confront their beige brethren. As wind struck wind and the thunder met the earthquake, the Scrafty crawled away in abject terror. An Excadrill moved to block his path, but the Scrafty used Hi Jump Kick, and made good his escape. As he sprinted away as fast as his stumpy little legs and 58 base Speed would carry him, he looked back. The genies were writhing somewhat as an Abomasnow appeared out of nowhere, summoning a howling blizzard that sent them all reeling, and then a Ninetales appeared just for narrative effect. The blistering heat of its approach seared the Scrafty's back even as it fled.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the Scrafty got back home safe, sound, and severely traumatised. He never spoke of his hideous adventure, but every time he went outside, he would always take both an umbrella and a Ferrothorn: the umbrella to protect him from the rain, and the Ferrothorn for moral support. And from that day on, he never underestimated the power of the weather.

Elsewhere, the genies settled their differences, and went their separate ways. Barry and Paul forged lucrative careers as children's television idiots for a short while, and when that failed, became employed as stunt doubles for the Mario bros, before shaving off all their hair to act as stunt Lakitu, and finally ending up as BBC meteorologists. Winston had a rather more successful time, becoming Professor of Fertility Studies at Hammersmith Hospital, and later becoming a famous professor, scientist, doctor, and television presenter, as well as a member of the Labour party.

The End

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