Apocalypse: 2.5 Burnout

Burnout 2.5

August 2015

I started my patrol of the lake shortly thereafter. It wasn’t just the two kinds of stunfisk I was looking for. Back in the dungeon, I saw a red shovel buried in the sand, almost as if a child had played there, only to return home, abandoning his tool of choice.

I’d been paranoid as all hell when I saw it. The dungeon wasn’t the place to experiment, so I hadn’t dared to touch the shovel. Nothing happened to me, good or bad, which in itself was a good thing in my book. Unfortunately, that meant I still didn’t know what the shovel was.

Was it an item the dungeon had offered me? Did it have a magic effect I didn’t know that could have helped me? Could the dungeon even offer items at all?

Or, the possibility that truly unnerved me: Was it a pokemon?

Pokemon that looked like objects had been around since generation one, voltorb and electrode. In the fifth generation, released shortly before the world went to shit, Unova revealed there were foongus and amoonguss, grass-poison type, mushroom-like pokemon who could also pass as pokeballs. So who was to say there weren’t others?

In the same generation, there were yamask. Their dex entry stood out to me because of how grim it was: Apparently, all yamask were once humans. The golden masks they carried were the perfect likeness of their faces in life, and a yamask could occasionally be found looking at its mask and weeping.

When I played through Black and White, it had been a neat bit of worldbuilding. It added a lovely sense of suspense to an otherwise lighthearted setting. Now, though, it was horrifying to consider.

If that red, plastic shovel was a pokemon, then it must be a ground-ghost type. I could already imagine the dark lore that would have filled its dex entry had it been in a game. Did it lure in children to devour their souls? Or was it formed from the lost souls of those children who had drowned at the beach?

I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. But as usual, finding out was my job.

The dungeon said all pokemon would be seeded in “appropriate environments.” If the shovel was indeed a ghost-shovel, then I would think it belonged at a sandy beach somewhere, far from my mountain lake, but I couldn’t take the risk that the RKS System might consider all shores to be fair game.

I plunged my scouting pole into the muck in front of me. It was a repurposed ski pole made of durable fiberglass that could withstand a person’s weight on it while going downhill. Lake Tahoe being the vacation destination it was, we didn’t have a shortage of these.

I had a dozen more of them strapped to my back. If something took a bite at the pole, I’d hear the sharp crack, giving me clear warning to fuck off. Even better, fiberglass didn’t conduct electricity, especially through its foam handle. A stunfisk wouldn’t do more than give me a lightshow if I poked one.

“Smell anything?” I asked Rocket. 

“Lin…” he chuffed, shaking his head.

We spent all day wandering around our stretch of Lake Tahoe. No one expected me to actually circle the entire lake; that was seventy-two fucking miles, but we did need to make sure the area around the town was safe.

To be honest, it was nice, nice enough that it hardly felt like work. Vincent and his fishermen had struck a delicate balance with mother nature and kept the paths mostly clear of vegetation. Sir Swagsire’s jolly attitude further added to a jovial atmosphere.

I’d allowed him to run off as soon as we’d arrived at the shoreline. He’d promptly launched himself into the shallows with a happy, croaking laugh. I liked to set out a little tub of warm water for him to bathe in each evening, but clearly, there was no replacing a good mudbath in his eyes. I even gained a bond level for it.

Occasionally, Scout and Swagsire would return with information about the local pokemon. With the impressions I received through aura and them poking at my notebook full of pokemon drawings, we were able to get a line of communication going.

I learned that there was a nest of bidoof relatively nearby. According to Swagsire, they were similar to mundane beavers in that they were herbivorous. They ate the inner bark of nearby trees, various types of wild grasses, and aquatic plants I couldn’t quite get specific enough to identify. I marked the nest down in my notebook but made a note to leave them alone. Beavers were critical species to the ecosystem and I had a feeling the local bidoof would soon take that position as well.

They, poliwag, wooper, and tympole seemed to enjoy the mud, or at least, not mind it. We found no trace of either the red shovel nor the two varieties of stunfisk, which was a relief in my book. The inclusion of tympole and wooper in the lake biome was not entirely a surprise.

I called that a job mostly done. We’d return in the evening, maybe stay overnight to see what was active at odd hours, but Vincent and his boys shouldn’t be troubled by those much. Satisfied, we were about to head home when the crack of a gunshot pierced the air.

We rushed towards the sound. By now, I could tell it had come from a hunting rifle and not a pistol. Repeat shots told me that whoever fired it had missed.

“Fly ahead, Scout,” I barked. “Help out if they need it. If not, hold position.”

“Tran!” he trilled. 

When we arrived, it was to find a fisherman shooting aimlessly at a sky-blue duck. It was clad in a stream of water that rocketed it around the surface of the lake like a speedboat. Maybe it wasn’t very fast in the grand scheme of things, but its size and agility made shooting it with a hunting rifle a fool’s errand.

I’d been keeping count of the gunshots. The fifth crack rang out and I knew my man had nothing left. His nemesis quacked mockingly as he hastily replaced his spent magazine before diving underwater, straight towards the submerged nets.

There were two main ways the fishermen here fished. Primarily, the fishermen liked to take boats out into the lake before tossing out homemade nets. But we’d run out of diesel and there were only so many boats that were both big enough to haul a decent catch and didn’t require motor power.

So, they supplemented the boating trips with a network of submerged nets along the shore. The wooden piers were great for that. And to keep wild animals or pokemon from getting to them, one or two of the fishermen always stayed behind.

“Yo,” I said, chuckling to myself. I didn’t know his name off the top of my head, but I’d seen him around. “That’d be Aqua Jet, I reckon. Makes a pokemon several times faster than it is normally, more agile, too.”

“Yeah, I fucking noticed,” he swore, glaring at the water’s surface. “The little fucker’s been stealing from the nets for over a week now.”

“How bad is it?”

“Not enough to affect the catch, not like the dwebble. Still, it’s damn annoying.”

“Curious. A ducklett shouldn’t know Aqua Jet though,” I mused. “I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a part of its normal moveset. Maybe pokemon have expanded movepools in real life.”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. I wanna eat duck, damnit,” he groused.

I laughed and gave him a friendly pat on the back. “If it’s just one or two fishes, why not let it? We don’t exactly have unlimited ammo either, you know.”

“Yeah, maybe. I think the little fucker’s laughing at me.”

“Oh, it’s definitely laughing at you. Pokemon are smart enough to be smug, trust me.”

“But ducks are edible, right? Even magic ducks?”

“They are. Want me to take a crack at it?”

He offered me his rifle. “Yeah, you do that, Shane. Save me a bite if you get him.”

I pushed the rifle back gently. “I have my crossbow. Besides, I was thinking Scout could take it out.”

“Scout?” He looked up and found my tranquil circling leisurely. “Right, Tom’s old bird. Isn’t it supposed to be a pheasant or something? I don’t think those things eat other birds.”

“He, and he’s omnivorous. He’ll eat anything.” I whistled sharply and Scout soon landed on my shoulder. His injured wing had recovered and he was back in top form.

“Suit yourself. Ducks here are fair game anyhow,” he said, waving as he walked away.

“How about it, Scout? Wanna challenge that one when it comes out? I think you should be agile enough for a good fight.”

“Tran? Quil,” he nodded. He’d had relatively few direct battles compared to Rocket and I saw this as a good chance to give him more experience.

“Great. Get ready. It won’t be long now.”

When it next emerged, I realized I'd made a mistake. That was no ducklett. I couldn't tell beneath the curtain of water generated by its Aqua Jet before, but its body was predominantly white, not sky-blue.

But it was no swanna either. Not only was it clearly too small, it possessed a tuft of blue feathers on its head that reminded me of a gelled combover. Since swanna didn’t have a middle-stage evolution, I could only assume it was yet another pokemon Nintendo hadn’t had time to show the world.

I'd never seen this pokemon before, but I could make some educated guesses. It seemed very comfortable with Aqua Jet so I could assume it was both a water type and a physical combatant. Its avian form also said it was a flying type, but I couldn’t be completely sure. A charizard wasn’t a dragon type and tynamo wasn’t a water type; some pokemon played by their own rules.

In the end, what exactly it was didn’t matter. It was a duck and so long as it wasn’t also poisonous, it was food.

“Gust,” I barked. “Knock it into the air.”

“Tran-quil!” Scout chirped. He flapped his wings vigorously, forming a small tornado to throw at the not-ducklett.

“Quack!” it said. It didn’t quack, it literally said the word, “quack.”

Which told me that there was a pokemon with some variation of “quack–” in its name. I now had to live with the fact that this “quack” could potentially present an existential threat to me in the future if it survived and decided to hold a grudge. I sighed. At this point, I just wanted this thing dead for impinging upon my sanity.

The battle was swift. Scout was a highly intelligent pokemon who made up for his lack of direct power with a good grasp of tactics, maneuverability, and intense focus. Truthfully, Scout picked up on the cues and signals I used for ease of communication faster than Rocket had when we first began to work together. He didn’t need me to elaborate on what I needed.

A small tornado stirred up the water, bodily lifting the duck into the air. It might be a flying type, but that was by far better than letting it dive again and playing whack-a-mole.

It maneuvered with Aqua Jet, but before it could dive down into the lake, Scout cloaked himself in a black aura and chirped something that enraged it. Taunt, I’d honestly forgotten he could learn the move.

With its path of retreat closed off, it had no choice but to fight Scout head-on. Scout was twice its size and had far better mobility. The duck was so awkward in the air that I wondered if it was a flying type at all. Other than using Aqua Jet to move around, it could only flap its wings haphazardly to guide its fall.

Less than thirty seconds and several Air Cutters later, I had a very dead waterfowl. My tranquil picked up the carcass and flew back to me before dropping the bird into my hand.

“Great job, Scout,” I praised. He cooed proudly and took his seat on my shoulder.

The duck had called itself a “quackly,” whatever that was. It was a hefty thing, with thick muscles built for a physical scrap rather than Scout's agile hit-and-run tactics.

It weighed a good fourteen-fifteen pounds, more than four times the weight of any mundane duck I'd seen in my life. That was the size of a large, farm-raised turkey, not a wild waterfowl. With bulk like that, it was no wonder it struggled in the air.

Work done for the day, I led my team back to the yacht club that had become the fishing association's headquarters. There, I found Phil and Plue play-fighting together, his mother, Elaina, watching over them cautiously.

“Shane,” Elaina said, eyeing me with measured distaste. Vincent’s wife didn’t like me much, not since the crustle incident. I’d been one of the people who voted to stick her son underground so Plue could flood the tunnels.

Vincent understood. He wasn’t happy, but he accepted that Plue had been the best way to get the dwebble above ground so we could try diplomacy. Elaina, Phil’s stepmother, was a little more emotional, not that I could blame her. Though Phil was safer in the graveler tunnels than on the surface, and she acknowledged that things were well beyond my control there, she never quite forgave me for that mess.

“Elaina,” I greeted back cordially. I held up the quackly corpse. I still wasn’t sure what that thing was called exactly, but until I got my hands on a pokedex, “quackly” it would be. “Mind if I borrow the club’s kitchens?”

“Go ahead, you know where it i–”

“Shane!” Phil yelped, only now realizing I was there. “Woah, is that the fish thief?”

Plue slunk behind his trainer. He still wasn’t comfortable around Rocket. Apparently, there was some existential dread at who I suspected was the marill’s natural predator.

For his part, Rocket gamely ignored the aqua mouse. As far as he was concerned, Plue wasn’t worth the trouble any more than human children.

I reached down and tousled the boy’s hair. “Yeah, it’s a new duck pokemon. I think it called itself a ‘quackly.’”

“Cool! Are you gonna eat it?”

“Eventually, that’s the idea. For now though, I need to take a few pictures,” I replied.

I pulled out a disposable camera and laid the bird on the counter. I used a tape measure and scale to get a few basic measurements I knew Sabrina would want. The yacht club had one of those scales used for fishing competitions between members, though I had no idea where they’d gotten their hands on one.

When I was done, I put the scale back and made for the kitchen. Now that I thought about it, this wouldn’t be a bad time to teach Phil a few life lessons. 

“Yo, kid,” I called back. “Wanna learn how to clean a bird?”

“Shane,” Elaina said warningly.

“Just some basic knife work, Elaina. It’s important information.”

“Can I, mom?” Phil asked imploringly. Kid was adorable. If there was a way for a human to pick up Cute Charm, I figured he’d learn it eventually.

Elaina sighed, her chocolate-brown tresses bouncing resignedly. “Fine, just be careful with the knives.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I saluted.

I led Phil into the fishing association’s kitchen. Theirs was fully stocked, about as good as the one in the town’s central mess hall. The electric stove had been torn out and replaced with a set of metal grates for grilling. The ventilation fans didn’t work anymore, so they’d ripped that out too, along with a decent chunk of the back wall.

I set about starting a fire and heating a kettle of water. This was the first time I’d ever cleaned a waterfowl pokemon, but I was assuming similar rules applied.

“Say, Phil, you ever clean a bird?” I asked while we waited.

“No, but I’ve gutted fish before. Rainbow trout is good eatin’,” he said with a proud nod, with the exact same accent that one of the fishermen had, likely something he’d overheard and thought sounded cool. “I can pull out its guts, but dad says I shouldn’t handle a knife by myself yet. Can I use the knife?”

“Not if Vincent said no. Listen to your pops, boyo.”

“Aww…”

“Still, watch carefully, this is important. See, first, you want to pluck the duck. That means we need to pull off all the feathers.”

“So do we just grab it and pull?”

I nodded and began pulling a few feathers on the breast. “To start. Ducks, and other waterfowl like geese, have lots of feathers because these feathers act like a waterproof coat when they dive. So we start by thinning the feathers a bit and pull out what we can by hand.

“See here? On the tips of the wings? These long feathers especially are useful on any bird. They’re called flight feathers because these are what they use to fly. A smart man can use these to fletch arrows so you’ll want to set these aside.”

“Cool! Can you make arrows?”

“I said that a smart man could,” I replied with a wry grin. “Now, after we pluck what we can, we’ll take that kettle there and scald the duck for five minutes. The hot water will loosen the feathers so we can get the rest.”

“Can I try?”

“Sure, just grab and yank.”

He did, and came away with only a few feathers clutched between his fingers. “It’s hard.”

“Yeah. Duck feathers are harder than chickens. You can pluck an entire chicken by hand.” From what I could tell, pokemon feathers were even tougher to pluck than a normal duck’s. By the time we’d thinned the feathers to my satisfaction, the water was boiling away merrily. “Alright, now we scald it.”

“For five minutes.”

“Good, you were listening. Now let’s see if you can use your brain a bit. What do we do after we scald the bird?”

He stared at me like I was stupid. “Wait for it to cool, duh. Mom says I shouldn’t mess with fire.”

I flicked him on the forehead. “Less cheek, but good. And then after that?”

“Uhh… Pull out the guts?”

“Right. I start by cutting off the head, feet, and wing tips, but I suppose either order works. You ever have fish guts?”

“Like, to eat? Ew!” he squealed, making a disgusted face.

“You don’t usually, right? But you can. Some people like eating liver, especially cod liver.”

“That sounds gross. What even is the liver, anyway?”

“I’ll show you on the bird. Because birds like these are much bigger than fishes, we can actually eat most of the organs. Gizzard, heart, and liver are pretty tasty if you prepare them right. Some people even say they’re treats just for the butcher.”

“They don’t sound tasty though.”

“Maybe. If you don’t want your share, trust me, Rocket will enjoy it just fine.”

“I want to try!” he said, with all the enthusiasm of a nine year old. I remembered those days, when “gross” things were by definition cool.

At the mention of his name, Rocket looked up from a nearby alcove where he’d settled in for a nap. He opened one eye and offered us a lazy yawn. Sir Swagsire had taken to using the oversized ferret’s tail like a blanket. A picture of the two snoozing like this would have gone viral in the Before. Sadly, the internet wasn’t really a thing anymore.

I worked quickly and carefully. When it came time to drain the blood, I did it in a tub of water so we wouldn’t make a mess. I pulled out each organ and set it aside, telling Phil exactly what it was, what it did, and how it could be prepared.

By the time I’d finished and set the cleaned quackly carcass to dry, the fire I’d started had died down. I stirred the coals a bit to get some more heat from the fire and set a skewer of sliced organ meat directly onto the grate.

“You only need a pinch of salt to go with this,” I explained. “In Japan, this kind of cooking is called yakitori.”

“Organs?”

“No, skewering and grilling small pieces over an open fire. It’s different from a frying pan because it lets you taste the smoke of the wood.”

“Wood smoke tastes different?” he asked, puzzled at the idea. “Why would you want to taste smoke, anyway?”

I smiled knowingly. “Give me a minute and I’ll show you. Normally, you’d also eat this with a dipping sauce made of soy sauce or ponzu sauce, but we’ll have to make do.”

Teaching Phil was bringing back bittersweet memories. My uncle loved stuff like this. He had a farm in the Before, and he’d been the one to teach me many of the skills I relied on now.

He was big on self-reliance and especially loved cooking styles that emphasized the freshness of ingredients. He wasn’t Japanese, but yakitori was one of his favorites for that reason. One Fourth of July, he DIY’d a huge, metal grill like at a Brazilian steakhouse because the meat was “fresher” that way.

I allowed the quackly heart to grill for six minutes. Typically, four minutes would get you a medium-rare heart, but I didn’t want to chance it with pokemon meat. Finally, I took one skewer and handed it off to Phil.

“Careful. Don’t burn yourself,” I told him. I gently blew on my share and gave the first bite to Scout before going around to each of my pokemon. By the time Rocket and Swagsire also had a bite, I had a small mouthful left.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Phil asked.

“I am. I’ve got a whole bird I need to cut. But remember, Phil, pokemon are our partners. If we eat, they should eat. In fact, Scout was the one who made the kill so really, this quackly is his. He’s just letting us have some.”

“Oh,” he said, deep in thought. “Thank you, Scout.”

“Tran,” the murder-pigeon bobbed his head in acknowledgement.

Author’s Note

Yes, Shane found a quaxly. Yes, he could have had one of the most competitively viable starters. Yes, he ate it.

Plue the marill is called that because back when Gold/Silver/Crystal first came out, there were rumors of a “pika-blue.” That turned out to be marill. There is also a creature called Plue that’s a weird dog-thing in both Rave Master and Fairy Tail (both written/illustrated by the same mangaka).

Everything I said about ducks is true so you don’t get an animal fact.