Curate's Egg - Image of God

[farla]

Easter Wattpad prompt, also gave me a reason to ponder pokeverse religion which I usually skip over. Wanted an egg related title and "a curate's egg" originally means saying there's something good about something terrible "out of timidity or politeness" and the meaning's now shifted to mean "something of very mixed quality".

This will probably be a chapter in itself. Also, the seviper takes her name from the number of zangoose she's bested.



Jackson cursed, chasing the seedot, or more accurately, chasing his watch currently held tight in the curled leaf bobbing behind the cursed pokemon. He'd just been thinking how it'd be nice for there to be something to actually deal with instead of waiting around staring at flowers, and well, talk of a gyarados and you'll get eaten.

The seedot sprinted up to a blonde girl with a bidoof standing near her feet. It hopped into her arms, his watch still clutched in the leaf growing off the top of its head.

"Is that your pokemon?" he shouted.

~I'm terribly sorry.~ Some psychic? Didn't they usually stick to psychic pokemon? And this was one so infuriating pretentious she was showing off rather than just talking like a normal person. As he glared, the girl pried the watch loose and gingerly held it out to him.

He snatched it back, not at all mollified. "And what are you even doing here, Floaroma Meadow's off-limits! There's a sign!"

~I was pursuing Autumn Bounce here,~ she responded, as if that didn't just underline the problem. ~The good weather has him so excited. He only wanted to play.~

"You need to keep your pokemon under control!" he thundered. "When were you last at a pokecenter? You should've had that leaf clipped off as soon as you noticed it, weeks ago!"

~Clipped?~ she repeated. Her eyes grew big and trembly. In her arms, the seedot began to bleat, "Dotse!"

He ignored both forms of nonsense. "It's basic husbandry!"

~He uses the leaf to hold things,~ she said.

"Yes! That's the problem! What is wrong with you!" Arg, kids these days. "That's it, trespasser. I challenge you to a battle," he said. "And then you're getting yourself out of here when you lose. Go, Zangoose!"

Her expression transformed in a flash to a pleasant smile, like this was some sort of joke to her. ~Oh. How nice. Three will love this.~ And then, like some sort of crazy person, she sent out a seviper.

He tried getting out at least one order but his zangoose was already in a wild frenzy. The girl just stood there silently. Under any other circumstance, he'd complain about the terrible sportsmanship of using private telepathy to hide her commands but there was no way she could be giving any. This was someone incompetent enough to think of sending out a seviper against a zangoose when Cynthia herself would be hard-pressed to keep one listening in such circumstances.

Which by all rights should have meant his zangoose won. Everything about this girl said she was some coddling airhead who didn't know a thing about actually handling pokemon.

But her seviper was an absolute beast, the sort of thing that made you think about how in the old days people just called these things monsters. Zangoose had quite the resistance to poison but within minutes his pokemon had more venom than blood in its veins.

"Hrn." He recalled his pokemon and regarded her with grudging respect. She looked back with a smug serenity. Well, she'd earned that. "Not bad. You're a better trainer than I expected."

~I can't take the credit,~ she said modestly as she knelt down by her seviper, dropped her bag, and began applying medicine. So she had enough successes to have money to burn as well. ~She's quite tenacious.~

"Well then. My name's Jackson. What's yours, trespasser?"

~Ormarr Shesha. I do apologize for trespassing, though.~

He waved a hand. "I'm just supposed to make sure no one tampers with the eggs for the 'Easter' hunt," he told her, unable to hold back the sneer. "Everyone else is attending Easter mass so I was tapped to help out, when the whole reason I'm not taking one step into that church is the pastor supporting this sort of pagan garbage. Eggs, eggs, eggs, like what comes out of a pokemon's butt has anything to do with divinity. You know, they've also doing this ridiculous 'tournament' about" - he checked his watch - "now where all the kids bang their colored eggs against each other and whichever one doesn't break is crowned champion."

~That's awful.~

"I know, right? Stick around and there's going to be an Easter bonfire tonight as well. They let people drag the garbage from their heathen cults along with them when they converted to the Trinity, and it's still stuck on almost two thousand years later and there's pastors, pastors who should know better, talking about Mesprit, Azelf, and Uxie hatching all because the pagans here were egg-obsessed and liked to go on about their mythical Palkia and Dialga coming out of an egg. There's even really ancient stories saying the world itself hatched out of an egg."

~I've heard something like that,~ Ormarr replied. ~That the sun is the egg of the next world.~

The bidoof at her feet squeaked, "Doof!"

He laughed. "Yeah, sounds like their sort of dreck. Ancient people believed some weird things."

~Well, who's to say what's truth when it comes to beliefs?~

The bidoof at his feet chittered, "Bi bi bi bi!" stubby tail wiggling.

He nodded. "It's about faith," he agreed. "The point isn't that there's a flesh and blood Uxie, it's about how our knowledge, our ability to reason and solve the problems before us, separates us from pokemon. Humans have been blessed with intellect, with passion, and with drive. It's about the virtues they represent. You know?"

The girl was quiet, evidently thinking. ~I must confess, my family are not members of your church, but in some respects perhaps we are similar in outlook. We look to one named Rayquaza as something to aspire toward. I would never expect Rayquaza to descend from the sky to solve a problem for someone, however long they cried out. Rather, we must work to weather our trials.~ She rolled the pokeball in her hands and added, ~And remain mindful of how humans are separated from pokemon. It's why I sought out a seviper when I decided I must become a trainer,~ she said. ~Snake pokemon are similar to Rayquaza, and even if it is only a silly superstition, I felt I'd need all the luck I could get.~

"You've certainly got an eccentric team," he said. "A seviper, a seedot, a bidoof?" He stared at the unassuming, rotund brown pokemon. It looked back at him and made a chuffing sound.

~Oh,~ she said. ~No, the bidoof lives here. She came over to say hello.~

"Huh," he said. It's hard to reconcile her having the command of pokemon to invite a wild one to relax by her feet, however dopey and stupid it might be, and her seedot's earlier behavior. Actually, where had that seedot gone?

He was jolted out of his idle musings by someone screaming, "Help me!"

"Stop!" a pair of other voices shouted.

That voice... "...Judith! Is that you?"

"Help!" Judith rounded the corner of the path and sprinted right toward them. A foot away from Ormarr, she smacked into thin air and was knocked backward.

~I'm so sorry!~ the girl said. ~I'm. I'm very claustrophobic. It's automatic. Are you okay?~

She was obviously not, but it didn't look like that had much of anything to do with hitting...some sort of psychic force field? "Judith," Jackson said, "what's going on?"

"There's -"

A pair of freaks in monochrome outfits tromped up behind her. He might not like all that pagan egg nonsense but at least it wasn't an actual New Age cult. What were his taxes even for if the government was going to allow this? One swore loudly, and in front of a kid! Frankly he didn't think Ormarr looked old enough to be hearing that sort of language either. The other shouted, "Don't you dare think of getting involved! Now give us the key, little girl!"

Judith scrambled behind him. He looked to Ormarr. "Well, you beat me, so you're the one playing hero today. Zangoose was my only pokemon."

~Oh. I.~ She looked oddly uncomfortable. ~This really has nothing to do. I mean.~

"Ooof do bi, do!"

Her face shifted back to the same gentle smile. ~Yes. As a trainer, and as a human being, I will of course battle these people. The virtues unique to humanity... That is part of the difference between myself and a pokemon, is it not?~

Little bit weird there, but sometimes people were like that. He'd heard all the really great trainers were a little bit off, anyway.

The two Galactic freaks nodded at each other and threw out their pokeballs, revealing a stunky and a croagunk. Ormarr responded with a mawile and what must be another seviper, since she called it 'Four', and the battle commenced.

It was a strange one. Both of Ormarr's pokemon went for the stunky and when the croagunk tried to punch the mawile, a flick of its jaws sent the other pokemon tumbling away. It didn't get up, apparently knocked out by the single blow. Its trainer stared at it in shock for several moments before cursing again and replacing it with a golbat who disobeyed his order of confuse ray in favor of fluttering over and getting smacked by the mawile as well. Meanwhile, the stunky seemed entirely up to the task of fending off both pokemon at once, blasting the mawile with a burst of flame and clawing furiously at the seviper's side. Maybe they'd been paired up in the hopes she could carry her partner in a battle.

To be honest, he was a bit concerned, as well as quite nauseated, by the time the stunky was finally beaten. Ormarr's pokemon both looked worse for wear and their opponent still had another pokemon, which turned out to be a dustox.

"Use psychic on the seviper!" the Team Galactic grunt ordered.

Instead, the dustox flapped over as if it meant to tackle the mawile and was smacked down in a single blow.

"What? No way!"

Jackson laughed. The remnants of the stunky's attacks were being swept away by the breeze and the thick smell of flowers had come back. He reached into his pocket, intending to take a picture of these miscreants' faces to post online, only to find nothing. "My iphone!" he shouted.

From a ways away in the flowers, he heard, "Seeee e e e e e e," in an almost giggling tone.

Ormarr wilted under his glare. ~I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!~