The Quest for the Legends

11/15/2007: Pearl

Finally a non-spoilery chapter of Scyther's Story II that I can show to you guys. :D

This is now chapter V which starts part II of the story; it was written in today, however, as I decided to expand upon a mention of a story told by some of the older Scyther to make it into a full-fledged Scyther folk tale. Enjoy.

Yet again, remember that this is raw NaNo text which may contain mistakes, awkward wordings, etc.

V

Once long ago, it was said, there was a Scyther who was a bit too adventurous for his own good. He would spend his days raving endlessly with childlike wonder about the world – isn’t it amazing, he said, that we have minds? Isn’t it amazing that there are living creatures all around?

And because life in the swarm bored him, he one day told his closest friends that he was going to leave forever and explore the world. They tried to tell him not to, but he refused to listen to them, and headed off the next morning.

He traveled through a forest, and it was not long before he was lost after walking around aimlessly for a while. He saw a Pidgey, and before it flew away, he shouted to it, “Please stay! I will not eat you, for I have never liked to kill other creatures. Will you tell me the way out of the forest?”

And the Pidgey, though wary, decided to do as he said, so it hopped between the highest branches of the trees, at a safe distance from the Scyther, to show him the way out. And soon enough the trees became more spread, and the Scyther walked out of the forest into the glorious sunlight, and as the Pidgey flew away in fear, he shouted, “Thank you!” because he had been telling the truth.

And off the Scyther went, over the plains and over mountains, past lakes and past rivers, until he came to a body of water so large that he could not see the banks on the other side. And he tried to drink from it, for he was thirsty, but found that the water had a strange, salty taste that made it undrinkable. He realized that this was no ordinary lake, and with fascination, he flew over the water to look over it. Not far off the shore, he looked down, although he could not see very deep into the water elsewhere, and saw a curious object there, a large, round, whitish-pink shape that gave off a peculiar sheen that reminded him of a scythe.

Enthralled, he flew back to the shore and sat there for a long time wondering what the object was. He was so captivated by it that he did not notice the pass of time, and only realized when it was already dark that he had not eaten anything for a while.

He eyed a small orange Pokémon stepping up from the shore of the water a short distance away. It had not noticed him because he had been still and hidden behind a rock, and it was dark; but now he saw it, and realized fully how hungry he was.

But his mind was so captivated by the object that rather than attack and eat the Pokémon, he revealed himself and swore a truce so that he could talk to it. The Pokémon introduced itself fearfully as a Buizel.

“Do you live in this lake?” the Scyther asked, and the Buizel smiled in response.

“This is no lake,” he said; “it is the sea. But I do live partly in it.”

“Then can you tell me what the round, shining object that I saw a short distance off the shore was?” the Scyther begged him, because he knew that his mind could not rest until he found out what it was.

“Oh, it must have been the pearl of a Clamperl that you saw,” the Buizel told him. “They only produce one in their lifetimes, when they evolve. The Spoink use them to focus their power.”

“I must get it,” the Scyther told him. “Would you dive down and retrieve the pearl for me?”

But the Buizel shook his head. “I cannot do that, Scyther; for I would need to risk my life to get it. The Spoink would be angry, and the mystical powers of the pearl are said to prevent anyone from getting it if they do not respect the pearl as the Spoink do.”

And the Scyther thanked the Buizel with sadness, and as it left he went to sleep.

But when he woke up in the morning, he spent the whole day searching for a Pokémon that would be willing to retrieve the pearl from him, offering all of them truce so that he could talk to them. And again he went to sleep hungry.

The next day he found a Spoink in the forest, a gray creature that bounced regularly on a spring with a pearl on its head; but the pearl was not as beautiful as the one he had seen in the water. He begged the Spoink to retrieve the pearl for him, but the Spoink was disgusted by the suggestion and told him that no Pokémon but the Spoink were worthy of the pearls.

And the Scyther spent several days in this way, eating nothing and thinking only about the pearl, until finally he was so hungry that he knew he would die if he continued to ask the Pokémon for assistance in getting the pearl. But he did not go and hunt, because he could not bear to kill a Pokémon that might have been the one that could have gotten the pearl for him. Instead, he flew over the water, eying the pearl, and then dove into the water to get it.

But he was a Scyther and could not swim, and the bottom was further down than he thought, and the salt burned his eyes such that he could only barely make out the shape of the pearl below him. And he cut it loose from the seaweeds it was tangled in, but he could not bring it up to the surface.

And the Scyther drowned there, still desperately attempting to bring his pearl up to the surface. And, they said, he still lay there to this day, on the bottom of the sea, far away from the rest of his kind, his flesh rotted away and eaten by sea Pokémon, the pearl still lying just by his scythe.

And if you haven't seen the previous entry, by all means do look at it. The request still stands.

COMMENTARY DONE

Comment on this entry

Comments

Zora the Terminian (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
*sniffle* That was so sad… Poor Scyther, not being able to get that pearl. It was still absolutely fantastic work, though.

Happypants3 (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
That second to last sentence was… gruesome. Ew. xP

So, does this mean Scyther can't eat berries and stuff? Or is it simply because the Scyther forgot completely about eating?

Butterfree (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
A little of both. Scyther are pure carnivores and need nutrients from the meat of other Pokémon to stay alive, so it would be impossible for them to live entirely on berries for any length of time. This is not to say it would be impossible for them to eat some, and while they wouldn't particularly like the taste it would certainly be better than nothing, but it wouldn't have kept him alive.

He wasn't exactly spending his time trying to think of alternative things to eat, either - but that would largely be because he already knows that there is no real alternative to meat so "I'll have to find something else to eat" isn't exactly the first thing to spring to his mind. We humans, being omnivores, would think of something like that because we know that there is such a thing as keeping oneself alive on a diet of wild plants, berries and fruits. The Scyther have no reason to consider alternative diets if they can't hunt. A Scyther that won't kill other Pokémon for food for whatever reason might as well already be dead (that is, unless a human comes along with manufactured carnivore food, but that is not relevant to this story).

The Mist (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
how is t that sythers urive in the games or any pokemon for that matter without food outsid ethe occasional berry

Butterfree (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
v.v You again?

KamikoRemu (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
God, 'The Mist'. Butterfree has made a perfectly fine explanation.

At least use proper grammar if you want to comment.

zapdos shadow (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
Is this story why scyther choose not to be curious and wounder about the world?

Butterfree (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
Actually, it's a warning about the dangers of love. Not that they generally get it, because they're not big on symbolism. The part about him being curious and wandering was just to illuminate what sort of Scyther he was, the implication being that he was already 'weak' and prone to becoming the victim of such evils as falling in love.

It is telling that this was always Stormblade's favorite story when he was young, not for the message, but because he sympathized with the main character and fantasized about what sort of object this pearl could be that was beautiful enough to make him sacrifice eating for the chance of obtaining it.

Big Guy (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
I like the story…… It was sad, though. Maybe a story about a Scyther that liked to kill too much, or something, instead of Scythers always being little babies.(No offense)

Butterfree (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
…bwuh? o_O Um, I think I'll get a headache trying to make any sense of that. So okay, somehow in your mind being sad equates somehow to Scyther "always being little babies", which in some bizarre way is all I write even though I keep writing about blood, gore and murder, and which in some way you seem to deduce is what the entirety of Scyther's Story II is about after reading one excerpt from it that consists of a Scyther folk tale unconnected with the main storyline except in a symbolic manner…? Yeah, I think that chain of logic is pretty odd, and I can't really make whatever else you may have been attempting to say out of that. o.O

Happypants3 (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
Actually, if I can comment on Big Guy's question, the Scyther seem like the kind who tell tales of 'consequence'… Like, there's no negative moral to be found in a fable about killing when your society revolves around acceptance of killing. :/

At risk of looking like a clueless idiot, who's The Mist? ^^;;;

Butterfree (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
Oh, that makes more sense. I didn't read Big Guy's post right. And the Scyther only accept killing sometimes - to kill some random Pokémon for the heck of it without the intention of eating it is still immoral in their eyes, as well as murdering another Scyther without giving him fair opportunity to fight back. There may be stories about this too, depending on how I go about writing the rest of the story. We'll see.

The Mist is some annoying troll who has been harassing me by e-mail for a few months because I apparently don't write enough hot lepidoptera sex, even after I told him I would ignore any further e-mails he sent.

Big Guy (11/15/2007 00:00:00)
Thank you, Happypants3.That is exactly what I meant. So, yeah, Butterfree, how about a story like that. I'd like to see one telling all the 'Desciths' (did I spell it right?) that random killing isn't a good thing.

The Mist, shut it.

11/15/2007: Pearl

Comments

Your Comment?