Sasha's Story

Pokémon do feel pain.

In trainer vs trainer battles, no matter how seemingly lethal the move used to inflict the fainting blow may be, it will never kill the pokémon that receives it. However, battles between wild pokémon can result in death to one or both participants. This has puzzled humans for centuries. Thousands of pokémon have been killed in pursuit of their secret, and humans have made no steps towards understanding how it works.

Damage inflicted by legendary pokémon, however, can be lethal to other pokémon. Legendary pokémon rarely battle each other, but if they ever do, the battles are often cataclysmic in the scope of their ferocity. One of the most well-known was the struggle between Groudon and Kyogre. Thousands of pokémon lost their lives as they raged back and forth across the land and sea, only ending their feud when Rayquaza descended from the sky. Both pokémon fell asleep and Rayquaza vanished without a trace.

-

I watched as Twilight Sparkle levitated a book over to me. We had adjourned to another room after Twilight’s friends had said their goodbyes and gone back to their homes. Spike had gone upstairs to – as he put it – get his full allotment of sleep, something he claimed Twilight deprived him of on a daily basis. I brought my mind back to the here and now as Twilight began speaking.

“This explains basic internal energy manipulation. I figure it’s as good a place to start as any,” Twilight said and I nodded as I opened the book carefully. The book itself wasn’t all that impressive, but it had clearly seen a lot of use. I felt Twilight’s eyes on me and I looked up at her curiously. I raised an eyebrow and she smiled awkwardly.

“How did you learn to read? Who taught you?” she asked, her voice alive with curiosity. I looked up from the words before me and blinked.

“I…always knew how to read,” I said quietly, thinking back. The first time I had ever seen words printed on the side of a building – I think I had been in Celadon City in Kanto at the time – I could understand that the shapes were words to be read. Twilight’s eyebrows rose and she tilted her head.

“That’s strange, I’ve never heard of anyone being born being able to read and write…well, read, anyway.”

I shrugged. The question of how I knew how to read without having been taught never really bothered me; it was a useful skill to have.

I closed my eyes and sighed. “So,” I asked, opening my eyes as I changed the topic, “How does magic work in Equestria?” Twilight took a moment before she answered.

“Well…Equestria’s a land full of ambient magic – it’s all around us – and all we’re doing is tapping into it and using it for our needs,” Twilight said. “That, and every pony also has their own internal reserves of magical energy, even pegasus and earth ponies.”

I pricked my ears thoughtfully, remembering the glow that had surrounded Celestia and Twilight Sparkle when I had first met them. Looking at Twilight, I saw that the glow was still there, but it was a lot more restrained.

“I’ve seen it; you’re practically glowing,” I remarked and watched as Twilight’s cheeks turned a soft pink. She looked away with a nervous laugh.

“Y-yeah, I haven’t really mastered controlling it though, it still flares wildly from time to time.” A grimace passed over her face. “Woke up one morning to find out I’d been sleep-casting; entire library was a mess and Spike made me clean it up,” she said with a huff.

“Your technique is…unrefined,” I said slowly. Twilight looked at me curiously. I ducked my head. “I…uhm…have a friend who uses telekinesis. When he uses it, his control over the item is a lot more controlled than what I’ve seen in Equestria.” Twilight looked interested and I went on.

“When you use your magic, you’re wasting a lot of energy. Your…field…doesn’t conform to the object, which results in a massive loss of energy.” Twilight’s horn lit up and she levitated a few books around her. The field expanded a good inch and a half – maybe even more, since her field was constantly in motion. It eerily reminded me of Luna and Celestia’s manes and I wondered if that meant they were made of raw magic.

Twilight’s eyes narrowed and the field around the books shrank a little. As she did so, the books trembled, bending slightly and Twilight hastily cut off the magic.

“Strange, if I try to narrow the field, I threaten to destroy the books…,” she murmured, looking at the books. She sighed and shook her head. “Well, can’t help it, I guess.” She turned her eyes to me. “Now then, have you ever tried tapping into your reserves?”

I shook my head slowly. “No, I only got them a few hours ago, actually,” I said. Twilight looked around the room thoughtfully.

“Well, we’re not going to be able to practice here. Odds are you’re going to have some very unstable energy surges, so we’re going to have to find someplace else to practice.” She looked out the window thoughtfully. “I’m sure there’s a room or two in the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters that has a room designed for magical training we can use.”

“Castle of the what?” I asked. Twilight only smiled and trotted towards the door.

“I’ll explain on the way.”

By the time we reached said castle, my head was filled with a very detailed and exhaustive lecture – there was no other way to describe it – about Equestria’s early history. Twilight had explained about how Equestria had been created by Empress Faust; how she had literally written the entire world into existence. Nopony knew what happened to her. One day she simply vanished and Discord had taken over Equestria and ruled the land for several thousand years. Two ponies – both Alicorns – had risen against him and sealed him in stone. The sisters – the elder, Celestia and the younger, Luna – had then ruled Equestria for a few decades. Over the years, however, Luna had grown jealous of the attention the ponies paid to Celestia while mostly ignoring the younger sister. Sure, there were some who enjoyed her nights, but they were a minority and some ponies even went out of their way to cast Luna in a negative light, claiming she planned to steal the throne from her sister and plunge the land into darkness.

I found it strange that these ponies could be so…fanatical in their single-mindedness. I reminded me of some people back in my world.

Pokémon Professors from all over the world claimed that pokémon were partners with their trainers. They grew and learned together, which formed a powerful bond between them. Trainers from all regions had faced down powerful foes with nothing more than the pokémon by their side, and triumphed.

I smiled as I thought about my brief tenure as a pokémon owned by trainers. My first experience had been shortly after navigating my way through Kanto. I had found myself at the base of a huge mountain. I don’t know what compelled me to scale it. The pokémon that lived there were extremely powerful and territorial. Had it not been for my small size, I probably would have ended up as a meal for a Ursaring.

I had wound up becoming completely lost in the caves and when I had finally found an exit, I had found myself trapped by a raging blizzard. I had very nearly frozen to death on the mountainside. Lucky for me, there had been a trainer on his way down the mountain who stumbled across me and managed to thaw me enough to carry me back down the mountain. The mountain (I had later learned it was called Mount Silver) was home to some special hot springs whose water seemed designed to treat ice-type injuries. The trainer, Red, had explained he had come here after he himself had been trapped in ice and showed me the strange ice burns on his wrists from ice cuffs. After a few days of relaxing, I had felt well enough to leave and Red had pointed me towards the region of Johto.

The second trainer I had met had been one named Gold, who had rescued me from members of Team Rocket who had wanted to exploit my many possible evolutions. He more or less adopted me onto his team. While he never called on me to assist him in battles, I had seen that he cared for pokémon deeply and seeing a red-haired trainer named Silver treat his pokémon harshly had disturbed him. After Gold and the regional Champion, a dragon-tamer named Lance, had taken out Team Rocket’s base of operations in Mahogany Town, Silver had changed. Gold had released me shortly before departing to Goldenrod to confront Archer and I heard nothing about what had happened next. A few weeks later I had found myself in a whole new region with its own conflicts and adventures.

I swapped my own stories with Twilight’s and she seemed intrigued by the concept of bonds between a trainer and pokémon.

“It’s friendship, and there’s nothing stronger than that,” she stated, then smiled a little. “Well, except for love, I think.” I arched an eyebrow from my position on her back. She had offered to carry me, since it was quite a hike to the castle. Her hooves were more suited to it than my paws, and I had gratefully accepted her offer.

We fell into a comfortable silence. I felt Twilight quicken her pace, and soon she was galloping down the road, heading towards a dark forest.

Seeing it sent shivers down my spine and I felt myself shrink down as we entered the trees. Twilight’s horn lit up, lighting the way as we slowly followed a path through the twisted trunks.

I could see the hungry eyes of predators peering out as we passed and I shivered.

“Easy, Sasha, they won’t hurt us,” Twilight said softly. I didn’t answer, and simply made myself as small a target as I could. The air grew cold around us and I peeked over Twilight’s wing to see we had arrived at a gorge.

“Hold on tight,” Twilight said, spreading her wings. I wrapped my paws around Twilight’s mane and even took a mouthful and didn’t let go until we had safely flown over to the other side.

I slid from Twilight’s back and walked around on slightly unsteady paws, both in an attempt to shake off the dread that seemed to cling to me and to work some life into my legs, which had fallen asleep from my ride on her back.

Twilight waited patiently and when I was ready, we made our way to what appeared to be ruins.

Twilight entered them without a second thought and I followed her, looking around at a place that felt strangely familiar to me. There were plenty of old ruins spread out over the regions of my world. Great towering structures dedicated to many things, ranging from resting places for pokémon, to castles for old and powerful kings who had ruled millennia ago.

Like them, this place filled me with a great sadness. It was clear this place had been a place of peace and learning, possibly even a school of some kind. I could easily imagine Celestia and Luna teaching here. About what, I could only guess.

“I think we’ll save practice for tomorrow; today, we’re just going to do some reading,” Twilight said. “We’ve begun cleaning this place up – I think we expected it to become…my castle before the whole Tirek thing happened.”

“Tirek?” I asked curiously.

As Twilight explained about Lord Tirek, we entered what appeared to be a library. It was large, but held very few books, which I didn’t find all that surprising. Twilight’s horn glowed as she lifted every book off the shelves. Her eyes were closed and I wondered if she was somehow reading the titles to pick the ones most relevant.

Finally, she picked out three books and levitated them over to a table.

“Alright, class is in session; open up your book and start reading,” Twilight said.

The concept for internal energy manipulation didn’t seem all that complicated. It all boiled down to thinking what you wanted and then having it happen. I wondered if it was similar to how a trainer would call out a move and a pokémon would then execute the move.

An image of me being used like a trainer’s pokémon in a pokémon battle by ponies popped into my mind and I frowned.

Wild pokémon’s attacks were not as powerful as attacks used by a trainer’s pokémon. In general, wild pokémon were almost always outclassed by trained pokémon and the only pokémon who were ever really a problem to experienced trainers were legendary pokémon, and they rarely interacted or battled with humans.

I sighed as I kept reading, my eyes a blur as I drank in the basics. Twilight was reading her own set of books. I wanted to ask what she was reading, but dismissed it as unimportant.

Hours passed and I was halfway through the second book when Twilight finally spoke. “I think that’s enough for today.”

I jumped, blinking as I pulled myself out of the book. I got to my paws and my body screamed at me as blood started flowing again. I grimaced and shook my paws to get some feeling back in them.

Twilight offered her back again and this time we flew straight up over the forest. Why we didn’t do this in the first place never entered my mind and I was asleep within minutes.

-

Princess Luna was not a very social pony. She had always been the one ponies overlooked, the shadow nopony paid attention to. That suited her fine; she liked to watch the ponies as they came before her sister with their problems, which Celestia then easily mended with a few words, usually pointing out something any smart pony could have figured out if they’d take the time to think before deciding it was too much for them and dumping it on the princess.

Luna tried to ignore the fact the ponies that came before her sister tried their best not to look at her and she understood their actions perfectly.

She had been a Nightmare who had plunged Equestria into a very short eternal night. Shortly before her thousand-year exile, she poisoned the minds of many ponies with special nightmares that left them mentally broken. During her exile, she had come to terms with it and had entered the dreams of those she had tormented and treated them. They did not fully recover, but it was her own little apology.

Now she tended to the dreams of her little ponies. A smile passed over her lips as memories floated to the surface of her mind. Before she fell into darkness, she had become a second mother to a group of homeless foals from Canterlot. Every night she would take them to what she affectionately called a summer home and played with the foals, reading them stories, helping them find their special talents and helping them deal with their own issues. When her sister found out, however, she did not approve of this and forbade Luna from taking the foals from the orphanages and streets of Canterlot.

Luna shook off the dark memories and flew through the dreamscape. All around her, she saw the dreams of ponies in slumber. Most were pleasant, some were erotic – that was the most interesting use of a bowling pin, a frying pan and a socket wrench that Luna had ever seen – and others boring.

Luna searched for a specific dreamscape; one she had been curious about ever since she had first heard about it.

“Where are you, Sasha…” Luna murmured to herself, reaching out with her mind to try to pick out Sasha’s unique feel. She almost missed it, due to the fact it was very heavily guarded.

Luna wasn’t very surprised; from her limited interaction with the Eevee, she knew Sasha carried a wide variety of emotional scars that prevented her from being open about herself - especially with others.

The Dream Mistress was tempted to force her way into Sasha’s dreams, but she knew that wouldn’t help in the long run. Ponies that feared Luna had closed their minds and dreams to her.

She stared at the dark swirl of emotion curiously and touched it with a hoof.

The sheer amount of pain that coursed through her body from the contact made Luna scream. She was knocked out of the dreamscape and was thrown from her bed by the knockback. She lay on the ground, panting hard as she heard hurried hoofsteps and then Celestia was beside her, pressing close and wrapping Luna in her wings.

“I heard you scream…what…?” Celestia said, then paused as Luna shook her head, steadying her breathing.

“Just…took a look at Sasha’s dreams…couldn’t even get close…she’s got a lot of pain…” Luna shook her head. “How does she deal with it day by day? It’s amazing.”

Celestia looked out of the window towards Ponyville, a look of worry on her face.

-

I was no stranger to nightmares. Every night, I relived parts of my life. Some were pleasant, times spent nestled against Espeon as he taught me about the world; the places I’ve traveled to, from the quiet region of Kanto, to Johto, to tropical Hoenn, to Myth-centric Sinnoh, modern Unova and Kalos. Every place had its own fair share of memories, both good and bad. Ten years of my life had been focused on wandering around the regions, seeing the sights and learning the history.

Each place had its own villains. Team Rocket had set up operations in Kanto and Johto - mostly pokémon smuggling and distribution. In Hoenn, radical environmentalists had planned on unleashing Groudon and Kyogre, heedless of the consequences of doing so. Sinnoh had nearly been torn apart when a group of creationists had planned on using the power of the regions legendary pokémon to create a new world. Team Plasma, in Unova, had planned to make everyone release their pokémon so that only Team Plasma would be able to use them. Three years after being thwarted, Team Plasma had tried again, this time using the power of an ice-dragon to freeze Unova solid.

For whatever reason, I had been dragged into that and held captive by a trio of Team Plasma members, called the Shadow Triad. My companion during my captivity had been a Purrloin they had taken from a girl years ago. Under the treatment of Team Plasma, it had evolved into a Liepard who hated humans. While the Shadow Triad had been interested in my Shiny coloration, they really didn’t find a use for me and more-or-less let me run wild on their frigate.

I had met Kyurem, the discarded husk of the dragon that had split itself to help two feuding brothers seek their truths and ideals and while we didn’t become friends, we had understood each other on a level pokémon being used and feared by humans shared. Kyurem scoffed at the rumors that it had used to eat humans. Freeze them solid for eternity, yes. Devour them, no.

Ghetsis - the mastermind behind Neo Team Plasma – truly terrified me. He was truly heartless, with no affection for pokémon of any kind. Whenever I saw him walking through the frigate, I usually found myself clawing at the walls to get away from the sheer amount of hate he gave off.

“Sasha?”

I snapped my head around to see Princess Luna standing above me. The Night Mare seemed disturbed as she watched the memories flow around me. I didn’t ask how she had entered my dreams, but I knew that it couldn’t have been easy.

I simply let them flow and Luna was quiet as she watched, her eyes flicking from one to the next.

“To think…you carry this with you…how do you stand it?” she asked. I followed the flow of memories and pulled some of them out to view.

“I focus on the few good memories I have,” I said quietly, “small islands of serenity in my ocean of darkness.”

I saw Luna’s brow furrow and she let out a hissing breath.

“I see…” her eyes followed one memory and she pulled it close.

I felt my eyes go wide.

“Is this Espeon?” Luna asked curiously as she watched the memory of the psychic feline.

I simply nodded. “The first time we met…I…” I closed my eyes as the memory floated to the front of my mind.

I opened my eyes to see Luna watching the memory. I saw her coat bristle and she bared her teeth as her eyes blazed, which confused me.

Why would she be so affected by what had happened to a stranger?

I was suddenly enveloped in a dark blue aura and Luna pulled me to her as she hugged me tightly.

“Luna…?” I asked, now very confused. I felt Luna take a breath.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I know what it feels like to have everything taken from you. To be broken down into a shell of yourself.”

From what Twilight had told me, I think I knew what she was talking about.

Together, we watched as Espeon and N cared for me, treating both my physical and mental wounds in their own unique ways. Luna seemed to take interest in Espeon’s psychic abilities as he used them to treat me.

“So after meeting them, you more or less settled down?” Luna asked. I nodded.

“The community we joined accepted us and I settled down with Espeon…”

Luna must have noticed the change in my voice and she arched an eyebrow.

“Were you thinking of…ah…” she trailed off, making vague gestures with her hooves.

“Nothing more than fantasies,” I muttered, then felt my face go scarlet as those fantasies then surfaced. Luna giggled as I squashed them.

“So, do you know anything about the Bittercold?” Luna asked.

Thankful for the change in subject, I shook my head.

“Nothing more than what Arceus told me,” I said. “Apparently it’s raw emotions – hatred, mistrust, fear…all the negative emotions of pokémon concentrated together.”

Luna looked thoughtful. “But…why would it be attracted to you? What makes you special?”

“Rainbow Dash asked me the same thing – I don’t know why,” I said with a sigh.

“Right place at the wrong time, I think,” Luna said simply.

“What would the effects of it be here, though? From what I’ve seen and heard about Equestria, there’s not a lot of negative emotions here.”

Luna smiled slightly. “If you were here a couple thousand years ago, you’d probably think otherwise,” she said as her gaze grew distant. “Ponies weren’t always so kind. All three races were constantly at each other’s throats over one thing or another.

“Unicorns wanted to enslave the Earth ponies, Earth ponies wanted Unicorns to help make their lives easier with their magic and Pegasi just wanted to kill everypony without wings,” Luna said grimly. “It took the threat of extinction to unite them.”

“That sounds rather similar to some people from my world,” I said quietly. “People that wanted to truly enslave pokémon, make them their servants, control everything about them…” I shivered.

Luna gently rubbed my back. “You need to get some rest, Sasha. I can help ease your nightmares. You’re young, you don’t need this kind of burden on your mind every moment.”

I simply nodded and the rest of my night was free from any dreams.

-

Pain

I thought I knew pain; that I understood it and could ignore it. Turns out all that applied to was physical pain. Break my body, my bones; that, I could filter out easily enough.

The pain that came from getting attacked by elemental moves, or worse, the backlash from a failed attempt to use a move? That was a whole new kind of pain that I would never get used to.

I pulled myself out of what used to be a perfectly good wall with a groan. I fell to my paws and shook myself. Across the room, Twilight Sparkle was doing something similar. Smoke clouded the air and she coughed, fanning her wings to clear the room.

“Alright, Sasha, I think we can call that progress,” she said cheerfully as she extinguished her burning mane. I could only stare at her. She was covered in scrapes and bruises and even blood.

I hurried over to her and patted her leg gently. “I’m sorry, are you alright?” She nodded and smiled at me.

“I’m fine, Sasha, really. This is nothing like how it was back at the Academy. Plus, I’ve been thrown through mountains, have had numerous heavy things fall on me and been in quite a few explosions,” Twilight explained, with a fondness that made me question her sanity.

“How is this progress though?” I asked, looking around the room. I saw Twilight do the same and she had a thoughtful expression on her face.

“Well, you managed to keep the damage internal this time,” she said and I winced, remembering the disastrous first attempts at channeling my power.

I sighed in frustration. “It’s manageable in small amounts, but once it gets past that…” I said, kicking away a piece of debris. Twilight’s horn glowed as she picked up every piece of rubble and I watched as she repaired the room.

The corona around her horn was smaller, its edges softly pulsing as her field enveloped the pieces of stone that the blast had dislodged. With unerring accuracy, Twilight guided the rocks back to their rightful places, where they glowed briefly before the wall was once again smooth, as if it hadn’t just had an intimate meeting with the body of an airborne pokémon and pony.

Twilight looked at the walls for a moment before she turned her purple eyes towards me.

“So, Sasha, have you had any ideas about your powers?” I bit my lip as I searched my memory, careful to steer clear of the pool of energy that seemed to hover at the back of my mind, my reserve, as Twilight called it.

I examined it carefully. The energies within constantly shifted color, from red, to blue, to green, to yellow and white. Maybe if I could find a way to separate them from each other…?

“There’s more than one kind of energy…would be it possible to separate them?” I asked. Twilight looked up at the ceiling and frowned.

“Separate energy…in theory, yes, but you’d still have to store it…somewhere; you can’t just get rid of energy.”

That was true; all forms of energy had some form of release. Fire had light and heat, water evaporated, lightning and light dispersed, spreading out before they were eventually absorbed by the surrounding area. Ice had to melt first then went through the same process as water.

I hesitantly dipped into the pool of power within me and felt it cling to my mental probe. Problem was, I had picked up more than one kind of energy. If I had any hope of controlling it and keeping it from killing me, I had to find a way to be able to call on one power at a time.

The only reason I hadn’t razed Espeon’s home to the ground was due to the fact the power had only just recently manifested in me. Now that it had been given a few hours to settle, it had only grown more unstable.

Flamethrower

The gout of fire the erupted from my mouth and slammed against the magically reinforced wall. At the point of impact, it also released tendrils of lightning that sputtered and died when they couldn’t find anything to conduct themselves through.

Ice Beam

The orb hovered in front of my mouth while the actual beam shot out from it. Anyone looking at it might wonder why it was so thin, yet when it reached the wall, the orb then shot down the thin icy trail and hit the wall, exploding into a thick chunk of ice. At the point of impact, small orbs of light glowed briefly before fading away.

Thunderbolt

My body glowed yellow, sparks dancing wildly over my fur as it built to release. The bolt was the size of the one who cast it, which led many people to believe that small Electric pokémon didn’t pack that much of a punch. People who had seen a Joltik take out a Wailord with a Thunderbolt usually started to think otherwise. At the point of impact, shards of ice formed and melted.

At first, using a move sapped my energy rapidly, but with constant repeated uses, it gradually became easier, although I couldn’t get rid of the strange side effects. Flamethrower would paralyze the target instead of burning it and Thunderbolt would freeze the target instead of paralyzing it.

As I explained what the moves would normally do, Twilight had a thoughtful expression on her face. Finally, she spoke.

“If I had to hazard a guess…I’d say the energies are mixing because they’re not natural to your base species, right?” I thought about that and nodded slowly. I wasn’t fully aware what kind of moves the Eevee line could learn.

“Foreign energy in a unique body…Pinkie Pie did say your species was highly adaptable, didn’t she?” Twilight looked at me curiously.

“We are. There’s an evolution for fire, water, electricity, grass, ice, darkness, psychic and fairy.”

As I described the various Eeveelutions, Twilight was taking notes.

“There was an Espeon named Vui I knew before I met…well…Espeon…” - it felt really odd to refer to two separate Espeon – “She was able to change between Vaporeon, Flareon and Jolteon at will to deal with any problem, but eventually, she chose to evolve into an Espeon.”

“How does that work?” Twilight asked. “Espeon, Umbreon and Sylveon don’t evolve from exposure to evolutionary stones…”

“They evolve from happiness and – depending on the time of day for Espeon and Umbreon – the care their trainer gives them, or just life in general, I guess,” I said, remembering how Espeon had said he had felt content with his place in life and had evolved from that.

“Have you ever been happy?” Twilight asked.

I thought about that carefully.

Being cared for by Red, Gold and N - all three pokémon trainers - I had felt happy that they didn’t see me as something to be used. Living with Espeon, I had felt happy because he didn’t judge me for the color of my fur. He accepted me for what I was.

I am a Shiny Eevee.

I have a white-gray coat instead of a cream-brown one.

I am not something to be kept in a cage and admired.

I am not a tool to be exploited.

“I have been happy,” I replied. “I can only hope I can find that same kind of happiness here before my time runs out.”

-

The Bittercold was confused.

The Key had moved.

The Bittercold was angry.

The Key had moved.

The Bittercold was afraid.

The Key had moved.