Lucas's body was covered in scratches and fluffy, feathery pompoms.
"Hey! Stop!" He grabbed the bird-like beast and pinned it to the ground. It was so warm. Its feathers felt rich and soft, a heavenly sensation melting into his palms.
Beneath all that fluff, he could feel a tiny heartbeat. A tiny, stubborn heartbeat pounding in its chest.
He looked Piplup in the eyes and realised—the answer was no. He wasn't alone.
"Hehe, I didn't give you a name, did I?" Lucas asked with a smile, peering into those defiant blue eyes. He had the perfect name. "Azure. Your name's Azure from now on. Listen, Azure: we may have lost to Barry, but that's in the past now. I know you're angry. I am too. So let's take that energy and use it to build each other up, okay?"
The bird chirped, still with an angry look on its fluffy white face. But it seemed more like determination than anything else.
Hesitantly, Lucas loosened his hold on the bird. Azure immediately sprang up and ran towards him, pecking his legs with his hard yellow beak.
"Ow! What's your problem? Are you hungry or something? Why do you keep—"
A faint SNAP cracked in Lucas's ears, and before he could even turn around—
A feral roar paralysed him as a shining beast cloaked in polished yellow light BURST out of the blackness of the trees!
Lucas screamed, shocked by the sudden ambush. Literally. A furball shrouded in crackling electricity tackled him to the ground and let out a vicious feline hiss.
It was a Shinx. A wild, wild Shinx baring its pointy demonic fangs at him. Its crazed, glowing yellow eyes, with knife-slit pupils, beamed into the very depths of his soul.
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Lucas shrieked as the savage cat dug its claws into his arm—before being sent CRASHING into the ground as Azure tackled it into the grass!
The boy's heart drummed like never before, his mind flipping out as if he were falling from the sky.
"AZURE!"
The two Pokémon growled violently, rolling around in the grass with murderous intent. Azure screeched as the Shinx's devilish fangs sank into his fur before he delivered a horrible peck to its eye. The resulting blood-curdling SHRIEK shook the forest!
Lucas was paralysed.
This was insane. This was... cruel! Such a raw display of animosity; too pure to be hatred—just kill or be killed.
The most undiluted form of violence. And people made their Pokémon battle like this deliberately? This was sick!
This was nothing like the sorry battle he'd had with Barry. This was horrifying. In fact, it made Lucas want to vomit just thinking about making Azure fight mercilessly in that trainer match.
And yet...
This was what it meant to venture out into the tall grass.
All those times he'd whined about being denied the chance to explore by the adults in his town...
Was this what they were shielding him from? Something as gory and ruthless as this? This was just wrong.
And yet...
Soaked in the hazardous yellow light the Shinx radiated, fierceness etched onto his avian face as he struggled, covered in bloody scratches and bruises...
Azure looked like he was enjoying every second of it.
That’s when Lucas realised—an epiphany.
The cruelty, the rawness, the carnage... was exactly why trainers and Pokémon alike did this.
But that knowledge was useless.
A powerful surge of electricity entangled Azure like searing ropes before EXPLODING in a wild flash of golden light.
"AZURE!!"