Blitzer’s feet crunched through the snow, as the Charizard spat blue fire at the frozen vegetation ahead. He had Sefonia beside him, the Dragonite holding on to his back. Sisu trailed not far behind, a distance between her and his tail. She didn’t attempt to close the gap. Far worse could appear if that was her main concern.

“No one behind us,” the Marshadow said, then repeated every half minute after that. The trees thinned out at a snail’s pace, the weather remained ever so frigid, and Sisu kept repeating herself.

The Charizard didn’t care. Didn’t respond with much more than a grunt, or growl. He had one arm wrapped around Sefonia’s back, supporting the Dragonite’s weight with his own strength as she struggled to walk. She focused on breathing, looking where they were headed, and otherwise said nothing.

The smell of fear was thick in the air.

‘Don’t you dare give up on me now…’

Instead of them, the Charizard held the lead, his blue fire lighting the way. Snow melted at the slightest contact, whether fire or scale. He had his teeth bared the whole time, a growl accompanying his breathing. It never happened that often in his life that he got to smell fear besides his own, let alone so vivid. It disgusted him.

‘Stop being scared… we’re surviving… kill anyone trying to stop us…’

With a sudden unfurling of his wings, Blitzer kicked up a wind strong enough to blow the snow away. Dust clouds flew off in all directions, making way. The Charizard stomped ahead, each step powerful enough to shake the earth, growling like a predator prowling around its prey.

“No one behind us…”

Blood pumped through Blitzer’s veins. Each beat of his heart strengthened the muscles, he could feel himself getting stronger by the second. Fearless, powerful. Capable of anything he wanted. Instincts led the way, like guides taking him on a tour. They were tuned into every sound and smell, even before his eyes registered what was happening before him.

“No one behind us!”

Blitzer reared back, and roared at the top of his lungs. The trees shook and quivered, snow falling from their branches as the sound echoed for miles around. All the while, his left arm was yanked on, and he tightened his grip. Sefonia must’ve flinched.

About fifty meters before them, a pale Buneary scurried away as fast as its legs would go. Nowhere near fast enough to escape him. He didn’t pursue.

“B-Blitzer! What was that for?” Sisu pleaded, her voice panicky. “A-are you trying to give us away here?!”

“No,” the Charizard snarled. “Keeping you safe…”

“Please…” Sefonia perked up. He could hear her heart beating right beside him. “How far do we have left?”

“Y-You said you saw lights on the horizon, right?” Sisu replied. Blitzer didn’t look at her. Only marched on to the sound of his growls, keeping Sefonia at her side.

“That could’ve just been dawn light.”

“It can’t be much further from here…”

“Look ahead,” Blitzer said, flicking his head towards the horizon. “Dawn is coming.”

In his mind, he spoke in a plain tone. Yet it came out as a growl regardless, a heavy amount of bass nestled in his vocal chords. The area fell silent. Friends was what Sefonia and Sisu might be, yet the Blitzer they’d connected with existed no longer. He’d vanished inside a black-scaled beast.

Those few seconds tasted sour on his tongue. Sourer than the fear-drenched air. Their survival was at stake, yet they got caught up on his appearance. So did the Charizard feel. It fueled him in all the wrong ways. Nevertheless, he voiced no frustrations; only stewed on them.

‘Who cares… how I look? How I evolved…? I want to live. I want you to live!’

“We should be close,” Sisu said. “If we’ve been at it long enough to make daylight, then-”

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“You’ve been saying that for the last hour,” Sefonia groaned, her antenna’s drooping beside her head. The vapours simmering off her gathered around her feet, like an ant colony massing for an attack. “I can’t last forever on promises…”

“Then we go,” Blitzer said. With one tug, he was off with Sefonia in tow.

“Wait-”

“We. Go.”

The Charizard’s last few words disintegrated into a dull roar, the kind one associated with nighttime horrors. Sefonia was dragged along, whether she liked it or not, and Sisu followed. Could the Marshadow overpower him? Was she dying to find that out? Both looked in front of them with icy gazes. They’d done this all for him, yet Blitzer acted on his own accord. No stopping, no talking, no licking wounds or idle chit chat.

And so their march through the snow continued, Blitzer stomping ahead with energy stewing inside. He had to get to safety. They all did. The thoughts of failure stung like a blow to the back of the head. Made his fire burn brighter, hotter. Snow be damned, he was getting them there, whether they liked it or not.

“Keep. Going.”

As the miles went by, and the forests thinned out, so too did his energy start to falter. It took time, but the anger simmered back into the exhaustion that had gnawed away at him over the past week. First the feet, then the legs, then the spine. His fire dimmed, Sefonia sagged away more and more, and his thoughts scattered to the four winds much like the snow at his feet.

‘Don’t… stop!’

The forest gave way to lightly wooded plains, the snow eversothick. Silhouettes emerged in the mists on the horizon, the triangular shapes of roofs sticking out like Drilbur hills in the terrain. Civilisation? Friends? Was that the end in sight, or did his eyes fool him?

“Just a little more,” the voice of Sisu panted out in the distance.

“Can’t do more,” Sefonia groaned.

Blitzer wanted to raise his voice, yet pulling her along had worn his arm out. Everything went slower, even his breathing. No matter how wide he opened his mouth, his lungs never seemed to fill up. Breathing through his nose was a struggle in and of itself. Disgusting scents stuffed his nostrils. What were they? And where did they come from?

The what and its cause fell by the wayside. When exhaustion sets in, you lose interest in figuring out why things are the way they are. It takes too much out of you. Just walking began to take its toll on Blitzer now, let alone what poor Sefonia went through. Two sets of feet, struggling to shove snow aside. Sisu might keep up. Might. Perhaps she’d face planted into the snow just now; Blitzer heard a thud, and didn’t look back.

‘How… far…?’

The ecstasy of evolution faded at an ever faster rate. It had felt so glorious, and yet the fall from riches to rags hit far harder. The fire pouring out of Blitzer’s throat reduced down to a trickle, the blue turning back to red. His arms felt fragile, unable to swipe at enemies. Blizter’s legs hardly kept up. The silhouettes ahead might be getting closer, but his mind was in other places. He couldn’t stop thinking about how weak he felt. And how fast, too.

And all the while, the snow nipped at him. The winds tore at his scales, nearly sweeping his companions away. Some protector he was, unable to fight back against mere winds. He gritted his teeth. To come this far, only to lose? Blitzer fumed at the thought, didn’t matter what came after. Death, recapture, or worse. It all stung much like the cold gales did, wings spitting snow up at his belly as they went uphill.

Alas, a Pokemon could do so much. Whitiaran winters came too fast, lasted too long, and lacked respite. Anyone unlucky enough to be caught within its grasp were little more than playthings for the elements, no matter how strong their affinity to fire. Blitzer felt his knees gave way, just as mere silhouettes turned to cottages. His belly hit the snow, and Sefonia landed on top of him moments later. Her weight knocked the air out of his lungs.

“Blitz? Blitz!! Sef!”

The Marshadow’s voice echoed throughout the frozen plains as the Charizard drifted in and out of consciousness, the cold smothering his warmth all the while. Just a faint pulse of strength remained in his body now. Blitzer felt that much. It could’ve been his heartbeat, or even what was left of the marble… if it existed at all after the trek.

For a moment, a wave of clarity washed over his mind. What happened? He remembered all sorts of primal urges taking over, from sullying his claws, to protecting loved ones, to smelling nearby prey. The past hour resembled a blur. Nothing quite made sense.

Not that the thoughts would haunt him for long. Voices screamed out overhead - more than one, though no one he recognised. Something tugged at his arm. For a brief moment, he caught a Pokemon in the corner of his eye. Orange, rodent-like, with a thunderbolt tail. Then his eyes fell shut.

The only discernible words he could still hear were ‘poor kid’.

* * *

Two dragons spotted the ice crust, their limbs bent in ways they shouldn’t. Sisu had been timid ever since Blitzer’s deepest self came out. She’d known more about it than he did, but the difference between seeing and experiencing was wider than the oceans. Gone was the teenage boy, a beast having replaced him. That Ampharos never knew how savage his end would be.

Witnessing it was a shock. One that finally wore off as Sisu realised how miserable their situation was; forget being mauled by a Charizard. The cold really couldn’t care less who got trapped outside. It killed anyway. And the way Blitzer and Sefonia fell over each other, they were knocking on the pearly gates. And someone was going to answer soon.

The Marshadow jumped on top of them. The black scales turned orange as her feet stepped on Blitzer’s head, Sisu’s landing getting little to no response out of the Charizard. “This is bad,” she muttered. “Bad bad bad BAD!” She hopped up and down. “Hey guys, GUYS! GUYS! Get over here!”

Her shouts were directed at the buildings in the distance. Buildings meant guards, patrols. Anybody. They had to have gotten far enough away from Smaugus territory. The frontlines hadn’t shifted yet, had they? She didn’t bother to check. No one wanted to come back to corpses.

By some stroke of luck, her calls for help didn’t fall on deaf ears. A Raichu leapt out of the shade of a tree, his ear chipped and a badge dangling from his neck like he’d won a medal.

“Sisu? Is that you? Who is this you’ve brought with you? Why are they covered in vapours?”

“What? No they’re not!” The Marshadow complained, whipping her head around. Sef looked as dreary as ever, while the last of Blitzer’s orange came into view. “Agh, no time to explain it now, Speedy. They’re gonna die if they stay out here, you got anything against cold?” She looked the Raichu dead in the eyes, to which he nervously whipped his head around.

“Can’t just lug two big dragons around… We’re going to need more hands for that.”

“I’ll drag ‘em myself if I have to!” Sisu shouted. “Just hurry up! I’m not letting Blitz, or Sef die on me here!”

“Right, right!” said the Raichu as he turned around running, only to stop after his first hop. “Hang on, did you say ‘Blitz’? As in ‘Blitzer’?”

“Yes I did!” Sisu barked back.

“Blitzer?!” The Raichu’s eyes widened. “Oh Arceus almighty, is it him? That poor kid?”

“YES!” Sisu shouted as hard as her body let her, stomping her feet on a dragon’s face. “I’m not playing around here, HURRY UP!”

“O-of course!” The Raichu turned tail and ran.