Knock, Knock: The Early Bird Gets the Worm

[Guy LeGrange]

You'd think that the idiots would just avoid the tall grass by now. They knew that there were other Pokemon just laying in wait there, various animals with bloodthirsty killing abilities that just waited for an innocent human to come along. Guy knew this all too well, having the thirst for human blood himself. It was, after all, a trait inherent in all Pokemon. The desire to destroy or otherwise harm humankind in revenge for being shoved into tiny little balls. Oh, Guy heard that some Pokemon enjoyed interacting with humans, enjoyed being their little slaves.

Guy was not one of those Pokemon.

For Guy was the most vicious of all Pokemon: the Magikarp, king of the sea. He and his kind had been around for generations, descended from the powerful dragon Pokemon of old. He had mastered the signature move of his people: the deadly Splash, and had soon learned the vicious Tackle. Even now, he was flopping his way in the general direction of the battle, chanting his bloody warcry:

"Magi-karp-karp-karp," or, more properly translated: "I'm gonna kill you you annoying little mother-fucker! You done stepped into the wrong neighborhood, sucka!"

Because apparently Pokemon translates into 70s Jive or something.

Oh, right, the battle. It was happening. It seemed to involve a strange Pidgey that looked a little scatterbrained, an adorable Caterpie that was just so much food, and an obviously clueless trainer.

But c'mon, you obviously want to read more about the VICIOUS BLOODTHIRSTY MAGIKARP that lurked on the sidelines.

[Erika Conner (Bellefonte)]

So here Erika was, in what seemed to be a second life. And clearly, a horrible one at that. Being a Pokemon was cool enough (Really, who wouldn't want to be?) but being a Caterpie; The deadliest of them all. The scariest, meanest looking thing on the face of the earth; A worm. A green little worm that can't do jack shit but sprout webs and tackle. Oh and, it screams. Unlike many other Pokemon, a Caterpie doesn't say their names with the utmost clarity; Nope. It squeaks.

Snailing over the ground, feeling her body wiggle to the sides, Erika turned her head to look at her trainer, before turning her gaze back towards the predatory bird in front of her. She could feel the giant, blue drawn on drop cover most of her back as she let out a faint sigh. She wanted to tell her trainer that this was the stupidest thing she could ever do, but of course, just like the rest of her puny race, she could only shriek.

''EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!'' she cried and curled up into a ball. She stood no chance against the bird, the Pidgey. Didn't her trainer know that? Hadn't she read any of the manuals or watched any of the neverending tutorials at the start of her journey?

Man...

Wiggle. Wiggle. Wiggle. Wiggle. Wiggle. Shriek. Shriek. Shriek. Shriek. --- Actually, now that she thought about it. Her string shot looked oddly familiar to what happened to sperm when mixed with water. Interesting.

Wiggle. Wiggle. Shriek. Shriek. Wobble. --- How did she even manage to move forward? Her head was like twice the size of her own body. Gravity couldn't allow that, could it?

''EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!''

[Castilla Salinas]

Cassie was so excited she had her very first pokemon! Can you believe it? She can’t and she couldn’t wait to get started, not even long enough to consider the fact that her first pokemon was a Caterpie and might be quite weak against some pokemon.

She took off into the tall grass searching for a wild pokemon to challenge pokeball in hand ready to send her new Caterpie into battle!

She let out a squee of excitement when she stumbled across a pidgey letting the pokeball fly she called out with excitement “Caterpie I choose you!” Another squee off excitement as her Caterpie burst forth from the pokeball and landed on the ground in front of the Pidgey.

Her excitement stalled slightly as she realized the bad pairing, she hadn’t thought about it before but seeing the bug type pokemon in front of the bird type suddenly didn’t seem like such a good idea. For a moment her shoulders slumped and she almost swore under her breath at her own stupidity as Caterpie wiggled around letting out her little EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE noise.

She wracked her brain trying to think of a move that Caterpie should be able to use on the Pidgey realizing she should really have done some research, maybe it wasn’t too late to run... NO time to face the music girl and man up!

“Caterpie! Tackle!” all pokemon knew tackle right?

[Tessa Andrews]

Tessa sat happily in the tall grass, fluffing her beautiful feathers and enjoying nature. She was a very happy bird. But she was lonely. She turned her head from side to side, looking for friend. 'Ugh, stay away from the Magikarp...they're weird,' Tessa thought, catching the sight of him in the distance.  As she turned to look the other way she saw a young girl enter the tall grass. "hhoooo," she cooed happily. The girl seemed just as happy to see her, though her shriek was a little disconcerting.

Suddenly the strange girl threw a red and white ball and a bright light shone forth. Tessa tilted her head, "hhooo?" From the light emerged a.......bug. A caterpie to be more exact. She hopped forwards, towards the caterpie and girl when suddenly the girl yelled out.

“Caterpie! Tackle!”

Tessa's eyes squinted, "HHOOOO?!" 'I just want to be friends! Why are they attacking?' she thought saddened and furious. She was able to dodge the tackle. 'I know! I'll use sand-attack! It can affect Caterpies accuracy. Which means less chance of either one of us getting hurt.' With a determined coo Tessa flapped her wings, "HOOO!"

[Guy LeGrange]

Argh, where was the blood? Where was the violence? Guy mentally swore, watching the younger Pokemon flail at one another. The Caterpie looked especially pathetic, wriggling and writhing there, not even seeming to want to attack or defend itself until its obviously moronic trainer said something. The whole scenario disgusted Guy the Magikarp to his core. Here he was, the King of Carp, destroyer of his enemies, and all he could do was mostly flop in their general direction while the two of them acted as though neither had a brain in their bodies.

"Magi-karp-karp," blubbed Guy, which of course could be translated into understandable language for the other two Pokemon, since everyone knew that Pokemon could talk to each other. Fortunately, we don't even need subtitles for situations like this, which was probably for the best, seeing as two of the three Pokemon mostly just made adorable noises at one another.

Oh, right, the translation:

"You foolish Pidgey! Can't you see that your natural food is sitting in front of you? Your species has been killing Caterpie since the beginning of, well, your species! You're a bird for Arceus' sake. You've got an attack called Gust, why don't you try using it on the little green worm? You'll kill the damn thing in two moves!"

And no, no I don't know why this sounded more like some Ancient Greek warrior or maybe just normal Guy as opposed to the 70's jive talk. It's Pokemon, don't expect anything resembling consistency.

Oh, and Guy was flopping a little closer to the fight. You had to admire that kind of will. It was pretty much the only thing admirable about Magikarp; that is, unless you liked their color or something.

[Erika Conner (Bellefonte)]

Glaring at her trainer, Caterpie shrugged and let out a faint sigh. Man, why did she have to be the pet? She was the one with the abilities, and what exactly did her trainer have? Oh yeah, a pack of balls and a nice costume. ''Nhahnhanheah,'' the Caterpie said in protest and turned to look at the bird once more. Oh well, it couldn't be helped.

Dashing towards it - she was fairly sure it looked preeeetty pathetic. A worm attacking a bird? Exactly. Though, the Pidgey dodged her attack and instead countered her with sand. Really? Sand? Out of all the things she could have done she threw SAND in her face? Man, how lame was that? Coughing, the Caterpie bowed its head to shield herself from most of the sand; Who wanted sand in their eyes? Yuck!

''YATAAAAAAA'', the Caterpie cried and scowled at her trainer as if telling her to shut the fuck up and stop being such a dumbass. Why couldn't she be the one fighting? This was ANIMAL CRUELTY at its worst. God dammit. And then there was that annoying fish. Didn't it have a pond to swim around i- oh right, it was a Magikarp. Neeeevermind.

Crawling away, Caterpie moved towards a nearby rock and leaned its back against it. Heck, if her trainer wanted to fight, she could do it on her own. Nope. Caterpie would rather sit her and sunbathe. Like a master.

Humming to herself, Caterpie closed her eyes and let out a pleasant sigh, ''I wanna be the very cutest, that no Caterpie ever was. To sunbathe is my real test, to get a tan is my caaaause,'' she continued to hum, probably sounding more like a stuffed pig rather than an actual Caterpie, but whatever, ''I will sunbathe across the wooorld, getting a tan far and wide~''

[Castilla Salinas]

Cassie was excited as her Caterpie responded lunging forward in a tackle at the bird, “That’s it Caterpie!” she called in excitement, but it was short lived as the attack missed. The wild Pidgie countered with sand-attack, Cassie grinned, although she was beginning to realise just how mismatched they were up against a Pidgie the fact that the pokemon responded with sand attack might bode well for their chances right

“Caterpie tackle again! You can do it” the trainer called out in excitement arm raised pointing at the Pidgie with a grin on her face. Her arms dropped and her smile lost as Caterpie crawled over to a nearby rock and flopped down refusing to partake anymore in this match.

Cassie walked over to Caterpie and sunk to the ground beside her with an exasperated sigh. “I guess this is your way of telling me I’m an idiot right” she sighed more to herself then the actual pokemon, she sat back and watched the Pidgie she was a pretty little pokemon and she felt bad for jumping into battle so hastily but wasn’t that what pokemon trainers were supposed to do?

[Tessa Andrews]

Wouldn't that magi-karp just shut up already! As far as Tessa was concerned magi-karps had the most annoying voices. This one in particular for sure. "Geeeee!" Tessa the pidgey sniped at the magi karp, basically telling him to mind his own business. 'Fine if it thinks I should use gust, I think I just will.' Tessa turned towards the magi-karp as Caterpie went and laid against a rock. "d'gee, geeee!" In other words, he asked for this. If birds could smirk, Tessa's face would have a big one on it as she rose in the air and flew just a liiiiiittttle bit closer to the magi-karp, casting Gust. "gegegegegege," 'Mwhahahah. Take that evil magikarp!'

Then she turned towards the Caterpie to see the trainer girl person thingy kneeling down and talking. She glided over and landed on top of the rock, tilting her head, her eyes flitting back and forth between the two. "Ooooo, oo gee gee." Tessa said. Maybe giving of compliment of her singing voice would let the failed battle be forgotten. Fighting tended to mess up Tessa's feathers and it took hours of preening to get them the way she liked.

[Guy LeGrange]

The foolish Caterpie was pathetic! Clearly living among the humans had weakened it to a god-awful, pathetic amount! Okay, sure, Caterpie were among the most pathetic creatures in the Pokemon kingdom. Most of the earliest bug evolutions weren't exactly known for their overwhelming power and fighting abilities. This one though, Guy could have sworn he heard it telling itself it was cute and adorable. Then its human seemed to order it to Tackle, because what else could a Caterpie do? Then they had a heart to heart.

"Here's your chance," said Guy (of course, this all comes out as "Magi-karp, karp," but who wants to type this stuff twice?), "use your---wait, what are you doing? Not on me, you idiot! On the caterpieeee!"

(that last was Karrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp, which is worth typing twice because it's an awesome sound effect to think about as a Magikarp goes flying through the air, pretty much landing back in the water it had just spent the last several minutes painstakingly crawling forth from and viciously hopping/flopping toward the fight.

Of course, this was a Magikarp, and this was the Pokemon universe, so abuse generally yielded... interesting results among the Magikarp...

and Guy could feel the power surging within him.
The great power.
The undeniable power... of, of....

THRASH!
[Yes, Magikarp do learn moves, vicious, vicious moves. Or something. Maybe Guy's a special Magikarp; really, does accuracy count in situations like this, really?])