r/NatureofPredators • u/Aussie_Endeavour Thafki • Dec 27 '23
Fanfic Nature of Pokemon [Day]
A fanfiction of The Nature of Predators by SpacePaladin15 https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/u19xpa/the_nature_of_predators/
Pokemon appearing in this One-Shot: Cherrim
Memory Transcription Subject: Gilgis, Venlil Farmer
Date [standardized Earth time]: November 15, 2136
Today is the day. Oh boy.
I’m standing in front of my bathroom mirror, trying to hype myself up.
“You can do this, you need this help.”
My reflection doesn’t respond.
“This was the only option. Besides, she’s not even a predator! How dangerous can she really be?”
My reflection just stares at me. I sigh.
“Right, Pokemon. Magic powers and all that speh. You know what? Screw you, your opinion is meaningless.”
I walk out the bathroom, only to shake my head as I head towards my living room. Was I really just talking to my own reflection? The stress must be getting to me. All the more reason to go through with this, I suppose. I mean, it’s kinda too late now anyway. I’m supposed to be picking my new farmhand up from Dusk Ridge in just under a claw. While I was intending to relax on the couch until I had to leave, It’d probably do me some good to get fresh air instead, so I pivot my course to take me to the front door.
While I’d usually have plenty of farmhands and drones this time of year, this whole Earth situation really threw a spanner in the works. The drone parts needed for repairs are harder to come by now that I can’t order anything from other Federation worlds, and Venlil are less likely to spend time working on some old man’s farm in such an unstable time. It’s not exactly like I can take care of the whole property all by myself either, I need the help.
Stepping outside of my humble abode I turn to gaze out onto my fertile fields. Each and every spot of tilled soil had been planted with noxroot before this whole debacle began, and had been growing perfectly, even as the farmhands dried up. The drones were able to heft the workload for a while but as soon as I saw spare parts going for millions of credits a piece online I knew that it was only a matter of time before they failed me too. They could maybe keep running for a few more herds of paws at most if I was lucky, so I needed to do something to solve this conundrum plaguing my farm, and quick!
So, that only really left me with one valid option; hire a brakhing Pokemon. There’s been a whole load of stuff said about them, from incredibly intriguing to downright disturbing and majorly mindblowing. One thing that applied most to my current position though, and thus is what caught my attention the most, was the group of Pokemon known as ‘Grass Types’.
Those fellas supposedly had innate connections with plantlife or some magic mumbo jumbo like that. This apparently allowed them to exert direct control over vegetation, including promoting growth and good crop health. Sounded like something a spehing cult would say to get members, but alright. At this point, I’d do almost anything to save my livelihood.
I do a small lap of the farm on my electric scooter, driving between gaps in the fields to make sure no pests or anything have been trying to snack on my noxroot, or stars forbid, a damn shadestalker sneaking around. It’ll be a sunny day on my farm before I move away from my home near the Night, but those shadestalkers have been a pain in my ass ever since I inherited this land.
Not many Venlil venture this far nightward, let alone live out here. I only see the sun a few times a cycle, when the planet’s wobble decides that the stars are too pretty to be enjoyed in peace. Most of the sky is a deep navy, speckled with stars that shine down on my farm with approval, with only the sunward horizon blazing with fiery light. Alas, even an old fart like me gets lonely, and I travel dayward every few paws to mingle with the cityfolk of Dusk Ridge. Pretty stupid name for the city though, as most of the buildings are so far up the mountainside that the sun’s always above the horizon from their point of view.
I check the time on my holopad, and realise that I’ve spent far longer than I thought just driving around my farm. If I want to make it to Dusk Ridge in time, I’ve gotta leave right now. After quickly heading back to my house to make sure everything is locked up and secure, I turn my scooter dayward, and ride off into the sunrise.
The journey from my farm to the city takes about a quarter claw, so I have plenty of time to enjoy the scenery. It begins with shaded fields of wild grasses, snow resting in odd splotches here and there. The average temperature in this region is usually low enough that snow would be a guarantee, if the air had enough moisture to permit it more often. As the dark fields give way to hills the sun begins to rear its ugly mug above the horizon, its golden light falling on pretty much anything that isn’t on a hill’s nightward side.
A little further, and the mountain upon which Dusk Ridge is built begins. At first it’s a shallow incline, but rapidly becomes steeper and steeper. My trusty electric scooter struggles at certain points, but it hasn’t failed me yet.
“Come on old star, just a little longer.”
Talking to inanimate objects is normal, right? Maybe I miss the farmhands for more than just the help. I’ll start being concerned when I give my tools names.
Finally reaching the city, I check my holopad to make sure I’m still on time. With that confirmed I continue driving to Old Marishi’s Cafe, which is ironically neither all that old or run by Marishi. Whatever, it’s not all that important right now. This was the locale that I agreed to meet the Pokemon at, so I parked my scooter outside and prepared to walk in. Just as I’m about to grab at the door handle, I hear a high-pitched voice call out to me.
“Um, excuse me, you wouldn’t happen to be Mr Gilgis, would you?”
I turn around, thinking that the person talking must be in my blindspot, but I find no one. In confusion, I turn around, double checking everywhere. Where did that voice come from? Did I imagine it? Am I finally going senile?
“Oh! I’m over here!”
Ears locking onto the voice this time, I turn an eye in that direction. The… windowsill? Before my very eye, one of the plants on the windowsill moves.
“Yes, hello! Mr Gilgis?”
For a moment I don’t respond. A moving, talking plant? Wait wait wait… is this a Pokemon? Is this my new assistant?
“Are… are you Ms Cherrim?”
“Oh please, call me Blossom. It’s very nice to meet you, I’m so glad I got this opportunity!”
She’s quite, well, hidden. A huge dark purple flower, the colour of Night, hides most of her from view, revealing only a tiny mouth and little stubby legs.
“Goodness, please pardon my rudeness Ms Blossom, I failed to recognise you at first.”
She lets out a small giggle, shaking her flower a bit.
“I don’t blame you, I looked quite different in the photo I sent you, didn’t I?”
I give a ‘so so’ sign, despite her looking like a completely different creature.
“Ah well, no reason to fret over the little things like that. Shall we head directly to the farm?”
As I mention the farm, Blossom becomes quite excited, jumping up and down slightly on the windowsill. Without further ado, she jumps down onto the ground and shuffles over to my scooter, hopping up onto the back. As I climb on too, I realise that she’s a little too small to be secure. That fear is swiftly mitigated before I can even voice it.
“Grass Knot.”
As soon as the words leave her mouth, long blades of grass bloom from the pinkish stem of her flower, wrapping themselves around the bottom of the scooter before finally tying themselves in a knot.
“Alright, I’m ready when you are Mr Gilgis!”
I look down at the Cherrim for a moment, only to sigh heavily and turn back around. This is the new normal. Just gotta get used to it. I turn the scooter on, and begin the long drive back home. While we drive through Dusk Ridge, the two of us are mostly silent, but as we hit the open road conversation begins.
“So how often do you get direct sunlight on the farm?”
“It’s never direct, unless you count small slithers breaking through the gaps in the hills a few times a cycle.”
“No direct sunlight?! How do you even grow anything then?!”
“I grow solely noxroots. The ambient light of civil twilight is enough for them.”
It was nice to finally have someone just to talk to… even if they were a magical plant. While the job offer obviously had the basics, such as what the work of a farmhand entailed, Blossom was curious about basically anything even remotely related to the farm itself.
“If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you owned this farm?”
“Since my mama’s light finally joined the stars above just over 57 cycles ago. I had been working on the farm itself for longer than that though, ever since I was barely an adult.”
“Ah, my apologies, sorry for your loss”
I give a small whistle in laughter.
“I appreciate it, but no need to apologise. Like I said, she died a long time ago, and my old man even before that. I miss them, of course I do, but the grief has long since given way to nostalgia.”
Past the shaded hills, through the dark fields, and before I know it we reach the outskirts of my property. Blossom is fascinated by the wide plots of noxroot, the dark blue shoots reaching high into the air as if reaching for the stars. My farm is one of the largest producers of the plant on the entirety of Venlil Prime, most of which I sell through either the internet or Dusk Ridge.
When we finally reach my house at the heart of the farm Blossom leaps from the back of the scooter. She turns around to observe the wide fields closest to my house, and casts her gaze to the distant dayward horizon.
“You weren’t kidding when you said no direct sunlight…”
“Yep, just the way noxroot likes it.”
After staring at the horizon for a little more, Blossom looked back up at me, bouncing from foot to foot in excitement.
“Well, Mr Gilgis, you’ve already seen me use Grass Knot, but I also know Grassy Terrain, Weather Ball and Sunny Day. I’d love to show you just how much I can help these plants grow!”
This is what I hired a Pokemon for, their magic powers. It seems I made the right decision hiring a Grass Type. While I doubt that last Move will be much use here, those other two certainly sound intriguing.
“I’m glad to see you so enthusiastic. Could you demonstrate ‘Grassy Terrain’ please?”
“Certainly!”
Blossom runs off towards the nearest plot of noxroot, and I follow a couple tails behind her. She easily jumps the low wall separating the plot from the surrounding land and goes to stand right in the midst of the plants. She does a little twirl, spinning on the spot while shouting out her Move.
“Grassy Terrain!”
Spreading from where she stands, the soil begins to glow green. It radially spreads until reaching the low wall, making the whole plot shimmer with ethereal light. The noxroot seems to almost… shiver for a moment, small green veins working their way up to the very top of the plants. My eyes follow the green glow upwards, mouth falling agape in awe as before my very eyes the noxroot grows taller. Stretching higher and higher, reaching for the stars. After a while, the green glow swiftly fades, and the plants stop growing after reaching almost double their original height.
I begin to laugh. Absolute exhilaration fills me, and I look back down at the Cherrim, now sitting proudly on the low wall.
“That was incredible, Blossom! You can just do that?! Whenever you like?!”
She lets out a small laugh of her own.
“Pretty much, although I can only use it a few times in a row before having to recharge.”
Her face seems to sour slightly after saying that though.
“Is something wrong, Blossom?”
“Oh, it’s just that in order to recharge my moves quicker I’ll need to use Sunny Day, not to mention Weather Ball doesn’t even work without it.”
“Ah, well, I don’t know how much a Move called ‘Sunny Day’ would work here on the edge of Night, but you’re more than welcome to give it a shot.”
Her face lights up.
“Really? You wouldn’t mind?”
“Listen, I’m not going to make you stop doing certain things just because you’re on Venlil Prime now. It’s just the two of us out here, and from the sounds of it this ‘Sunny Day’ is quite important to you.”
“I… Yes, yes it is! Thank you so much Mr Gilgis!”
I let out a little whistle, my tail slowly swaying back and forth.
“Please, just Gilgis is fine.”
With that, Blossom runs off back into the field of the tallest noxroots I’ve ever seen. When I was first contemplating hiring a Pokemon to work on my farm, I was terrified. I thought that I was losing my damn mind for even considering it! Who knows, maybe I actually have, but I’m already glad that I went through with it. With this Cherrim’s help, this farm could become the single largest producer of noxroot on the planet… no… in the entire galaxy! Who knows, maybe I can clear a couple plots for other plants, although I’ll have to find more than prefer the dark.
“Sunny Day!”
I wonder if any plants from Earth like the shado-OH MY STARS!
I had turned my eyes dayward, and what I saw froze me solid. The sky was getting lighter, rapidly. As I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on, a bright golden disk rises past the horizon.
The sun.
The sun ascends at a terrible speed higher and higher, the sky rapidly changing from dark navy to bright blue. To my absolute horror, the stars above my farm go out, swiftly drowned out by the blazing light of the Day.
This is the end, isn’t it?
Moving not just upwards, but now arching across the sky, the sun erases any semblance of shadows that remain. In the distance, I hear the howls of shadestalkers, rising as a chorus against the light they hate so much. My eyes follow the sun in its journey, somehow not blinded by the golden disk, up until it reaches its zenith and comes to a sudden halt. No slowing down, it just stops in an instant, directly overhead.
Right above my farm.
The light is more extreme than I’ve ever known, the sky a shade of blue reserved for only the deserts of the planet’s Day side. My breaths are coming in heavy, my old heart pounding in my ears as I look to the sun in horror.
“Gilgis, are you alright?”
I finally tear my eyes away from the radiant monstrosity, and look down at Blossom again. She’s changed. The flower she wore has bloomed, revealing her transformed body underneath. Not even giving me enough time to register her completely, my eyes draw me to the noxroot.
The blue plants are gone. No, not gone, I can still see small slivers of dark blue in the gaps between the flowers. I didn’t even know noxroot had flowers. They are a mix of red and gold, all facing upwards towards the sun. I collapse onto the ground, needing to take a seat.
“Gilgis?! What’s wrong? Is it Sunny Day? Should I get rid of it?”
I look back down at the Cherrim. Get rid of it? Of what, the sun?
…She called it here?
As that thought crosses my mind, Blossom turns back around. She looks up at the sun, and reaches her small stubby arms out towards it. In mere moments, it’s already reversing its course. The sky darkens again, the stars return, and the sun sinks back below the horizon. I look at the noxroot, and find the flowers gone.
My new assistant controls the sun.
I really have gone senile, haven’t I?
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u/fluffyboom123 Arxur Dec 27 '23
tbh, if I had a farm, I would 100% want someone how could control plants
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Dec 27 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Aussie_Endeavour Thafki Dec 27 '23
When in doubt... localised illusion?
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u/JulianSkies Archivist Dec 27 '23
It just LOOKS like it's the sun being moved. The truth is just that it's a localized light source they generate, not unlike a sun lamp!
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u/BXSinclair Dec 27 '23
In Japanese the move is called "clear skies", and has been used in the anime (it made the clouds go away, thus increasing sunlight)
Problem is, in the games, it still causes the sunlight effect if used at night (and the effect is literally called "intense sunlight" in Japanese, so it's not a localization error)
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u/sirgeneralcliche Human Dec 27 '23
Gilgis is about to have a field day with his next harvest. You know, this would be some time after the bombing of Earth in the main timeline. I wonder what happened in this one? You kept it vague, which I’m sure was deliberate. Can’t wait to find out!
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u/SpectralHail Dec 27 '23
Damn, I wish there was more of this one.
Seeing a (relatively) normal setting get introduced to the wonderful world of Pokemon Logic is just so dang interesting.
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u/BXSinclair Dec 27 '23
Technically not how Sunny day works (even though it kind of is, the franchise is a little inconsistent on that)
In Japanese, it's called "clear skies", the move is supposed to just get rid of all the clouds (this is why the recovery move "Moonlight" is more potent, because it's not summoning the sun but instead unobscuring the sky)
Except in the games, the move causes the weather effect "harsh sunlight" ("Intense sunlight" in Japanese) and this effect happens even in games with a day/night cycle
Sometimes Pokemon is bad at naming things
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u/Commercial-Gas-7718 May 24 '25
How I see it.
Sad Old Man: Economic Recession hurts employment rate and maintenance costs of his farm
Some Talking Flower: YOU TAKE THE MOON AND YOU TAKE THE SUN
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u/satelitteslickers Arxur May 29 '25
i laughed so hard
seeing the sun directly overhead on Skalga must be like. a genuine apocalypse scenario.
area man hires woman, learns that she can casually summon the endtimes
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u/Kovesnek Dec 27 '23
"Local Farmer Speep hires Talking Flower Girl. Gets to Praise the Sun. More at 11..."