"If you're still hungry after that, go find your own food." Paul says sharply. "Now again, get out of my face."
Foolish mortal.
Wha- did I just walk into someone's secret berry garden?!
Like, say, that of an Ursaring?
I already know how Cheris, Pechas, and Orans taste, having been lucky enough to get a hold of them once or twice back in Bewilder Forest. Of those three, the Orans were my favorite — though Pechas are nicely sweet, and Cheris are oddly decent for being so spicy, Orans somehow manage to encompass an entire variety of flavors without having them clash.
Berries are an interesting subject in Pokemon. I kinda wonder just what exactly they're all like; we have a large number of berries, and they have quite the eclectic range of qualities. It also brings to mind the real-world technicalities regarding various fruits and berries by actual definition and how definition according to general custom can vary so wildly from such. I wonder if "berries" might encompass quite the range of edible plant fruits that might ordinarily be considered vegetables or nuts. One does not typically think of berries as a spicy food, but from a botanical standpoint rather than a culinary one, peppers fit right in. Peppers also have a pretty different flavour from tomatoes, too, which are themselves quite different from the likes of pumpkins. So, then, how might that all turn out when throwing in the wackiness of the Pokemon world?
I shift my widening gaze to the berry pile at my feet. I've been looking for these things solely due to their value as sustenance all week, so I guess it kind of slipped my mind that in most of the games, they're generally considered much more valuable for their various curative properties. Even if it hadn't though, I don't think I'd have expected those properties to be nearly so potent in this world, nor would I have expected them to work so incredibly fast. If all the other berries' effects from the games translate just as directly, these things are basically outright miracle food.
No kidding. I remember turning practically every single patch of soil available towards farming Leppa Berries with a big, sprawling harvesting path worked out to best reach them all, because those were a dream come true for grinding or slogging through difficult areas. The Power Point system is one of the biggest deviations from game mechanics, so I'm quite curious what the likes of a Leppa Berry might actually do in-universe; given the results of the other berries, I have to wonder if it might as well be a straight IV drip of caffeine laced with amphetamines, all in a bite-sized snack.
On a related note, as part of the in-universe worldbuilding, the berries also seem a strong candidate for featuring in pokemon medicine. The humble Potion might be a sort of concentrated extract of Oran Berry in a convenient multi-dose aerosol bottle, with superior derivatives more or less just using a more expensive, higher concentration, until you get the likes of the Max Potion that is simply guaranteed overkill able to get
any job done with completely undiluted Sitrus Berry concentrate.
A giddy laugh bubbles up in my throat, and I spin on one foot, greatly enjoying my regained freedom of motion. I run back and forth a few times, swinging my arms around just to prove that I can-
I'm picturing this pint-sized mon with the huge mass of metalstuff jaw-horns hanging off to one side, and I can't help but wonder just how much fine control must be needed to not accidentally go summarily flying away in an uncontrolled lurch trailing after the eponymous maw.
Flairile, use Iron Head! *pirouette* SLAM! And the Voltorb is going, going, gone! It's a home run! I think a Mawile can be expected to have a spooky good sense of balance, or just rely on outright bullshit.
I think about it for about half a minute before rejecting the notion — as verdant and pleasant as this place seems at a glance, I think I've had more than enough of slumming it out in the wilderness already. However, I also don't think I want to put off escaping from Paul for any longer than I've already had to. The negatives of doing so have very rapidly begun to outweigh the positives, and I'm a lot more willing to risk heading into the unknown now that I'm back in fighting shape. I just wish I had some way of actually knowing where I was going...
Mm. Good to see some decisive choices being made.
I don't know something tells me his only reaction will be a momentary raising of the eyebrows and a moderately disgusted "Go take a bath, the rivers right over there."
Paul doesn't seen like the kinda guy to get queasy (at least outwardly) from a little blood and maybe some bone shards stuck in teeth.
Oh, I dunno. It may not be just a
little blood. She's a messy eater at the best of times, so if she had trouble with her food and didn't care about her state—or indeed actively
tried to make a mess simply for shock value—and came back drenched in blood and viscera with a gory trail behind her and, er, "debris" from her prey in stark evidence, I imagine that Paul might be just a tad disconcerted about the blatant, enthusiastic carnivore that apparently has both a huge appetite and a bad attitude, such that it was entirely willing to give him an angry crocodile impression right in his face... especially if she didn't make a particularly
clean kill after he gave her that particular order and he was subjected to a terrible snapping sound and the loud, blatant
screams of something dying in panicked agony not far off in the trees as darkness falls.
It has been confirmed that Mawile is a Tardis or Bag of Holding: She is bigger on the inside.
I am reminded of the related cursed item, the Bad of Devouring. Put stuff in, it doesn't come out. Om nom nom!
Eating other pokemon does not restore HP, unlike Oran and Sitrus berries, apparently.
Now then, to test what happens if she eats a pokemon that is
itself eating such a berry. For science!
Good thinking, she'll need a snack for the road!
It can even cook itself. It's perfect!
A stuffed animal would be... surprisingly effective for a lot of situations. If she played up the childlike ingenue angle she would be able to butcher her way through a lot of flatfooted opponents. Trainers are used to bluster and seeming harmless and changing directions on a dime would result in tragically misplaced torsos.
A teddy bear, specifically, would also be morbid enough to be hilarious. Particularly if you ever meet up with mom again.
That would be rather apt for a Mawile. Better still, plenty of pokemon are indeed quite cute, as well as additionally even deliberately played up in such manner by their trainers, so it wouldn't necessarily even stand out as suspiciously unusual for perhaps being
too innocent-seeming, but rather just seem like yet another adorable, friendly little critter. Just what happens when the Deceiver Pokemon starts leveraging human-level intellect? Further still, this
particular Deceiver Pokemon is not only atypically intelligent, but also has an intimate understanding of how humans think, and could easily actively conform to expectation and assumption, especially if she simply isn't expected to be so conniving in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if she tries out a "hair" accessory much like one of the Mawile featuring in the anime, and depending on how Pokemon shenanigans work, who knows, maybe tying a pretty pink ribbon or something on top of her head might lend her an edge in more ways than one.
