Visual art by BattleFerrets

From the pages of Yvette's dream journal.

...she was a Larvitar, but she was not the same. She had marvelous scales that looked more like samurai armor. The shadowy figure calling herself Bianca seemed pretty insistent that I take her with me, so I did. I swear, given how lucid these dreams are, I am going to another dimension. I honestly think it is a whole different world at this point. Anyway, I named her Penny and she just nodded at me like she understood everything I was saying. There was a fierce look in her eyes and whenever I had her out of her ball, she would find a quiet spot to meditate. It's so weird...

...I know nothing in that world. All of my studies meant nothing there. Penny, a Larvitar, was not a rock and ground pokémon at all. She's a fighting type. And those armor-like scales? They reacted just like the scales of Milotic, based on what I have seen. It didn't take me long to figure out since a Galvantula, which were water and psychic type there, hit her with a super effective psychic type attack. Based on the other things, the meditating, the storm throw attack, the stance she always had, and that fierce look, it was a no-brainer...

...Penny didn't seem to be doing well. She hasn't slept in a long time, from what I can tell, and the more I trained her, the more… skittish? she became. She was fine outside of a battle, but every time I called her out against a wild pokémon or trainer, she twitched and shuffled in place as if she was ready to turn tail and run. She still responded well to my commands, and her roar still scared even the most brave looking opponents, but I think if I let her fight on her own, she would immediately run away as fast as her legs could carry her...

...I know it was just a dream, but when I woke up, I nearly vomited. I mentioned Penny becoming increasingly skittish in my last entry, but today she actually ran away from a fight. The opponent was weak and we had already defeated the rest of their team, but she let out a horrible shriek and then ran, flailing wildly as if she was in a blind panic. I was not allowed to leave the building until I finished the match, so I ended things as fast as I could and then went to look for her. The dream's landscape was always very clear up close, but from far away, it looked like a pulsing veil of… smog, I suppose. It was not easy to find her, but I did. She was cowering before a group of wild Larvitar who all looked down on her with a gaze as fierce as hers used to be.

Trapped there like a wild rattata, Penny tried to run again, but they pounced on her. I tried to intervene, but one of the wild ones broke from the group holding her down to strike at me. I sent out some of my other pokémon, but they refused to fight. It was as if that was meant to happen for some awful reason. What they did next was terrible. The largest of the wild Larvitar grabbed her by the horn and yanked it right off her head. She shrieked so loud I thought my eardrums would burst.

They… threw the horn down in front of her before they encircled her tightly, turning their backs and snubbing her. I figured out what exactly was going on a little too late. As if they were all samurai and Penny was shamed, she was to take her own life. And she did. She took her horn in hand and turned it inward before slicing across and spilling her own guts… Or at least, that is what I expected. Rather than entrails, a stream of ribbon-like black strands came out and encapsulated Penny's body. They kept pouring from the hole in her stomach until nothing of her body remained visible. The black mass pulsed horribly as it took a new shape and spiked forms shot outward from within, creating gashes that spewed a black misty substance… Not a vision I'll soon forget. The shell that remained started to solidify, taking on a similar color to Penny's, but much darker. That, as it turned out, was Penny evolving in this strange nightmare land. An evolution through death… the only other pokémon I have heard doing something similar to this is Shedinja, but they are more a creation of a new pokémon from a discarded shell, rather than through the death of the pokémon...

...Penny is scary. I mean, I've never really been bothered by ghosts, we see them fairly frequently in our pokémon-filled world, but her presence was chilling. It's not actually cold, but it seemed to sap energy from me and gave me chills. Her touch was even more so and if she even got close, my skin horripilated. Since her shell was mostly immobile, she used more of those ribbons from within her body to move about. They shot out from inside the empty-seeming holes in her shell like tentacles and affixed themselves to everything they touched with suction cups, like squid or octopus tentacles. They left a ghostly, wet residue behind when she moved about slowly...

...I thought I had become accustomed to Penny's oddities. When she used those ribbon-tentacles and her spikes to cut at enemies furiously, that was tolerable. Watching her shell spew gooey ectoplasm to recover damage was equally tolerable. She never took much damage, so I didn't have to have her use it all that often anyway. But when she ran out of that weird black goo after a long stretch of battles straight to a gym leader, she petrified me with a move I didn't know she had. A gurgling, slimey… bellow... erupted from the holes in her body, as if she were a battle horn, sounding an order to the damned. Yes, she called spirits of the damned. This is a crazy possibly-not-actually-a-dream land after all. Anyway, the spirits were like mostly-transparent blobs of gunk that seeped from the ground like pus from a wound. They shrieked, cried, moaned, groaned, and screamed as they splatted against her, sealing her wounds and cracks further. She turned back to look at me in the middle of the fight as if to gauge my reaction to the heal order she'd given. I was scared stiff. And if it were possible, I swear I'd have seen a smirk on her face. It was bad enough she always stared at me with those blazing red, yet somehow dead, eyes… So I guess I should count that as a blessing...

...we defeated them all pretty easily. Penny's shell started cracking even more so than it had been over the last few battles, despite her not taking any damage. She wouldn't repair the damage as she normally did, either. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried at the time, but that moment was short-lived.

As we were wrapping up the last battle, the shadowy figure calling itself Clay handed me an equally shadowy badge and a loud crack resounded from Penny. The space around her became distorted and the glowing red eyes I had become accustomed to were gone. Black holes that sucked the light surrounding them in were all that remained in the hollow sockets. I tried my best not to be freaked out, but the creaking and groaning coming from inside coupled with an increasingly oppressive atmosphere had me instinctively backing away from her. It was good I did. The shell split down the middle and crunched and cracked as it began to open, the emptiness within sucking everything toward it like a black hole. I had to grab my hat and, eventually, hold onto the big crystal Clay was standing in front of to keep balance. A deep rumbling roar echoed through the chamber as Penny emerged, looming over us higher and higher. She seemed endless. I know Tyranitar are supposed to be big, but they average between five and a half to seven feet tall. Penny was at least ten. The shadows began to fade as light was allowed to permeate once more, revealing the deep, dark form that was now Penny. Her body was still riddled with holes that appeared much deeper than physics should allow and the many spikes that emerged from them were much larger than before. The deep hollow sockets of her eyes had no glow at first, but after a few moments, the red eerie glow returned...

...Penny is terrifying. I was battling a trainer that liked to have their pokémon bulk up and take little damage while being able to deal more. I was scared I was going to lose at first, but then I sent Penny out. I didn't know this at the time, but she just… completely ignored the power that the opponent built up. As if they hadn't done anything at all, Penny took a hit and just shrugged it off. And the thick scales that had become tougher, and deflected most of the special powers of pokémon had no effect on her. She summoned up a shadow ball and just… blasted their 'mon into oblivion. She always had this subtle smile on her face, too. As if she knew that their boosts meant nothing to her. Honestly, and I know I keep saying this, but she really freaks me out...

For those that made it this far, this is a re-imagined larvitar line from my randomized bw2 pokemon game where Larvitar starts off as fighting and with marvel scale ability, evolves into Pupitar which is now fighting/ghost and has suction cups and then tyranitar as fight/ghost again with unaware ability. and some random moves which are mentioned, too.