Work Text:
CLANG
CLANG
CLANG
Ahh… the one sound that made Kajiya absolutely, positively certain he was at peace. There was no one else around. No stress. No worries. Pokémon were surprised when the Darmanitan mentioned this, pointing out how doing his work should be the most stressful part of his life due to the time constraints it imposed upon him. But that wasn’t it, not at all. The politics of being one of the world’s foremost metalworkers were the stressful bit. Being in Mount Coquo with his forgery and twenty-or-so assignments was like bliss to him. It was like the peaceful sleep in between two tiring days.
CLANG. He was in the midst of forging twenty identical pickaxes. The heads of them, at least. His customer had insisted upon providing the helves themselves. They had also insisted upon providing the metal, even though he could produce that with ease. The region of Fala was full of mines of every sort, and he, as the expert he was, could create the ideal steel for any task. He understood why they wanted to produce the steel though, as what they had provided him with had a very intricate makeup, indeed. He had recorded its recipe, adding it to his cookbook, as he called it, so that he could recreate it at any time.
CLANG. That was the seventh one done. He threw it into the bucket of water nearby to cool. He reached for the next hunk of steel and dipped it into the magma flowing near the little cavern he had dug out within the volcano of Mount Coquo. Once it was substantially heated, he moved it down roughly to his anvil and began using his Hammer Arm. He had to savour these times, since he only took occasional trips to his isolated metallurgy workshop. The trip there took a day and a night, one way. But when he did go to his workshop, he remained there for many weeks, only stopping his work for the periodic nap, other mandatory self-care, and for Union Hour. Most of the Pokémon of Fala didn’t acknowledge Union Hour, but his mother’s side of his family came from Lower Lanakila, and he had grown up learning it was impolite to work during Union Hour unless absolutely necessary.
Speaking of which, Solgaleo’s light would be arriving soon, signalling the end of night and the beginning of morning Union Hour. He ought to finish the head he was working on and stop until the moon had been vanquished from the sky. He hastened his hammering, and after thirty-or-so clangs, he threw it into the water bucket with the other seven blades. He trudged over to the small, stone chair on the other side of the warm room and sat down, his pleasantly aching arms finding rest. How he enjoyed this. No one to interrupt his work. No one.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true…
“Kajiya?” Ah. Speak of Giratina.
“Yes, Frere?” He said gruffly. He didn’t do it on purpose. It was his natural voice.
The young Flareon came into the room slightly timidly, as he always did. Frere, his personal assistant. Kajiya had first recruited him when he was but a nine year-old Eevee. When he was eleven, he had evolved in that very workshop. At the time, Kajiya hadn’t known of the nature of Eevee’s evolution, so when he beheld what was clearly a Fire-Type where the Eevee had just stood, he panicked, thinking the heat from the volcano had triggered a mutation. Frere had then quickly explained Eevee’s power to him, and ever since they had been arguing over whether Kajiya was technically right about the volcano causing a mutation.
The now sixteen year-old Fire-Type spoke up. “I’ve been… well… I’ve been thinking of leaving.”
“Wha-!? Why?” He was partially feigning the surprise. He had always been able to tell that Frere was unhappy with this lifestyle. And he understood. His way of living wasn’t for everyone. Nonetheless, this conversation would go far better if Frere simply didn’t know he had caught on.
“Kaji, please don’t make this tougher than it already is. It’s just…” he observed the rising sun with his mentor through a hole in the craggy, grey wall. “You know how I love battling. And exploring. And meeting new Pokémon. Here, there’s none of that. I would ask you to come with me, but I know how much you love this land.”
He sighed. He liked the quadruped’s company. He was helpful. He had become particularly useful ever since he evolved, since he could now carry molten metal without any sort of protection.
“Alright. I respect your decision.” he stopped, thinking that was enough, but decided it wasn’t. “If… if you want some sort of… farewell gift to remember me by, I would be more than willing to forge something for you. A piece of equipment, maybe, perhaps a pocket knife-”
“Well, there is one thing. I don’t know, though…” he trailed off.
“I’m sure I can do it, kid. Out with it.” He kept his tone friendly.
“I’d… I’d like a helmet, since I’m going to be battling quite a bit. But… but made out of the Living Stee-”
“ What!? You know about that!?”
The young Flareon cringed back, with the Darmanitan having stood up from his chair in surprise. Perhaps it could have come off as anger. He calmed himself down. Not so much that he would go Zen mode, but enough that he didn’t look angry.
But he most certainly was confused. How had he learned of the Living Metal?
“I-I’m sorry! I knew it wasn’t well-known, and that it must be that way for a reason, but I’m curious and want to see it for myself!” he hastily explained.
“That still doesn’t explain how you learned of it.”
“I saw it in your other… er, cookbook. The name sounded interesting, so I asked some trusted acquaintances about this ‘Living Steel’, and none of them knew what I was talking about.”
Alright. Good. The kid spent time at the library every once in a while, and he head feared that he had learned of it there. “It’s not called the Living Steel. It’s called the Living Metal. It doesn't classify as a steel. That… bewitched stuff never will.”
“Why exactly is it named the way it is, then?”
He sighed as he hesitated. This kid was anything but megalomaniacal, but still… no, he had trusted the kid with other secrets of his, and so far he hadn’t told a soul. “You see, the Living Metal is the Consortium-Fala’s closest-guarded secret, and for good reason. Not only is it the most durable alloy on record, but when punctured, it simply… fixes itself. The metal melts back into position, over time. It earned its name because living things recover from wounds in a similar way.”
“Oh… I can imagine what a Pokémon with bad intentions could do if they knew how to make it.”
“Yup. The Consortium-Fala theorizes that if we were to research it further, we could make its effect more potent, and thus create an indestructible metal, with terrifying applications. We have no intention of doing that, however. Our mission is keeping this information from falling into the wrong hands, not encouraging it to.”
“... and so it would be unrealistic of me to want a helmet made of it.”
“You know, I don’t think so. Psychic is involved in making it, and psychic is needed to mold it. The only metallurgists who know how to do that are here in Fala, in the Consortium.” He paused, sighed again, this time due to remembering that Frere was leaving. “As long as you swear not to tell anyone the truth of its makeup, I’ll make the helmet for you.”
His eyes lit up. “Really!?”
“Yeah, go get some before I change my mind. I think I put a few ingots of the cursed stuff out closer to Mount Coquo’s crater, in a chest. Just follow the trail up for fifteen minutes.”
His assistant, still with a joyfully shocked expression, went back out to fetch the ingots, leaving him alone with his thoughts once again.
The Living Metal. He remembered the final test to become a member of the Consortium. You had to make a small ingot of the stuff, with some help if you couldn’t use psychic. When you succeeded, and were officially initiated into the Consortium, you were to attempt to break the ingot. The idea was, no matter how hard you tried, you would be unable to break it. Even if you were strong enough to dent it, as Kajiya had been, it would simply mold back into its previous shape. The Living Metal was a hazard to the world, and in the possession of the wrong Pokémon, it could have disastrous consequences.
But thankfully, they were nowhere near that scenario thanks to the Consortium’s secrecy measures. For now, he had a daunting (but still enjoyable) task ahead of him: making a helmet.