“C’moooon, I’m practically starving!”

Celosia leaned over the table and pouted, literally salivating at the capsule in front of her. Color-coded to her violet hair and outfit, all manner of unintelligible screams seemed to emanate from the container, and dull thumps and tumbles accompanied them.

“Not yet. Our leader wants to be present when we open them,” Bryony replied, ever tactful yet taciturn. She gestured to the three other cylindrical capsules that were positioned upright on the metallic tabletop, each of which corresponding to another shade of outfit, from blue to orange to green. “I’m as eager as you are, but you mustn't let that cloud your self-control. We shan’t allow our leader to get upset.”

“Boooo! Lame!” Celosia groaned, leaning back in her chair. “Just because she’s this Elite Four big-shot, now she’s suddenly all high and mighty. Can’t stick it out with the rest of us? We’re supposed to be a team!”

On the far side of the room, Mable was not paying attention to any of them. Her focus was to the chalkboard upon which several schematics were being drafted. A cursory glance at them revealed all manner of illicit, theoretical inventions that boggled the mind. Dead-set concentration upon her blueprints was only momentarily broken when she turned slightly to the rest of her team, and she said, “Just like you to be impatient, Celosia! Any true scientist knows that it is only the pain of anticipation that makes the joy of tasting the boons of one’s victory so much sweeter!” Mable made sure to pantomime crushing air in her fist to punctuate the final word as she grinned. She returned to her chalkboard.

In an opposite corner of the room, Aliana watched with a mirthful smile on her face at Celosia’s frustration. “They’re both right, you know.” Aliana laughed even as Celosia stared a couple of daggers at her partner through her visor goggles. “Patience is key. Though… maybe just a taste,” mused Aliana as she reached one gloved finger out to the edge of the table, only for it to be slapped away by Bryony, who stared at her fellow member of Team Flare with cold disapproval.

“No. Not yet.”

Aliana still chuckled, and she rested in the back of her chair once again.

“I don’t get it!” Celosia exclaimed. “It’s a new age! We should be on top! Why’s Team Flare still slinking underground like rats?! We can’t even take advantage of these new League regulations! It’s such a load of – ”

“The time for your return to the light of day will arrive soon, darlings,” came that sultry, buttery voice from the chamber doorway.

It was like a bell; all four women’s eyes went to it immediately as they laid upon their leader, Malva, leaning against the metallic door-frame stylishly. She removed her sunglasses, closing them up as the four Team Flare scientists stood at attention and performed their customary salute.

“That won’t be necessary,” Malva replied, adjusting her watch as she stepped into the room.

“W-we were waiting for you!” Celosia said, clasping her hands together as she beseeched her leader. “We didn’t want to start… well, dinner, without you!”

“That’s sweet, all of you,” Malva replied, stretching. “But I’m afraid I can’t stay. I have to deliver a report via Holo-Caster. But while I am here, since I am the only one of us who has a legally-distributed Poke-App...”

And with precision accuracy, she delivered four sequential blasts at the four upright capsules on the table.

“Bon Apetit,” Malva replied, returning her glasses to her face. “I locked in your orders already. They should be perfect.”

“Oh, hell yeah!” Celosia said, the first to dive to her violet-colored canteen. She twisted it open and both her mouth and nose immediately watered as the sickly sweet scent of dozens of defeated trainers from the Kalos League scent.

“Oh man… Malva sure knows how to please a girl,” Celosia continued, unable to prevent the drool from filling her mouth as she dipped her hand inside. Pinching two fingers around a squirming young man, she opened her gaping mouth and popped him inside, locking him within her lavender-colored lips as he struggled and screamed.

“Man, Sweet Scent! Killer!” The words were muffled through the haze of saliva and garbled smacking as she ran the unfortunate trainer all throughout her tongue, on the inside of her cheeks, and against the rough rock-solid sets of teeth that lined her gums, capable of disemboweling him easily if the mood struck. But that was messy, and besides, Celosia preferred to savor the flavor of his fear than put an end to the fun so soon.

Celosia threw her head back and the cavern of her mouth became a dank sinkhole, a slippery abyss that her captive tried fruitlessly to scale and find purchase upon as globules of spit continued to saturate him and send him sliding down into the hot and humid underworld beneath that threatened to swallow him whole. Until…

Gulp!

He made a tiny indentation in the bulge of Celosia’s throat, which she rubbed sadistically as she felt him deposit into her acrid stomach. A tiny belch of hot air erupted from her gastric interior, to which Celosia responded, “Excuse me,” with a devilish smile. “Soooo sweet.”

Bryony allowed a slight, sleek smile to pierce her veil of professionalism as she took her lime-green capsule of failed Elite Four challengers, unscrewing the cap and examining the pile of sorry excuses for trainers within. They had been given the privilege of being able to keep their outfits, but they were likely regretting it as even now Bryony could feel the intense heat being emitted from the depths of the cylinder.

“Overheat… Hmph. You know me well.”

Malva smiled as she watched Bryony remove a captive from the container and place him gingerly on the tip of her tongue, closing it.

Immediately, the spiciness of the delicacy caused Bryony’s face to flush, and a dab of sweat began to flow down her temple before being lost in her visor. Ultimately, however, Bryony swallowed and exhaled graciously.

“Exhilarating,” she breathed out plucking another one from the pack. Having barely seen what just occurred to his comrade, his struggles were even more pained, impassioned, and desperate; the entire room could make out the begs, pleads, and swears that left the trainer’s utterly minuscule mouth.

“It is quite a privilege to rid Kalos of this filth,” Bryony recited, putting her other hand to her cheek as she observed with approval the next burning hot morsel to be dolloped into her mouth. “Rest well knowing your nourishment will soon contribute to the rebirth of our glorious plan. And soon, a brave new world.”

Bryony patted her belly as the previous body deposited itself in the toxic vat of her stomach, reacting in a violent-yet-invigorating manner. She almost felt that she needed only burp, and the emerging vapors would have the power of a Flamethrower all on their own. Something not lost on the next tiny trainer as he cringed at the emerging vapors that exited her mouth, only to be roughly thrown kicking, screaming, and crying to join his companion. Followed by another. And another.

“What was that about restraint you were saying earlier?” Celosia called, giggling remorselessly as Bryony was surely rolling her eyes behind her goggles.

Mable was reluctant to depart from her schematics, but when she laid her hands upon her own turquoise capsule, a literal chill traveled from the tips of her fingers to the base of her spine, and she shivered with glee.

“Oooooh… it would appear my request was fulfilled! Malva, you truly shouldn’t have!”

Popping the lid open, Mable was not greeted by screams, squirms, or anything of the sort. She couldn’t even smell anything emanating from the interior of the can, though she knew if she could smell fear, it would be more than fragrant enough to detect.

Packed in like sardines, Mable’s eyes glimmered behind their visor as she examined her own personal frozen delicious treats, inflicted by the Ice-Type move Freeze-Dry. These trainers were certainly frozen; the terror that was immortalized over their faces made that quite clear.

“Freeze Dry, and Harden! A delicious combination for a lover of frozen confectioneries such as myself. But, oh, which one should I try first? This one?”

Mable plucked one out from his foot and raised him in front of her visor, the advanced electronics within allowing her to determine his vitals and decreased heart-rate. There was no mistake to be made that he was alive, for the moment.

“Or, hm, maybe this one?” And Mable pulled out another, her mouth continuously breaking into smiles that she could not stave off. “How about this one? Oh, they all look too good! I think I’ll just –”

And Mable dumped the icy chips’ worth of failed trainers back into the container and instead picked up the container itself. Her fingers were well-insulated through use of her gloved, and she raised the container high in the sky, shaking its petrified captives down tumbling into her awaiting, cackling mouth like a paradoxical waterfall of human suffering. They landed, filling up her mouth rather quickly. Only a spare few spilled out, falling onto the pristine linoleum floor of the office, which Mable gave only a sparing glance to before she angled the heel of her boot over these stragglers and stomped them out, shattering them like rock candy. Harden’s hardening of their forms did nothing to making them less brittle, and the right force applied to the right spot on their bodies could crush them with ease. It just so happened that in this case, the right spot was their whole bodies.

Focusing again on the treats inside her mouth, Mable blushed as she felt the intense sensation of warmth and cold, icy trainers dethawing in response to the hot streams of vapor and gas and saliva that were running over them at all times. Even as a few were beginning to break free from the melting ice that encased them, Mable began the process of swallowing them down gradually, a few at a time, slowly but surely decreasing the capacity of her mouth, only to raise up the container again and introduce a new batch of still-frozen captives to mingle with those that were only partially dethawed and only beginning to regain the scant few moments of consciousness they would have before they too were swallowed down and condemned to oblivion.

“Aliana, you truly must try this! It’s to die for!”

Seated in the corner, Aliana had been watching closely as Mable enjoyed her fill, and a slight smile came to her. Standing up, she sauntered to the table and took her brilliant orange capsule.

“Hm… Oops,” said Aliana, lazily spilling many of her demoted trainers onto the table.

“Huh?” inquired Celosia, and the other members of Team Flare were equally confused as they watched the disheveled shrunken trainers get their bearings, expecting them to run away, to flee, to find some way to escape from this nightmare.

But... they didn’t.

As they got to their feet, Aliana stared down at them like a loving idol, and she crouched and opened her mouth, placing the front of her chin directly against the edge of the platform.

And like the children of the pied piper, they began to walk toward it in a stupefied trance.

“Confuse Ray and Attract certainly was quite the combination,” Malva said approvingly, smiling at her underling as the poor losers began to hoist themselves above Aliana’s lower lip and dive willingly into her mouth, where Aliana dutifully swallowed before opening the cave to allow for the next willing participant. This continued in a single file line, and as it went on further and further, Aliana could only get more and more addicted to this taste before she was simple grabbing them from the table and shoving them in, which they reacted to without complaint. The capsule still remained half-full and its screams were loud as well, but rather than screaming for escape, they were pleading for Aliana to eat them, devour them, and swallow them whole.

“How creative,” Bryony remarked.

As Mable wiped her mouth, she turned to Malva, “Yes yes, but when are we going to get the chance to shrink and collect our own trainers?”

“Patience, we’re working on it,” Malva said with an irritated hand-wave, even as Mable frowned and grumbled. “The world has changed much since our defeat. Perhaps they weren’t ready then. But soon, they shall be. Even if I must make it so,” and with a flippant wave, Malva pushed her shades to the bridge of her nose before walking out, ensuring her own magenta capsule was secure in her pocket as she left.

“In the meantime, there will be more where that came from. Much more.”

*****

Malva shifted in her seat and cleared her throat just in time before the camera lit up, signaling that she was on the air.

“Hello, people of Kalos! Reporting live from Lumiose city, I’m here to bring you the top stories! Today, we’d like to hear from you, the trainers! In the intervening months since the International Pokemon League Commission approved new customs and rules following battles at the latest Champion’s Conference. This decision was met with much initial backlash, so today, we’d like for you to select the option in your Holo-Caster indicating whether you approve or disapprove of these new rules. You will have ninety seconds. Get ready!”

The light on the camera shut off, and Malva sighed as the timer ticked down. She pushed away from her table and took a peek underneath, where her black heeled boots were stuffed and tight beyond relief. Yet, they felt not at all uncomfortable, a product of Malva’s personal concoction of the Pokemon moves Lick, Nuzzle, and Ingrain. It didn’t feel at all like there were a cadre of tiny, foolish, weakling trainers stuffed inside the depths of Malva’s hot, moist boots, even if that was the case. It felt more like a set of soothing, draining insoles that catered to her foot hygiene in every way that mattered. They were far more in place on the bottom of her sole than they ever were out in the world, trying with foolhardy abandon to be a poor facsimile of a real Pokemon trainer.

Malva smiled as she stomped down, just for the fun of it. The timer was already nearing zero, and she scooted back up to the table as she prepared to finish the report.

“Fantastic! It would appear that 97% of all Kalos citizenry agree with this change! This is up from only 62% when it was first announced! I guess one could say the proof is in the pudding. When I come back, I’ll talk with experts, some of whom are saying that this overwhelming support could pave the way for even more legislation to equalize rights between Pokemon trainers of all genders, shapes, and colors everywhere. Stay tuned!”