sup everyone it's asami here with a fanfic featuring darkrai, my trash fave. i've tried to write a pokémon fic before, but i lost the flow halfway through because i'm a lazy, unmotivated shit. it's been adopted by kyroshiro, who's done quite a good job of continuing it. it's called 'bleeding darkness' – give it a read if it tickles your fancy.
anyway, i've got plans for this one. i've always liked the idea that everyone hates darkrai because they think that he gives nightmares on purpose, but it's actually his ability, 'bad dreams'. in actuality, darkrai is a very kind and gentle pokémon who would never hurt anyone without good reason. so in this fic, i'm going to have the world realise that fact. hopefully, there's also going to be a plot involving some evil criminal organisation or another trying to capture powerful pokémon as tools to use in their dastardly plans of world domination. you know, the usual.
there will be no romantic ships in this fic, but there will be a queerplatonic relationship between darkrai and the main character. if you don't know what that is, just google it my dude.
well anyway, sit back and try to enjoy the first chapter.
note: i won't use capitals for pokémon's species names because they're like the animal names of our world, and we don't capitalise those. darkrai's name will be capitalised, however, because that's literally his name.
warnings: blood, gore (graphic descriptions of injuries), profanity.
Strands of seaweed swayed gently in the slight currents of the ocean. Multi-coloured corals dotted the seafloor, little chinchou and finneon darting in and out of them. Sunlight filtered down from above, creating dappled, golden beams of light in the crystal clear water.
Ayla Shirase was perched on the back of Aurora, her empoleon, wearing a green, one-piece wetsuit. She smiled at the beautiful scenery around her, though the expression was rather awkward and strained due to the breathing apparatus in her mouth. She'd been exploring the ocean floor all day, not even coming up for lunch, and she was sure she must have been halfway across the region by now. Luckily, her trainer's backpack was waterproof, so she hadn't had to leave it on land before diving in.
She glanced at her watch, and was mildly surprised when it read 6:24pm. It was summer, and the sun didn't come down until well past seven, so she supposed it was plausible. Either way, she was going to have to come up for dinner soon—now that she wasn't so engrossed in finding all the rare and interesting pokémon down on the seafloor, she could feel her stomach growling angrily.
As Aurora drifted leisurely into a forest of seaweed, Ayla suddenly spotted a cloud of dark water a distance away from them. She furrowed her brows. That looks too much like blood for me to just ignore it, the trainer thought. Using the telepathic powers she possessed, she spoke into her empoleon's mind.
"Aurora, do you see that?" Ayla pointed at the murky cloud. Beneath her, the empoleon nodded.
"Could you swim towards it? I want to see what it is. If it's an injured pokémon or person, we need to help them."
Aurora complied, and they sped towards the bloody water.
As the two approached the source of the red cloud, Ayla began to feel a faint echo; emotions that were not her own. Her heart skipped in worry. It wasn't the presence of the emotions that alarmed her – along with her telepathy, Ayla had an empathic sense that allowed her to feel the emotions of anyone within five metres of herself, should she so choose. It was the emotions themselves – panic, fear, sadness, and resignation. Definitely not a good sign.
When they reached the dark water, Ayla hopped off her pokémon. There was a blurry, indistinct figure amidst the field of swaying seaweed that seemed to be the source of the cloud of blood, and Ayla bent down to examine it more closely. But the blood was too thick, and she couldn't clearly distinguish what it was. She turned to Aurora, whose underwater eyesight was infinitely better than hers. "Hey, can you see what that—"
Ayla made a muffled noise of surprise as her empoleon's flipper knocked her away from the unconscious creature.
"Don't go near it!" Aurora cried in her trainer's mind. Her eyes were wide with fear. "That pokémon is very dangerous!"
"But to produce that amount of blood, they must be badly injured!" Ayla replied, once she had gotten back on her feet. I have to help them! She made to approach the unmoving pokémon again.
"No!" Aurora shouted, and held her trainer back with her flippers.
"Aurora, they're unconscious!" Ayla reasoned as she struggled in her pokémon's hold. "It's not like they can hurt me. Besides, look at how much blood they've lost! They might die if we don't help them!"
The empoleon's grip slackened slightly as she wavered, unsure, and Ayla used that opportunity to slip out of the penguin's grasp. She knelt beside the pokémon again, and gently slid her arms under them. She lifted them up – an easy task considering the buoying effect of the water and the fact that the pokémon was smaller than she was – and made her way back to Aurora with the pokémon in her arms.
The empoleon's expression still held doubt and apprehension, but nevertheless, she lay herself flat on the seafloor to allow her trainer to mount her before beginning to swim towards the surface. As they cleared the cloud of blood, Ayla looked down at the unconscious pokémon. Her eyes widened in horror.
The pokémon's body was mainly black, shaped like an hourglass with a tiny 'waist' and what looked like a tattered robe of some sort on the bottom, a similarly ragged tail protruding out the back. Their arms ended in claws, and there was a row of bright red spikes around their neck. From their shoulders streamed two plumes of corporeal black smoke, and from their head, a white plume.
But their appearance wasn't what had horrified Ayla. It was their injuries. There were numerous cuts all over their body, some shallow and some deep, with a particularly nasty gash just below their collar of spikes. The black tatter that flowed from their left shoulder looked like it was missing quite a sizeable chunk, and Ayla would eat her Pokétch if that arm was twisted the right way around. When she looked behind her, she could see a distinct, dark red trail marking their path.
Shit, Ayla thought. "Faster, Aurora!" She called to her Pokémon, who obliged. It wasn't long before they broke the surface of the water with a gasp.
The trainer thanked the empoleon, and recalled her to her pokéball with a beam of red light. She swallowed a lump in her throat as she caught sight of the spreading redness surrounding her and the unconscious pokémon, as the blood diffused across the water. As quickly as she could, Ayla removed the oxygen apparatus from her mouth and stuffed it into her backpack, then reached inside and removed two pokéballs from it.
"Come out, Tori, Miria!" She cried, and tossed both balls into the air; two beams of white light escaped and formed into the shapes of a staraptor and a gardevoir. The former settled on top of the water, and the latter levitated just above the sea's surface.
"Tori, I need you to take me to the closest city to here, as fast as you can," Ayla addressed her staraptor urgently. She then turned to the gardevoir. "Miria, do you think you'd be able to keep up with Tori and levitate this pokémon along with you?"
The two pokémon's gazes travelled over to the wounded pokémon still floating in the sea, and their reactions were immediate. Tori jerked back violently, splashing water onto her trainer, and Miria stiffened, a horrified gasp issuing from her mouth.
"Ayla!" The staraptor's mental voice was sharp with fear. "What are you doing with that- that thing?!"
Ayla gritted her teeth. "Look, I can see that neither you two nor Aurora have high opinions of this pokémon for some reason, but look at them! Do you think they're in any shape to be causing any trouble? They're dying! Please, just help me get them to a pokémon centre, alright?" Her voice softened into a pleading tone in the last sentence.
Grudgingly, the two pokémon nodded, Tori swimming closer to her trainer and motioning for her to get on her back, but not without a muttered side remark of "'don't have high opinions of him', that's a gross understatement." Ayla made note of the pokémon's apparent gender, but otherwise ignored the staraptor's comment.
"Under normal circumstances, I would have no trouble managing what you want me to do, but... he's a dark type. I'm not sure if my psychic powers would have any effect on him at all," Miria said, her mental voice worried. "But I'll try anyway." She raised a hand and a green light shimmered into being around the injured pokémon. Relief bloomed inside Ayla's chest when the gardevoir's telekinesis successfully lifted the pokémon out of the water and directed him over to float in the air beside her.
"Alright, to the nearest city!" The trainer commanded. "Fast as you can, he's already lost a lot of blood!"
Many things could be said about Ayla's pokémon, but nobody could accuse them of being unreliable when things got dire. Without wasting a second, Tori flapped her wings powerfully, lifting both her passenger and herself into the air, and shot forward. Miria's eyes glowed as she skimmed over the ocean underneath the staraptor, effortlessly matching the flying-type's speed and keeping the injured pokémon airborne behind her all the while.
All conversation ceased once they had set off—Tori was too busy scanning the horizon for any sign of land and the telekinesis Miria was using took up all of her concentration. As for Ayla, she was caught up in both the usual exhilaration she felt from being up so high in the air, the sea spread out in a vast indigo carpet beneath her and the sharp winds raising goosebumps along her flesh, and her intense concern for the dark-type held in the green glow of Miria's psychic powers. She couldn't gauge the exact amount of damage he'd sustained, but considering what she could see, it would probably be a miracle if he ended up surviving. Though, she wasn't sure whether that was really a bad thing, just going by her pokémon's attitudes to him, which had been averse to say the least.
Her curiosity rose at that thought. She wondered what sort of pokémon he could be to arouse even the hatred of Tori, who, while reckless and brash, was also inclined to see the good in everyone. She glanced down at him from her spot on her staraptor's back, and grimaced. His injuries looked bad even from there. Whatever had made them must have been even more terrifying than he supposedly was. Ayla could see a steady trail of red marking their path in the otherwise unbroken blue expanse of water, and she hoped no sharpedo were near.
The girl was jerked from her thoughts by a cry from Tori, made loud and raucous in her attempt to be heard over the rushing wind. "I see land!" The staraptor informed her trainer through their telepathic link. Ayla squinted into the distance, and, after a few seconds, caught sight of the thin, dark line on the horizon that her pokémon's sharper eyes had seen before her. It was silhouetted by the reddish light of the sun, which was in its final stages of setting. As they neared the land, details began making themselves clear in Ayla's vision, the first of which was the white lining the treetops.
"Tori, Miria!" The girl called to her pokémon. "That should be Snowpoint City up ahead! Speed it up, we need to get there before dark!"
Both pokémon quickened their pace in response, the staraptor tucking her wings in and angling herself so she was slicing through the air like an arrow shot from a bow. The glow of Miria's eyes brightened as she strained her powers to keep up.
The group found themselves flying above land just as the sun's dimly glowing outline sank below the horizon. The treetops that passed in a blur underneath them grew steadily harder to see in the twilight, and Ayla was relieved when the four finally came to a stop on the ground near the pokémon centre.
The trainer quickly dismounted her staraptor and, thanking her, called her back to her ball. She then made her way over to the injured pokémon and held her arms out under him. The glow in Miria's eyes faded as she slowly released her telekinetic hold on him and let him gently come to a rest in Ayla's arms. The girl staggered a little under his weight—he was definitely heavier on land than he had been in water. Then she noticed the slight, barely discernible rise and fall of his chest, and her knees grew weak again, this time with immense relief.
Ayla turned around immediately and ran through the pokémon centre's automatic doors. She heard several gasps from the occupants of the centre's lobby as she entered, Miria behind her, but paid no heed as she hurried over to the counter. "Nurse Joy!" The trainer cried, her voice full of desperation. "Please save this pokémon, he's severely injured!"
The pink-haired nurse froze as she caught sight of the black pokémon. "A legendary," she breathed, voice both awed and fearful. "But how on earth…?" Then, seeming to remember herself, she hurried around to the front of the counter and began to issue orders quickly and efficiently to the chansey and blissey around her.
"Nana, get a stretcher!" A chansey disappeared into a doorway and returned wheeling a stretcher in almost no time. Ayla ran to it and gently placed the pokémon onto it, wincing as she saw the blood he'd left on her arms.
"Eve, use soft-boiled, then refresh, to stabilise him!" A large blissey approached with a determined look in her eyes, and uttered a soft cry. The egg in her pouch glowed, and a second, smaller egg separated itself from it, floating over and entering into the dark-type pokémon's body. His wounds shrank slightly, but they were still horrific in their severity. Next, a green aura surrounded Eve's body, and a similar glow appeared around the pokémon's. The oozing of blood from his wounds slowed almost to a stop.
"Quickly, to the ICU!" Joy commanded decisively, and the egg-like pokémon rushed with the stretcher into another entrance without a second's delay. The nurse followed quickly, closing the door behind her. A few seconds later, the fluorescent light above the green door lit red.
originally, this chapter was just one part of the first chapter, but it got too long so I had to separate it. that's why this chapter ends in such an awkward place.
just to clear shit up: none of ayla's pokémon except miria actually have telepathy themselves; ayla's telepathic connection to them is constantly open and they can simply project what they want to say into it and she'll hear.
i'll have the second chapter up in a week because i already have it written, but otherwise the update schedule will be irregular af because as i said, I'm an unmotivated shit.
last thing:
pls dunt hate on mi eym just a dumb 16 yr old lmao