Warning: Vampires. Yes, you heard me. The internet has finally won.
Notes: This fic is based pretty much on My Headcanon only. If you happen to be an employee of the police, a paramedic, a doctor, a vampire or generally more knowledgable than me and find any mistakes, feel free to inform me about them.
Notes 2: YOU VOTE IKARISHIPPING, I DELIVER IKARISHIPPING. Kind of.
Mortal
It happened on a Friday night.
Twenty-one-year-old Paul Heartnet, ambitious pokémon trainer and owner of various badges, had just finished a five-hour long training session with his pokemon in Ecruteak Forest and was currently on his way back to the local pokémon centre. He was exhausted and longed for sleep, but he was content with what he and his pokemon had accomplished that day. At this rate, his victory against Ecruteak City's gym leader Morty would pose no problem.
In order to cut the remaining route to the centre short, Paul veered off the main road and steered into a narrow backstreet Nurse Joy had recommended to him before he'd set off. The alley was lined with tall brick walls, protecting the surrounding estates from curious stares, and wound its way through the city's suburbs like a nimble ekans, sometimes at almost ridiculous angles.
For a while, the only sound in the alley was Paul's own breathing, as if everything else, the city's noise, the wind tugging at the trees, had been completely drowned out.
He kept walking, following the lane's lead farther into town. He didn't know how long he would be underway but he guessed he would be reaching his destination soon. According to Nurse Joy, after 300 metres, there would be a fork in the road, the left way looping back toward the outskirts of the city, whereas the right one would guide him directly to the pokémon centre.
Arriving at another turn in the alley, Paul halted. Hadn't he heard something just now?
He was enveloped by absolute silence.
But then, a scream. Paul froze. Footsteps, frantic and loud, resounded in the street, coming from just around the corner. Another scream, and a nasty cracking noise.
And suddenly it was quiet again.
Paul stood there, as if glued to the spot, and waited for something to happen. When everything stayed still, he slowly ducked around the corner. In the dull glow of the moon he spotted a dark figure cowering over the motionless body of a young woman.
Paul's mind raced, trying to figure out what to do. Obviously, he had been overhearing a serious crime, murder by the look of things. Still, something was odd. What was that person—the perpetrator—doing, so close to the girl's body? Paul squinted his eyes but it was impossible to make out anything else in the haze of the night, all he could discern was the vague shape of a person looming over the outline of a female body lying on the ground.
Taking a deep breath, Paul dug his hand in the pocket of his parka and grabbed a pokéball. He wasn't sure what his worn-out pokémon could do against a homicidal maniac but what else was he to do? The next police station was at least a fifteen-minute walk (or a ten-minute race) away from here and he didn't have a flying type with him.
As gently and noiselessly as possible, Paul released Magmotar from his pokéball. Maybe he was able to trap the guy over there with a fire and draw attention to the crime scene at the same time.
With a meaningful look Paul indicated to his pokémon that he should stay still until the moment his trainer gave him a sign.
Then he took another glance behind the corner. Nothing had changed. The human-shaped shadow sat perched over the girl's lifeless body, unmoving.
It was now or never.
Paul gave one strong nod toward Magmotar, and the fire-type followed his trainer's command immediately. The flame he fired was large, even larger than Paul had expected, and its strangely flickering light seemed to swallow up everything around the boy. He tried to catch a glimpse of the perpetrator, but to no avail.
Crouching down, he rolled under the flames to the girl's body. The dark figure hunkering next to her was gone. How he should have skirted around the blazing fire within this little time, Paul had no idea.
Yelling at Magmotar to cease his attack, he bent down to pick up the girl and get her away from the flames. As he hauled her up over his shoulder and ran back to safety where his pokémon was waiting for him, he thought that her face looked vaguely familiar, though he had no name or memory to attach it to. Gingerly, he put her down and removed some strands of her long dark hair from her throat, in order to check her pulse, and discovered that it was almost entirely covered in blood. He swallowed. Was that what that shadow had been doing, sitting beside her and—slicing open her throat? But there was no cut, just a steady flow of warm red coming from two small wounds just above her collarbone. Even though they were only slightly bigger than the prick of an injection needle, they went deep into the girl's flesh, deliberately aiming at the fresh, oxygenated blood of her arteries.
Above him Magmotar gave a low growl, as if to remind his trainer that he would have to hurry up if he really wanted to save her. Paul dipped his head in agreement, shrugging out of his parka, and ripped off the left sleeve of his shirt. It wasn't going to hold back the bleeding for long, but hopefully it would last until the fire brigade arrived.
The flames began to spread. Thick clouds of opaque smoke obscured the air.
Calling back his magmotar, Paul could not stop his gaze from wandering back to the girl's neck. The sleeve he had slung around it was now soaked with her blood, tinting the originally blue fabric a disturbingly beautiful shade of claret.
In that moment the sirens of several fire engines shrilled from behind Paul, and he let out a relieved sigh. The fire fighters' floodlights reminded him of dawn in the morning—
Something far off in the back of his mind shifted.
Dawn.
Suddenly it occurred to him; it was like a jigsaw in reverse, with all the pieces falling apart, all the memories disintegrating into tiny, tattered fractures. Dawn. The girl's name was Dawn.