Disclaimer: I do not own Pokémon.
"Look not into the Pokémon's eyes. In but an instant, you will have no recollection of who you are.
Return home, but how? When there is nothing to remember?
Dare not touch the Pokémon's body. In but three short days, all emotions will drain away.
Above all, above all, harm not the Pokémon. In a scant five days, the offender will grow immobile in entirety..."
-A Horrific Myth
:Chapter One:
It was endless, the darkness.
It stretched for miles. Silent darkness. Deathly silent. His breath came in hard, ragged pants. He could smell the forest around him, the sharp resin of the mountain pines, the damp soil beneath him, and the vague scent of sweat…his sweat. But scent, he found, was the only thing he was conscious of. He couldn't feel his body, couldn't see, couldn't move…
And yet, it was more than simple paralysis; His body was alive, wired and alert, even if he was unable to move. His pulse raced, mind spinning with uncontrolled possibilities before a random thought bloomed within his mind.
Animals.
Pokémon.
They reacted similarly in battles, sometimes. Their limbs locked, they no longer heard commands, no longer were even conscious of the trainer being there, so frozen were they by the predator before them—
Predator.
Everything happened very fast, then. He felt the eyes on him, the pulsing sharp eyes of it, of this unnamed predator which he couldn't see, but that his instincts screamed was there. How had he ever missed it? Those eyes were piercing; he couldn't feel his body but he could feel its gaze, sharp and cold, stabbing into him. He took a breath, trying to calm his racing heart. The logical thing…the smart thing to do would be to stay calm, to not move. To keep still, like his body, apparently, had unconsciously forced him into doing. He would stay calm, he wouldn't panic, he refused to panic, not over some petty animal, at least. He was above such things.
Still….his breath came in short gasps, as though there were a vice over his lungs, and his eyes…he couldn't see for some reason…
And just as suddenly he realized that his eyes were closed, squeezed tightly shut, and so secure that his face was beginning to hurt. A flash of annoyance cut through his anxiousness – how could he not realize that he'd shut his eyes? – But a moment later the annoyance was forgotten, and he was opening his eyes, slowly, carefully, as to not startle whatever animal had cornered him. He was trying to will his body into moving, trying to think of the most convenient way to reach his Pokébelt once he was able to move without upsetting the thing, and wondering which of his Pokémon would fare the best against…well, he had yet to even see the thing, but—
Don't open your eyes!
The command whirled like a breeze through his consciousness, and he stiffened, hesitated, going tense. Had he..? But no, it had to have been his imagination, that voice. His mind was trying to protect him; it was an obvious reaction to fear, much as he loathed to admit such a weakness. And…
…who was he to need protection? If his face weren't frozen, it would have fallen into a dark scowl. He'd been in worse situations before. Why should this one be any different? But something felt wrong, his heart continued to race, and a bead of sweat dropped into his closed eye. If he was going to get out of this one, he needed to see what he was fighting, needed to face whatever it was that was affecting his body. He had never been one to run away from anything, human and especially not Pokémon. Resolved, he opened his eyes.
Keep your eyes SHUT!
This time a sharp pain accompanied the voice, cutting through him like a knife, and his body was suddenly on fire; hot. Scorching. Burning through his chest. He couldn't help what he did next; his body had chosen that moment to unlock, and unbidden his hands flew to his throbbing head, and even as he was falling to his knees, even as he was clutching his head, he knew that moving was the worst possible thing he could have done.
The screeching roar was the only warning he got before it was on him.
oOo
He woke up screaming.
His body was tangled uncomfortably amidst the sheets of the bed, fingers digging painfully into the mattress below him. Beside the bed, right next to his ear, the rings of the telephone screeched, eerily reminiscent to the echoes of the roar that loitered in his head.
A...nightmare?
His face twisted, but he could do nothing but lay there, breathing hard as the furious pounding of his heart played percussion to his breathing. There were demons in his head. Dark whispers he couldn't distinguish. He had never felt anything so…disturbing. And yet already he was unable to even recall the dream, the once vivid details were already fading from his mind along with the last vestiges of sleep.
Grunting, he pulled himself up, running a rough hand across his face and head, damp strands clinging to his fingers like spider webs. He'd been sweating hard. Was still sweating, he realized hazily. His shirt was soaked; it clung uncomfortably to him like a second skin. And yet despite this, despite his flushed form, the room around him was icy cold. Freezing, as though he'd let the air conditioner run all night.
He blinked foggily into the darkness around him. Beside him, the telephone had long since ceased its rings, leaving an unearthly stillness in its wake.
Darkness…deathly silent…
Lethargic eyes surveyed the room.
A simple room, sparsely furnished, from what he could see. Your hotel room, his eyes were telling him, even though his mind remembered no such thing. Hadn't he been camping somewhere…? The room around him looked vaguely familiar, generic, even. Like every other middle suite hotel he'd ever been. From the glow of the television he could just make out the form of his belt and Pokéballs near the center of the room, strewn uncharacteristically across the floor. And next to that, a few feet away, was what looked to be an unlaced sneaker. He frowned, resisting the urge to yawn. For some reason, he felt languid, as though he'd just awoken from a heavily drug induced sleep. Inadvertently his lids lowered, and it was at this moment, with his vision partially obscured, that he thought he saw the shadow move.
It had lain stationary across the floor and bed, large and dark, but now suddenly it withdrew, shrinking back to the corners of the room, back to where the glow of the television didn't reach, and he watched it with a sort of detached interest, wondering for a moment if he was even awake. Shadows didn't move; not unless-
Not unless the object from which they were cast, did.
The haze in his mind suddenly cleared, and that rational part of him finally awoke. His body tensed, ready to spring, and this time, it was with sharp eyes that he studied the room.
He was alone.
The shadows that covered the room were just that; simply shadows. The darkness that had previously cloaked the area was fading; perhaps it had never truly been there, he thought flatly. The curtains behind his bed were partially open, and a thin ray of sunlight shone through the window. Then too, there was the television, muted and currently running what looked to be some sort of documentary.
He didn't remember turning it on.
He frowned.
He didn't remember coming in last night, either.
Another frown, this time laced with growing unease. The fleeting image of darkness draped his mind before vanishing. He closed his eyes. Calm…he needed to stay calm. It was perfectly normal to wake up a little disoriented after a deep sleep. Perfectly normal. There was even a name for it, if he wasn't mistaken; some technical scientific name that escaped him at the moment, but a name none-the-less. A scowl melted onto his grim expression. Pathetic as it was, the nightmare had shaken him up more than he cared to admit. It did nothing to ease his mind; that he, he of all people would be affected by something so trivial…
He huffed, dry lips pressed woodenly together. He felt nauseous. There was a strange taste in his mouth, something metallic and coppery that he refused to dwell on. As soon as he calmed down, he decided then, as soon as his heart stopped racing, his memory would return.
And so he waited, forcing his breathing to slow, sitting meditatively on the bed. The sheets were clammy around him, and the cool air of the A/C was like a frosty kiss to his flushed skin. Calm…I'm calm…
He shifted, thinking back to the previous night.
His mind came up a blank.
The knotted feeling in his abdomen grew. For one brief, wild moment, his thoughts ran rampant. What was wrong with him? How long had he been laying here? Moments later his mind was still blank, and when he opened his eyes, they glinted with cold apprehension.
He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember any of last night. His fingers clutched the dampened sheets, body automatically tensing. He couldn't remember….couldn't remember—
Normal…it's normal that I don't remember how I got to bed last night…
It sounded like a load of shit, even to him.
He didn't realize when the phone had resumed its ringing; it was only when he heard that screeching cry, the haunting scream that still lingered in his mind, that he was conscious of it. He stared blankly at machine, not really even seeing it, or maybe expecting to see something else, before it quieted. The quiet murmur of the television, the ticking of a wall clock somewhere in the room, the hum of the air conditioner; they filled his consciousness, distantly, but he was unaware of it, staring down, for the first time, at himself.
The black T-shirt he wore was soaked through with sweat and debris. It itched against his skin; for some reason his body tingled uncomfortably, as though he had sunburn, and his sweaty cloths weren't helping. He tugged at the shirt haphazardly, watching the dark material stretch in his fingertips. Fingertips that were black with grim for some reason. There was the faint scent of smoke, mixed with the stronger overriding odor of sweat, along with something else he couldn't identify. Why did his cloths smell like smoke? And…
Where was his jacket? He stared around the room, eyes darting about, and somewhere in his mind he was aware that this was a useless detail. The jacket wasn't important. It wasn't even that expensive, really, and wherever it was, it could be easily replaced.
But for some reason, his mind kept returning to the thing, unbidden. He needed to find that jacket. He needed that jacket…
Forget the stupid jacket! He thought angrily. Except that for some reason, his mind could not seem to let go of the thought. If he found his jacket, he'd find answers. Somehow he knew this.
But where to begin?
He needed to get up, he realized then. Get up and find out just where the hell he was. Sitting here hypothesizing was just…useless. Probably someone had seen something. No, he corrected brusquely, they had to have seen something. He was too well known, too much of a celebrity for people NOT to recognize him. If he didn't find out soon, it would certainly be all over the networks; television, magazines… Somehow, something had happened to him, and whatever it was had left him so out of it that he had not even bothered to undress, had simply fallen into bed.
…or maybe someone put him there?
He scratched that idea. There was no way he'd NOT remember someone putting him to bed. And the very thought of someone seeing him in what had obviously been a weak moment…
His hands clutched the bed sheets, eyes once again scanning the room, drawn again to his lone sneaker and belt. It wasn't like him to leave such things lying around. He was obsessively neat… to the point of compulsion, really. Most wandering trainers were. You didn't leave things simply strewn about in a camp site. It could attract predators—
He froze, brows deepening in sudden discursion. Something had caught his attention, something in the half light of the room, just at the foot of the bed, on the floor beside his sneaker. A blinking light-
His Pokédex was blinking.
He was there in an instant, ignoring the sudden wave of nausea and dizziness that struck at his sudden movements. He reached down, snatching the thing up before collapsing back on the bed. That small bit of movement had been strangely taxing. It left him spent, exhausted, panting for breath. He allowed himself a few scant moments of recovery before gritting his teeth and forcefully pushing himself up. He didn't have time for this. He needed to focus on the Pokédex.
The dex…
His eyes were greedy as he considered the thing. Pokédexes had internal clocks and calendars. And GPS systems. If nothing else he'd be able to find out where he was at present, what town he was in. He flipped it open, pausing slightly at the heat in his hands. It was unusually hot… as though he'd left it powered on.
Hn.
Yet another result of his unremembered night, no doubt.
This was confirmed when he noticed the energy bar on the screen. One bar of energy left. He stared. The thing was nearly completely out of energy. But that was impossible. He recharged it nightly, meticulously and without fail. One night of being uncharged certainly wasn't long enough for the dex to be this low on energy.
Or had it only been one night? His dark eyes narrowed at the possibility. How long had he been unconscious? How long had he been lying here in this unfamiliar room? He felt that panic which he'd so fervently denied build again within his chest. There was no way he could have been out for more than a night…not him. He wasn't that….that…pathetic. That weak. Whatever the situation was, whatever had happened to him it could never have been enough to put him out of commission like this. He flat out refused to even consider that possibility.
But for a moment he felt the faint inklings of doubt.
His eyes dropped down to the screen in his hand, the screen he usually felt so much confidence in. How many times had he held the thing..or not held it, because he was so confident that he didn't need it? Hell, he didn't need the thing, not really. It was only out of habit that he even continued to carry it with him. He'd long ago stopped relying on it for information. It was a weakness to be so dependent upon a machine that could easily malfunction at any given moment.
Better to absorb that information into his head, to memorize everything Pokémon related, so that he would never be in such a situation.
So he'd stopped using it as much, had only brought it out in the most extreme situations. But now….now with the wings of doubt fluttering in his mind, he stared down at the screen, feeling like he was 11 years old again.
Impossible…
The number of Pokémon breeds he had seen had increased by one.
But he hadn't seen anything new…not for years, now. There wasn't anything new to see, not really. Over the past eight years since becoming a trainer, he'd seen nearly every known breed of Pokémon there was, even the more recently discovered ones. That number had not changed in a long time. He hadn't expected it to.
And yet, it had.
His Pokédex had somehow recorded an additional Pokémon sighting.
But even as he thought this, even while his mind began formulating possible reasons for the obvious glitch, his fingers were moving, scrolling down, eyes piercing in their sharpness. There was no way he'd seen a new Pokémon and not remember. No way-
He stopped, breathing hard. Distantly, some part of him registered the ringing phone - the fifth ring, to be exact - but his eyes were frozen onto the tiny screen. The once cold room now seemed unbearably hot, and his mind, always teeming with thoughts and strategies, was strangely blank.
No.
No.
Number 481 was now being registered as 'seen'.
His fingers tightened on the dex as a slow fury began to rise, like the gathering of a storm.
Not possible, he thought flatly.
He had not seen Mesprit. He would have remembered. And if he had seen it, he certainly wouldn't be here, in God knows where, in bed, while such a thing was still out there roaming free and uncaptured-
When did this happen?! It was as though a switch had been flipped. He was no longer the confused and bewildered young man who'd awoke some 15 minutes earlier. Now he was once again The Trainer, The Sinnoh Region Hopeful, the scion of trainers everywhere, and he transitioned into the role smoothly, without even a hitch. Here was familiar territory, something he could logically decipher, something he knew. Something he did not have to be confused about…
His fingers worked furiously, scrolling, entering. Pokédex entries recorded the date, time and location of a sighting. It'd be no problem to-
The dex abruptly flickered off, out of energy.
His fingers stilled. At almost the exact moment, the phone ceased it's ringing.
The room was silent, save for heavy, rasping breathing. His breathing.
Paul dropped the dex wordlessly, fingers slowly curling into a fist. His lids drooped and he sat there, motionless, trying to reign in the sudden fury that had washed over him. His breathing had crescendoed, escalating to the pounding of his heart, as though he had run for miles without stopping. His chest burned, his heart pounded. The bitter taste of bile rose in his throat.
No!
And suddenly he was flying towards what he knew to be the bathroom. He flung open the heavy oak door, flipped the switch and stared accusingly into the mirror. He did not recognize the furious face that stared back. To say he looked horrible would be an understatement. The tingling in his skin, he realized at once, really was sunburn. His normally olive toned complexion was a deep red. Some of it had already advanced to the later stages. The skin on his face and neck had begun to blister, and his pale lavender locks hung like limp noodles around his face. Dark circles lined beneath his eyes. And his eyes, he realized then, his eyes were…they were…
Haunted.
It was not a look he was familiar with. At least not intimately. Oh, there was the surface anger, a superficial rage- frustration at his obvious lack of memories, but beyond that, there was nothing. The dark eyes that stared back at him were flat, as dull as a dead fish's gaze.
Don't open your eyes!
He felt sick. The room around him turned hazy, smoky. His nose burned, his eyes watered, and suddenly he was overcome by dizziness; blood rushed to his head, and it was all he could do to remain standing as the sudden wave of nausea hit him like a typhoon. And then he was doubled over the sink, hands clutching desperately at the sides as he vomited helplessly into porcelain basin.
oOo
A/N: Before anyone says anything, I'm aware that it's UXIE who causes those to lose their memories. I promise everything will start to make sense soon!
I'm a HUGE Paul/Shinji fan. With his personality, I think he's one of the most under- appreciated, yet fascinating characters in DP. (at present he, along with the mythos in the Sinnoh region, is the only reason I even continue to keep up with the DP series) He's garnered so much controversy that it's 'Either/OR' with him; that is, you either love him or you hate him, no in between. It's RARE to see a fic dedicated solely to him, where he isn't sharing the spotlight with one of the other characters. I've yet to even find such a fic, to be honest. I had this story planned out as early as summer of '07. However, I thought it'd be a good idea to wait awhile and see if the anime revealed a bit more about Shinji's past before delving into a story about him. I wanted to keep things as canon as possible in regards to his background and personality. However, nearly a year later, about the only thing that's really been gleaned is that he has an older brother named Reiji. Therefore, I've decided to go ahead with my original plan and post as is. D&P seems to be dragging along…with no end in sight thus far, so I guess I'll be in for a long wait if I wait for the anime to get going.
For consistency purposes, I'll be using the dub anime names. Although I'm very familiar with Japanese names of the humans and the original 150 Pokémon, I only know the English names of the newer generation Pokémon. So to be safe, I will be using all English names. (I hope that this doesn't bother any of you..)
Please, please review and tell me what you think.