WHOA, HE'S ALIVE.
Yeah, I know, long time no see. School, stress, etc takes over sometimes. Buuuuuut I have this. So there.
It's nothing big, nothing overly good, but it's something to chew on. Plus, I mean, Absol. 3
So... yeah. Have fun.
Also, Tragedy Bound = song by The Bravery. Weeeeee.
His commute home from work was marked by one thing, he thought as he trudged along the unevenly paved sidewalk to his apartment, and that was the rain plummeting from the heavens in the post-sunset lighting. It was the type of rain he loved: a step above drizzling but nothing more. It was revitalizing to stroll around in such a climate, just as the precipitation kept much of nature's creations fresh.
Not only this, but Dominic had been feeling really, really good about himself of late. He'd been holding an A in all of his statistics classes this year, A's or B's in the rest, had just finished a personal study on how much it mattered to be left-handed or right-handed as a catcher in baseball, and had just gotten word not long ago that a dissertation he penned on breakout sluggers had made it into a relatively prestigious journal.
As he turned right onto the final stretch, though, he felt a slight chill run through his spine, flash freezing his movement for a second. Something was approaching or watching him, Dominic just knew it. Some sort of intuition that everyone seemed to have, like humans had incredibly latent, uncontrollable (and minor) psychic powers. He kept his head down, picking up the pace a little bit, but he knew there wasn't hiding; the sensation was only getting stronger…
Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks, and looked dead ahead at the borderline of suburban sprawl, a small strip mall and some housing padding the left side of the road, but with a forest as the reflection on the other side.
Right there, not ten feet away from him, stood a creature that looked perfectly suited to the night, with a black face and damp white fur. The Absol's scythe, sharp as a Pidgeot's eye, looked even more menacing in person, matching the other details of the bladed figure, but it was the eyes that paralyzed him. They glowed crimson in the rising moonlight and stagnant streetlights, using Dom's own eyes as the door to bore into his soul. Above the beast, the moon stood in a mostly waxed state, with the left side partially obscured.
He had heard the legends about Absol, both the fallacious and the factual. Much of the time when they appeared to humans, it was as a warning. They predicted disasters and, noble despite their Dark typing, attempted to give due notice to those in danger. However, as often as it helped, it just as frequently had adverse effects. Many viewed the creature as the bringer of said disasters, causing chaos wherever they emerged, and many either weren't prepared or prepared in all the wrong ways before such cataclysm struck, needless lives lost or ruined. Hell, many people just dismissed it as myth, ignorantly bringing about their own demise in such a way.
But then, Dominic thought to himself, gazing behind him at the center of the relatively minute town, why just me? He's just… staring at me… I'd think if he was going to warn the whole town, he'd be halfway across Kettle Hills by now.
"Is the whole community in-"
His head swiveled back to see only dissipating ripples in the puddle a few yards in front of him, leaving Dominic to his own devices and own worries. Silently, he jogged over to the entrance to his complex, the raindrops feeling more piercing than he remembered as he slid inside, and retired to his room with a sudden sense of burden on his shoulders.
Dom was woken up by the familiar feeling of the sun's light unceremoniously piercing his eyelids and scorching his corneas. He had the day off from classes for college, but he was going into work at 11 to open and wasn't getting out of the pizzeria until 5:30, right before the dinner rush. Still, that left him time now to hit the books; more specifically, the newest edition of the yearly Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster. Relishing the thought of a bit of analysis (well, re-analysis), the college student hurried into his work clothes to be proactive, and after a few minutes spent on personal hygiene he slid into his favorite chair, book in one hand and notebook plus pen in the other. Its warm, Caribbean blue fabric embraced him as he sunk into it slightly, flipping the pages to 85 and 48, respectively.
"Let's see… Elvis Andrus…" he self-narrated, glancing over the shortstop's statistics. His eyes immediately darted to a set of three columns of numbers, and Dom made a couple notations on the spiral-bound page on his right leg. Just as he looked back at the Forecaster, though, his phone rang from across the room. With a questioning glance, he stood up and marched over to the stand outside his bedroom, retrieving the telephone. He didn't recognize the number of the caller.
"Hello?" he said after answering.
"Hello, is this Dominic Atkinson?" came the reply from the other end, the voice a slightly nasal yet professional tone.
"Umm, speaking."
"Hi Dominic. My name's Rowan Carey… I work for Baseball Prospectus."
Dom's heart skipped a beat. THE Baseball Prospectus? But… what did they want?
"I'm calling because a couple colleagues of mine saw your report on breakout sluggers and found it very well-done, especially for a guy still in college. As such, we were hoping we could set up an interview?"
Now Dom nearly dropped the phone (and he did indeed fumble with it to keep from doing so). Since he was a sophomore in high school he'd wanted to be a sabermetrician for a big-time organization like Baseball Prospectus or The Hardball Times, and now they had called him.
"Oh my, uhm, yes, yes! That, that would be fantastic. What times are available?" he asked, holding the phone with two trembling hands as he tried his best to mask the sheer giddiness surging through him.
"Well, we have a slot next week on Tuesday if you need time to prepare, or you could just come in tomorrow at noon," Carey informed Dom, and the undergraduate immediately took the latter option. After taking down their address and addressing other logistics, Dom hung up, turned to his right and did a Tiger Woods-style fist pump.
Finally, things were starting to go his way.
On the way to work, after returning to his dissection of various shortstops' on-base percentages, his mind drifted not to the phone call he received earlier, but to that moment last night, where the Absol stared him down under the moon, delivering… some sort of omen.
As soon as he got within eyesight of Alfonse's, he whipped out his iPhone and, first, checked the forecast for the next couple days. However, all that came up was a 30% chance of some sort of storming the day after tomorrow. Next, though, he sifted through a mental list of disasters, from volcanoes to hurricanes to…
"Wait a second…"
Dom stopped just inside the property line of the pizzeria, tapping in "fault lines map" into Google Images. He'd just remembered a medium-sized earthquake hitting a city not far north of Kettle Hills, just a couple years ago, and suddenly, his stomach was quavering at the thought of what might happen soon.
He clicked in the first image result he saw, zooming in on his region… and found his hometown perched precariously close to a fault line. He let a swear word escape his lips before shoving the device in his pocket and ducking inside, the cataclysmic future becoming more clear in his mind, though still very much uncertain.
After changing into his work apparel, Dominic sidled up next to his middle school friend Lane, back near the kitchen.
"Hey man, 'sup?" the greasy blonde asked Dom, who gave him the customary high-five/handshake/man-hug greeting.
"I dunno… I'm just thinking about things. Extremely conflicting feelings at the moment," he answered, eliciting a cocked head from Lane, then a hand gesture urging him to continue.
"Well, good news first: I've got a job interview tomorrow, and it's with Baseball Prospectus of all places…" he resumed modestly.
"Oh damn, way to go, man! I just knew that this month would be your time to shine… and that you'd get out of this dump soon enough," he said, looking around at the restaurant that did indeed have some hole-in-the-wall characteristics about it.
"Yeah, it's pretty awesome… but, um, I'm a bit worried about something else, actually…
"I, uh… I think there might be an earthquake hitting us soon."
Lane raised an eyebrow in that inquisitive manner of his, wondering where the hell Dom got that supposed premonition. A goldenrod bang fell in front of his eye, and he brushed it back.
"I saw an Absol last night. I was just walking back home from here, you know, right next to the forest, and I look up to see that Absol… he was just staring at me, as clear of a warning for something as I've ever heard for them…" Dominic explained, a slight shudder running through his system.
"You do realize that we haven't had an earthquake here ever?" Lane countered, and Dom shrugged, throwing his arms up.
"I dunno, man. I mean, I don't know what else it could be. Plus there was that quake up north a few years back, and we're even closer to the fault line than they are…"
"Dom, just chill out! Maybe the Absol was just lost or pissed or something. Whatever the hell it was, I'm pretty damn sure it wasn't a warning for a fucking earthquake! I mean, come on, that's pretty drastic," Lane laughed with a shrug, and Dom sighed. Lane was probably right… "And come on, you've got a huge interview tomorrow that you're sure as hell gonna nail!"
Dominic couldn't help but smile at this. "Yeah, true… you're right, it's probably noth-"
They were interrupted by an old couple entering the restaurant, bells near the top of the door signaling their arrival, and at that they were forced to cut the chatter and get to work.
Hours passed by with relatively little action (Wednesdays were almost always slow up until dinner), and luckily for Dominic, 5:25 rolled around with the place only just starting to heat up. As he checked his Rolex-esque watch (a gift from his mother for his birthday) to confirm the time, he ducked into the bathroom to change clothes. He re-emerged at 5:30 on the dot in a relatively sophisticated long-sleeve shirt, veiled by a windbreaker, as well as his favorite pair of faded jeans, and high-fived Lane on his way out the door, receiving a "Break a leg" in regards to the job interview looming ahead of the statistician.
The sun gazed over Dom's shoulder as he started to make his way home, its vantage point slowly growing lower and lower as he progressed. The walk itself was uneventful, though his mind once again shot back to the Absol for a moment when he passed the spot of the confrontation, but he shrugged it off and retreated to his apartment without any hassle.
As soon as he arrived home, Dominic dragged out his laptop and proceeded straight for Baseball Prospectus' website. He spent a solid hour poring over info about the organization, staff members, all of the company data he thought he'd need and then some. After those sixty minutes, though, he succumbed to boredom, and began browsing all their latest articles and analyses. One minute he looked at the clock to see 6:45, the next it was 8:32, with the lighting outside suddenly vastly darkened. Just as he finished up a read on Pablo Sandoval, however, he heard a sharp voice from outside his window.
"Sollll… Ab SOL!"
Dominic's veins made like Antarctica. That had to be the Absol from yesterday…
He heard it cry out again from the forest across the road, and he knew by this point that the creature was somewhere near, almost as if it was calling him. Dom stiffly stretched his limbs at the second call, finally getting up and ambling to the balcony of his 2nd floor space, back uncomfortably straight and rigid. He glanced up at the moon, a bit more waned than last night, noting that the obscure part of the moon, at its current angle, looked sort of like the scythe of an Absol…
Before he could do anything else, though, a sharp pain shattered his vertebrae, sending Dom onto his hands and knees for a moment. He took a few seconds to breathlessly pull himself up, but the throbbing persisted, slowly bringing Dominic back down with a moan.
He slowly backed away from the balcony now, wincing with every motion as his spine cracked, seeming to conform to this quadruped position. Right as it stopped, though, the bones in his limbs got much of the same treatment, Dom struggling not to faceplant. He let out a yell as his arms and legs shortened, bones and muscles contracting but, somewhat vaguely, getting much stronger. They widened as his head was forced up by his spinal cord, Dominic gritting his teeth to keep from screaming. However, when a jabbing at his backside exploded, revealing a black, bladed tail, he finally relented.
"Aaaaaaaagggggggggh!"
Dominic looked backwards, once he stopped shaking uncontrollably, to yelp once he saw the tail. Is that…?
He was interrupted by an odd feeling washing over his skin, starting with his arms, where the ends were fusing together to form swelling paws. As this happened, his pores seemed to multiply all of a sudden, with white fur exploding from his epidermis en masse. With the fur becoming fully grown within a minute, covering everything but his face, it finally dawned on him what was happening: somehow, he was transforming into an Absol.
Blades protruded now from the backs of his knees (now bent the other way) as well as hit feet, which occurred as his muscles and skeleton settled. Dom clenched his jaw at all these changes overwhelming his system, but he loosened when he felt it too morphing, fangs forming in his mouth to his chagrin; only his head was left to transform by this point.
The fur had already reached his head and melded with his hair, swooping down the left side of his head as a vertical blue ellipsis formed on his forehead. The skin on his face turned the same shade of dark blue, something he saw for himself as his nose jutted out a bit more, coming to a point at the end. As his ears became hidden, his vision blacked out, a blink of crimson assaulting him before eyesight returned, remarkably sharper. Only one more change was to be made, which Dom felt growing from the right side of his head, quite painfully (the horn was definitely very sensitive).
"G-gaaaah… aaa-AAAAAB!" he growled, a bestial roar to punctuate the finally-ceased changes. However, it took a full minute for Dom to idly catch his breath before coming to with a jump.
"Ab... uh-uhm… holy shit…" He looked at himself with trepidation and panic overtaking his senses, his right front paw shaking as he picked it up off the wooden floor of his apartment for inspection. He was standing on all fours now, the natural nature of it discomforting him greatly, and he felt a stray tear from the transformation drop from the confines of his left eye.
"Hey!" he suddenly heard from outside. "Are you okay?"
Barely able to walk, Dom padded to the balcony… and winced when he saw the speaker.
It was the Absol.
"You're the one that told me about the disaster…" Dominic said, almost inaudibly even to himself.
"WAIT A MINUTE!"
Suddenly, Dom's head whipped back to the door to his apartment. It was closed, and with his big white paws it'd be nigh impossible to open. Wild-eyed, he turned back to the balcony, got onto the low-standing railing, and leapt. Driven by the traces of feline instinct he landed well, and after a moment of recovery dashed across the street to the creature waiting for him.
"You okay, kid? Sounded pretty painful-"
"Do I look okay to you?!"
The Absol instantly had a witticism to fire, but now wasn't the time. Instead, he simply sighed "Look, I'm sorry, I really really am, but there was nothing I could do but warn you that something was going to happen..."
Silence overwhelmed the two, with it taking a full minute for Dom to muster enough to reply.
"I-I just dunno what to do…I mean… I guess I'll just wait until the sun rises, and I revert, right? I mean, that's how these things work, right?" He brightened up a little bit at this, his tail unconsciously wavering back and forth, but it drooped again when the Absol gave him a pitiful glance.
"I don't think you understand, kid… this is you for the rest of your life, all day every day."
Dom's jaw nearly slammed into the ground, with a dumbfounded quiet hitting him head-on. Again, moments passed without a word stumbling out of the Absol' mouths.
"I had a job interview tomorrow…" he finally moaned.
"I had a job interview tomorrow, for my dream job, I'd just gotten my own apartment, I was doing so well in school… and now all that's just… gone…"
The new Absol looked down at himself, tears starting to drip just in front of his accursed paws. This was how he was going to spend the rest of his being, as some beast, for no reason… his life was over, done for, quite literally.
"If you need any help at all adjusting-"
"Leave me alone," Dom snapped, staggering forward towards the depths of the forest.
"I just wanna help, kid. You're not gonna go anywhere by just moaning and grieving your life away. You can come back to my pack, join us, all of that, and we can help you adjust. This isn't the end of the world for you, I promise."
"…I said, leave. Me. Alone." His voice was stern but shaky, fighting the urge for total catharsis. Before he let the Absol notice, though, he darted away, on his own, to somewhere, though he knew not where. He'd eventually stop, Dom thought, when he could find someplace where he could bemoan his misfortune.
His disaster.