Crises of Sanity
Okay, this is a new fic. It's set in Johto/Kanto, and follows the journeys of the eponymous character Sanity.
Read on to find out more!
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Down in Newbark Town, there were exactly four houses. One was attached to a lab, one belonged to a nameless recluse, and the other two belonged to two families, who'd been friends for generations. In one of these houses, a boy with the odd name of Sanity lived. He wasn't very enthusiastic about much, and when his parents kicked him out of the house to train Pokemon, he postponed meeting the... eccentric Professor Elm for almost a week, surviving on the pizza scraps in his parents' trash pile. But all things come to an end, and so he found himself standing outside a broken automatic glass door, waiting for someone to open it.
When his brainless neighbour, Lynn Eeyear, charged through the glass, and smashed into the tiled floor of the laboratory, much to the surprise of Elm and his aides. A shelf with tomes of scientific information swayed dangerously, and one scientist dropped a glass vial filled with purple liquid in his haste to keep the shelf upright. The vial, naturally, fell directly on top of Lynn's prostrate form, and released its contents onto her back. Of course, nobody noticed that minor occurrence, seeing as they were too busy wondering what the hell had just happened. And also surveying the damaged door with disappointment.
"We... we were going to 'ave 'er fixed up tomorrow," choked out one nerd in a white coat.
"We said that yesterday, Chuck," said another one. "And the day before that... and the day before that... and probably the day before that."
A third nerd took out his mobile phone. "I guess I'll call the door fixers again."
"Kick out the girl!" said the second nerd. "This is the fifth time in as many days!"
And then the head honcho realised that his inferiors were talking. "Uh... yeah. We... should... like totally do that," said Elm uncertainly. "What you just said, I mean. We should totally do what you just said we should do."
Sanity was watching all this with vague amusement, but he really wanted to get things going. "Well... I'm Sanity Eldritch, and I'm here for my Pokemon!"
"Oh, sorry, we're all out of Pokemon," apologised Elm. In an undertone he continued, "At least... I think we are..."
"What the hell do you mean? There should be three choices," said Sanity, "And there are only two kids of training age in this bloody town!"
"Well, there you go then, Snappily! Two plus three equals five!" said Elm, glad that the conversation had finally turned to something he understood.
"My name... is Sanity."
The Professor shrugged. "Sorry about that, Sulkily."
"And... the real sum should be three minus two. Which equals-"
"Five..." mumbled Lynn groggily, her voice muffled by the floor.
"Six."
Elm scratched his chin, confused. "What point are you trying to... make?"
"If there are three choices and two trainers to choose one each, then the remainder will be six, dumbass," said Sanity, smirking. "And so I demand six Pokemon!"
"But then... but... then Miss Earhole won't have any!" said Elm, doing the maths.
"Five, then," compromised Sanity.
"Lemme see what I have..." Elm walked over to his desk, and pulled open a drawer. Curious, Sanity followed him, wondering what kind of Pokeballs the 'mons were in. The Professor stared intently into his drawer, and put his hand inside. The boy looked over the man's shoulder, and almost facepalmed himself. Inside the drawer, a number of sheets of paper covered in numbers and figures sat, each one about as similar to a Pokeball as a Magikarp... actually, even less so, because at least Magikarp were red. And round, too. Maybe that wasn't the best analogy...
"Professor. The Pokemon?" asked Sanity, each word punctuated by a rap on the head.
"Hm? Ah... yes... let me see..." He pulled open another drawer, this one, Sanity was gratified to see, full of red and white. But then he saw that the balls were expanded, and there were really only two.
"Say what?" yelled the kid, astonished. He had never thought that his messed-up mathematics would actually turn out true, but he had thought that there would be three balls exactly. Where the hell had the third one gone?
"Well... let's see... this one has a... um..." said Elm, indicating a ball with an image of a blue drop of water stuck on it.
"Totodile?" suggested Sanity.
"Yes! What you just said. It has a... what you just said... in it. Not that I don't know what you're talking about... you just... um... put it so... eloquently. Yeah. Eloquently."
"And the other one?" asked the boy, pointing to the ball with the picture of a flame.
"It was... Chimchar... no, that's the other one... Charman- nah, that's a wing... of course!"
"What is it," said the boy guardedly. Man was obviously crazy.
Radiating a smug air of confidence, Elm said, "Why, Torchic, of course! Go! Torchic!" He threw the ball down onto the ground, and in a flash of brilliant red light, the 'Torchic' emerged.
"Um... isn't Torchic meant to be a bird?" asked Sanity. The navy-blue backed little creature looked nothing like a bird, and even less so when its back erupted in flames. It's cream belly and stubby limbs gave it the impression of a bowling ball that had grown legs and a head. Whatever it was, it was no Torchic.
"Uh... well... sometimes..." The speechless Professor continued to open and shut his mouth, even after the disjointed words had trailed off into nothingness.
"Cyndaquil!" it chirped happily.
"How'd you become a Pokemon Professor again?"
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After Lynn had been pronounced unable to travel for two or three weeks, Sanity left the infirmary where she had been kept, and took the two Pokemon, reasoning that there would probably another shipment of critters before Lynn was allowed to leave on her quest. It was a weak lie, but then again, the people of Newbark had weak minds.
"Okay... names... names..." He'd heard that you needed to give new Pokemon their names quickly, or else they wouldn't answer to anything when they got older. His two new battlers were sitting in the grass on Route 29 in front of him, gazing around confusedly. "Well... I could go and call you Wave... but that doesn't have the right vibe... Tsunami? Okay, that's badass." The Totodile nodded in bemused agreement. "And you... should be something to do with fire. Like Blaze or Flint or Coal... how about Burner? Burn? Theodore?" At the last one, the Cyndaquil nodded eagerly, and Sanity wondered why he had just said that. What kind of name was Theodore? And didn't Cyndaquil eventually evolve into something really awesome?
"Uh... could you get out of the way?" asked a little boy, wearing a stupid blue baseball cap. Not one to take to being disturbed, Sanity turned his head slowly.
"No."
"It's just that there's a big battle going on here," said the boy, acting as if he hadn't heard Sanity's short answer.
"What's it between?" asked Sanity, "A Pidgey and a Spearow?"
The boy snorted. "Actually," he said, "It's between me and the Champion of the Cherrygrove City League of Pokemon."
"Say what?" Sanity stood up, his Pokemon following his movement with their heads. The kid was probably just exaggerating his opponent so that he could seem tougher. "Come on, guys. Let's watch this battle." The three of them retreated to the edge of the path, just in front of the trees, and waited for the battle to start.
A blonde-haired and grey-eyed man stepped out of the bushes opposite them, covered in leaves. He was wearing a flourishing blue cape, that was covered in stars, and a pair of equally-blue jeans that ended in flares. His boots tapered to a point, and his hair stuck up like he'd just stuck his finger into a plug socket. He probably had, thought Sanity, he seems just the kind of moron who would do that. From some obscure spot underneath his cape, he procured a blue ball, decorated with gold stars. With a painfully fake smile, he shouted, "Attack, my mighty Beacon!" The ball arced to the ground, trailing more of those sparkly gold stars, and released... a Staryu.
"Predictable," muttered Sanity. "It probably shoots stars too." The kid, meanwhile, had sent out a little yellow thing that looked like a Pikachu but with some form of physical deformation. It also seemed to have speech impediment issues, and kept on saying "Pichu, Pichu" over and over again.
"Pichu, use Thundershock!" A little electric charge snapped and crackled around the rodent, then leaped at the starfish it was facing off against. Nothing happened.
"Beacon, use Swift!"
"Here it comes," said Sanity, sure of what was going to happen next. A spread shot of golden stars shot from the Staryu's red core, and most of them thudded into the Pichu's body. As one would expect, the pitiable rodent was knocked unconscious by the attack. Sanity nodded smugly, his prediction having been correct. Tsunami stared at his trainer in awe, amazed that Sanity could see into the future. Theodore had, of course, fallen asleep.
The boy recalled his fallen battler, and with new determination, summoned his second Pokemon. "Come on out, Spartacus!" A Spearow fluttered weakly on the ground, struggling to stay conscious.
"What the..." Sanity found himself saying.
For the benefit of the readers and the world at large, the boy explained. "I just caught him, just after we agreed on a two-on-two battle."
"So you agreed on a two-on-two battle knowing that you only had one Pokemon?"
"Yeah."
Sanity shook his head in condescending amusement. "You suck, you know that, right?"
The man in blue flicked his fingers in annoyance. "Could we please continue our battle!" Caught by surprise, the boy gave a start. For no apparent reason, Sanity punched him in the face.
"Don't surprise me like that," he berated the boy, who was clutching his bleeding nose and whimpering through a flood of tears and blood. In a flurry of liquids that originated both in his sinuses and not in his sinuses, the kid ran away, screaming something about his daddy and the police.
Blue man said, "Hey, uh, I don't really want this to have been a waste of time, so... wanna battle?"
"Hell yeah," answered Sanity. "Go, Tsunami!" The Totodile ran out onto the road, jumping wildly.
"How about a one on one battle?" asked Blue man.
"Fair enough," agreed Sanity.
"Then let the battle... BEGIN."
"Use Scratch!" Tsunami stopped jumping and looked confused. "Leer?" More confusion. "Something?" With a sound of glee, the bipedal blue crocodile leaped into the air and delivered a roundhouse kick to the static starfish. The Staryu flew into the air, and, launching himself into the sky, Tsunami clamped his jaws over one of its arms. Before the stunned eyes of both trainers, it slammed Beacon into the ground, sending up a small cloud of dust. Its red core was now flickering feebly, and one of its arms somehow curled downwards, almost like a lowered head. Except that, you know, the thing didn't have a face. Then the red core went out... PERMANENTLY.
"You killed her!"
"Staryu have genders?"
"That's irrelevant! You killed her!"
Sanity rolled his eyes. "The narrator was obviously making a hyperbole."
"No, no, no. It was in all caps; that means it's true," argued Blue man, tears streaking his face and snot dribbling from his nose.
"Whatever," said Sanity, showing a complete lack of concern.
"You- you monster!"
"Well. Could you just get out of my way? I have a Pokemon League to conquer." The victorious trainer brushed off Blue man's protests, and strode off into the waist-high 'tall' grass, his faithful Totodile at his side and blowing a raspberry at the sobbing wreck.
As soon as they were out of earshot of the supposed 'Champion', Sanity stopped short and shouted "High five, man!" Whooping in ecstasy, the two winners walked into a Pidgey. An angry, angry Pidgey. One with a really bad Peck attack.
"Pidge!" screeched the bird as it dive-bombed Tsunami. Confused, the two looked skywards.
"What in the name of Ho-oh is-" The Pidgey missed, and smacked into Sanity's face, leaving three parallel gashes in one of his cheeks. "!" he screamed to the heavens, and his Totodile obeyed the command by leaping into the air and landing on top of the bird. Feathers and curse words in Pokespeak flying, the two spiralled three feet to the ground, and then the last foot or so when Tsunami smashed the Pidgey's back with a bone-cracking headbutt. Bleeding from several wounds and limping, the Totodile went back to his trainer.
"So... so far 'something' means a roundhouse kick and then a smash into the ground with his mouth, and '' means-" Tsunami leaped into the air, and ten seconds later, a second dead Pidgey fell from the skies, the starter astride it's twisted back. "Ouch."
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After Tsunami was knocked out in a particularly brutal battle with a territorial pack of Sentret, Sanity sent out Theodore, who had woken up of his own accord. After launching a fireball into the middle of several nervous Rattata, however, the Cyndaquil would have no more, and fell asleep amidst of the cries of burning Pokemon. Sanity, in his usual, apathetic, way, shrugged this off and for the next twenty or so battles, punched out the little critters with his bare fists. Just as the sun was setting, he got bored and crossed the border into Cherrygrove City, an act which no puny wild Pokemon could possibly hope to achieve.
"Why is it that every time a Rattata tries to get in here, they just vanish?"
"Technology," grunted the ever-so-charming Nurse Joy through a mouthful of Spearow leg. "Teleporters at the exits of the city cause anything that hasn't been caught or isn't human to appear in a random place in Route 29."
"But... suppose that a Sentret appears in a boulder?"
"Tough luck for the Sentret, then."
"Or if a Sentret appears inside another Sentret's stomach?"
The nurse thought for a second. "Tough luck for the Sentrets, then."
"... You know, for a nurse, you really have no compassion."
"I get that a lot."
"So, any rooms free?" asked Sanity.
"Just the one," said Nurse Joy, indicating a door at the end of the corridor. "Here's the key."
As he entered the room, Sanity noticed something odd. "Isn't this a broom closet?" he asked.
"Yeah. But then, they all are."
"You know, for a nurse, you really, really have no compassion."
"I get that a lot, too," she said wryly.
"I wonder why," he muttered under his breath as he made a bed out of styrofoam pellets and cardboard boxes.
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What do you think? Tell me. TELL ME.
It's in all capitals, that means that there's no denying it.