Tamah: Lo and behold, It's finally done! This fic was requested by Regina Demonica. I'm sorry it took so long to write. . . and if you don't like it. Heh. Uhh. . . This is a Pokécraft fanfiction, based loosely on The Whisperer in Darkness, by H.P. Lovecraft.
Night was beginning to settle in on Slateport City. The sliver of the moon was just beginning to rise above the horizon. And like the moon's ascent, one poor kid's troubles were just beginning.
He was sitting on a freezing cold metal stool in the middle of a cold, dank, and dark room. He, however had a bright fluorescent spotlight shining on him. The buzzing of the light was one of the many things that were driving him positively mad.
The roof must have been leaking, he thought aimlessly, because he could hear the steady dripping of water into a puddle. He felt like he was in a scene in one of those cheesy crime dramas. Any second now, the cops were going to come out and beat him senseless.
Well, it wasn't going to be cops, he knew that much. It was still probably going to end terribly. He would rather have been absolutely anywhere else.
Wait. No. There was one place where he didn't want to be, and he would never go there again.
The door finally squealed open. Someone needed to oil those hinges, he thought. Someone with very heavy footsteps tromped in, probably the Russian man who had dragged him here. He stomped through a few puddles before sitting down in a shadowy part of the room. In the dim light, the man looked to be the size of an ursaring, and he knew from experience that the man was just as strong. His chair looked very comfortable, and he hated the man for that, if anything else.
Quieter footsteps entered the room, they paused for a few seconds before shutting the door with a large bit of effort on their part. After a few grunts and groans, they managed to close the heavy steel door. The person was much smaller than the other man- he didn't get a very good look at them either- and they sat next to the larger man.
There was a few moments of uncomfortable silence before someone spoke. "What is your name," the man said with a thick accent. Yes, he was definitely the Russian man.
"B-Brendan Birch." the boy said, trying to sound tough and brave, but failing miserably.
"All right. Tell us what you know," the man said. "Or, perhaps you will go for a long swim."
"Aleksandr," the smaller one reprimanded in an accented feminine voice, "He is only a boy."
A woman. Huh. That was new. Brendan didn't think he had ever seen a crime drama with a woman interrogator, but it was probably to throw him off. But for what, though? Good cop, bad cop?
"Sofya. It does not matter. He knows where Cozmo is," the man growled. "And he will tell us."
Brendan grimaced. Not this, anything but this. He didn't want to relive this ever again, but it looked like he was going to have to.
"Tell us," the woman said, "What made you fly away quickly? Did something happen to the Professor Cozmo? What did you see?"
Well, it was go time. Maybe one day, he would be able to forget this whole thing. "See? I didn't have to see anything, not when I knew."
"Knew? Knew what?" Aleksandr asked quickly, "So, you know where he has gone?"
Brendan let out a long sigh. "You know what?" he asked, "I'm just gonna tell you everything. From the very, very beginning."
All right, so before I actually ever met Cozmo, there's an important thing I need to tell you about. About. . . three years ago, a pokémon named kyogre rose from the bottom of the sea. Long story short, it rained. A lot. At the time, I was helping my old man, who is a pokémon professor, down in Littleroot Town.
So, it was raining all over Hoenn until my girlfr- I mean neighbor- caught it- well, actually, she had battled it a few years before that and beat it- okay, okay, I'll get back to the story.
Long story short, it rained, and then it stopped. The whole region was flooded. Up in Fallarbor it was really flooded because all of the water was flowing down from the hills. So, apparently in the flood waters people up there were spotting some really strange things.
The pokémon up there, like everywhere else in Hoenn, were smart enough to miss the floods. Except for this new kind of pokémon these people kept sending us blurry pictures and calling us about. They looked weird. I mean weird.
Like, uh. . . let me think. They were these pink, human-shaped things with either large fins, or wings- people couldn't make up their minds- and they had a few more legs, like crabs, most of the reports said. There wasn't much of a head, just an eyeless oval with antennae all over it.
My dad and I really tried to figure out what they were. Eventually we came up with the idea of it being a blind, cave dwelling pokémon probably from water-filled caves in the hills up above Fallarbor. We were wrong, of course, but that's what we came up with. It made sense, in the scientific sense anyway.
So my dad made me look up legends that might point to these creatures. It was long, hard, work; it took me about eight months to sift through it all.
According to the legends, they were ill omens who lived up in the farthest away hills. It was said if any hiker found their distinctive footprints, they were doomed to disaster. Some tales would tell of them violently attacking anything that settled too close to their nests.
I was going to travel up there and take a look, but my old man saddled me with enough work so I couldn't. Over time, I thought that my dad was keeping me behind on purpose.
I was emailing someone behind his back, though, your man Cozmo. He was a pretty cool guy, he liked to ramble on a lot, but still, he seemed like a good man.
The first email he sent me was really long and I can't really remember it all off of the top of my head, but I still remember the gist of it. Right. He said that he had encountered the beasts before. But that wasn't really the most interesting thing about the email. He told me about this fascinating black stone that was linked to the creatures, and my mind instantly jumped to things like the Red and Blue Orbs.
Attached to the email were four things, a few images and a sound file. He was talking about the sound file in the email too, it was a recording he made of the things speaking with humans. So, I grabbed my dad and we looked over the email's attachments together.
The first picture was of a black stone. It was beyond amazing. I can't even start explaining what it looked like, its shape was so. . . indescribable. It was definitely something created artificially, but there was no way a human could have done something that incredible. Furthering my non-human theory was the strange hieroglyphs etched all over it.
The next picture was of a man and a woman surrounded by five mightyena. It was Professor Cozmo, with his wife and assistant. They were standing in front of a house surrounded by dusty grey rock. In the picture, a light haze of volcanic ash swirled though the air and caught the light. I remember it because it looked so peaceful.
The last picture was of a cave in the high hills, it was dark and foreboding. There was a round rock- it was too round- acting as a kind of door. The sun was high in the sky, but it was still a gloomy picture, for sure.
What freaked my dad out the most, though, was the sound file. All I heard was a twisted, screwy buzzing, but my father practically shoved me out of the room after a few seconds. I still haven't heard it.
My dad typed up a response and afterwards, he pretended like nothing happened.
Over the next few months, the Professor and I exchanged countless emails. Slowly but surely, the tone of the man's emails became darker and darker. His emails were beginning to become panicked, through the shorthand and spelling errors I learned that his mightyena were dying quickly, he had sent his wife to Lilycove with their young son, and he feared for his life on a daily basis.
I was really starting to worry for him. I stopped telling my dad about the emails, he would yell at me every time I did. So, I told my next door neighbor. She was getting really worried too, but she was always busy with Champion things.
For a few days, no emails came. And then a very odd, formal email wound up in my inbox. Gone was his normal, you know, chatspeak and shorthand. I didn't think it was very odd at first, what really bothered me was the whole feeling of the letter. He assured me that everything was perfectly fine.
He invited me to his house. I forgot to mention this before, but a few years ago he had moved a little farther away from Fallarbor, closer to a strange set of meteorites or something.
I didn't know if I should go or not, but May convinced me to go. She felt that I'd be able to handle myself, and she even lent me a team of some of her prized pokémon, because all of mine weren't really battlers anymore.
So, feeling confident, I flew away on her skarmory. I didn't tell my father about it, and I hoped he would just think that I was on a scientific run. He still doesn't know where I am. . . Oh, I probably shouldn't have said that. . .
We made it to Cozmo's house, and I was greeted by a man that I didn't recognize. He told me that the professor was feeling ill, but I should come in anyway. I found that suspicious because he had only sent me the email like two days before.
I greeted Cozmo, and he responded in a very quiet, raspy voice. He was literally engulfed in a blanket, all I could see was his eyes and his hands peeking out from the fabric. I shrugged it off, after all, he didn't seem that off, he could've just had the flu or something.
The strange man led me to the room that I was going to use during my visit, I got settled in and then made my way back to the living room to try to talk to the professor.
As soon as I sat down, he started talking. "They're not so bad, you know." he told me.
"What do you mean?" I asked, I mean, this was like a one-eighty from his previous attitude.
He then started telling me all about these strange, far-flung worlds, of near magical places in galaxies far away. It was all in that quiet raspy voice, and he still hadn't taken the blanket off. He told me about the Mi-go (or whatever it was,) and how they had offered him a way to visit these places.
I didn't voice my suspicions, after all, that strange man whose name I never learned was watching me. After all, why would Cozmo want to leave his wife and son like that? I wondered how they were, out in Lilycove.
Then he began telling me about the technology that allowed the creatures to keep humans through the vastness of deep space by preserving the brains in a jar. I know that it's crazy and sci-fi and all that, but that's what he told me. And that's how he was going to travel.
The odd man offered me some dinner. I ate it hesitantly, especially since Cozmo didn't eat anything. May's skarmory refused to eat. I hadn't returned him to his pokéball, at first it was because the unexpected other person, and then I kept him around to feel safe.
I noticed the stranger was eying the skarmory apprehensively and vice versa. So after the meal, I insisted that I was tired and so I went to my room. I couldn't sleep, even if I had been tired. I couldn't help but let my mind run wild, I swore I heard the creatures' buzzing echoing through the chilly night air.
I still hadn't returned the pokémon to its ball. I was whispering to it, it made me feel better.
But the buzzing noises still wouldn't stop, and they were joined by Cozmo's suddenly haunting voice and the voice of the nameless man. I thought I was going crazy, I was sitting in the corner of the room, grinding my teeth at the buzzing sounds.
After what felt like an eternity, it tapered down and then, thankfully, it stopped. I calmed myself down and made my way out of my room. I had sent another one of May's pokémon out, I had one of her blaziken out as well now. She was crooning quietly to herself and she jumped at the slightest noise.
Quietly we crept down the hallway and towards the living room- where the front door was. I saw Cozmo still sitting there on the couch, and it appeared he was sleeping. I had blaziken light up the room and I went to wake him up, to tell him I was leaving. On the little coffee table I saw a metal cylinder with strange machines attached. On closer inspection, a name was written on it- Cozmo.
My heart leapt into my throat as I remembered Cozmo telling me about the space-travel, and apprehensively, I looked under the blanket.
I screamed. I will admit it, I screamed. The room went dark for a moment as the blaziken reacted, but her fire flickered on again.
With shaking, trembling, hands I recalled the blaziken and ran for my life. The skarmory raced after me, my evident fear was frightening it. As soon as we made it outside I jumped on its back and flew away like a bat out of hell.
"And that was what happened," Brendan said weakly. He wiped the sweat off of his face and took a few deep breaths. "That was what happened."
"What was wrong with our comrade?" Sofya asked,"You did not say."
He took another breath and spoke again. "Inside the blanket. . . Inside the blanket I found three. . . things. Things that were meant to attach to other. . . things." His voice was becoming weaker now, more agitated. "Things that I knew weren't plastic or fake."
"Tell us already," Aleksandr growled.
"I found. . I found. . ." He took a breath and managed to continue. "I found the hands and face of Professor Cozmo!"
May was worried sick. Brendan still hadn't come back, and he told her he would be back within a day. She was at wits end, she didn't know what had happened to him.
But, wait, she saw a familiar form in the sky, and her heart lightened. Her skarmory landed gently, Brendan draped over his back. She rushed over to him, looked him over, and other than a black eye, he looked fine. "Brendan?"
A brown eye fluttered open. "May? I'm alive?"
She helped him off of the skarmory and she helped him get home.
He never did tell her what happened.
And so, that's it. Funfact: There is a Russia in the pokemon games; in R/B/Y and the remakes, a scientist at Silph complains that he was shipped off to the Tiksi branch, which is in Russia.