"Take it and go!"
She could have stayed. She should have stayed. Stayed and waited for their death by the hands of Them. It was a fitting ending; stay with the only person she knew, and the only person she's ever loved. Stay with him so that they could die together in each other's arms and never have to worry about a thing again.
But she didn't. She didn't take the promise of death. She had the shut the door in Death's face and ran away from her fate. She had taken her ticket out of the Grim Reaper's abode and ran like hell was right behind her.
"What are you waiting for?! Hurry! Run away!"
She can still hear the inhumane screeches of them. She can still feel the heat of the crackling flames swirling around her and her brother, the crumbling shafts of wood from their roof, the thumping on the door as they threatened to break in at any moment –
And she had left him all alone there, all alone to face the wrath of them. She left him to die alone, when he had always been there for her for everything. And she – the rotten human being she is – left him.
"But you'll – you'll–"
"Who cares what happens to me! All that matters is you! Just run, okay? Don't die – live! If not for yourself, then live for me!"
She ran away because she was a coward. A stupid, spineless coward who cared nothing for other people. She was the worst kind of person, because she had been scared. And being scared – that was unneeded. Fear was an emotion that people should never have discovered, because it didn't exist.
But she, of all people, should know that fear existed everywhere, whether she liked it or not.
She fell to her knees, charred grass tickling her skin, choked sobs escaping her throat. Tears trickled out of her eyes, streaming down her cheeks, dribbling down her chin, and splotching her face worse than it was already burnt.
Fear was unneeded. Fear was unnecessary. Fear was pointless. And if fear really was all those things, then she promised herself – she would never need to feel fear again, for then it wouldn't need to exist.
Skye promised herself that, on that dark day, when New Bark Town burned to ashes behind her and left none alive but her.
It started with rocks.
Every night, at least five rocks would come out of nowhere and land in their backyard, making either big, really big, or rhydon-sized craters beneath them. Skye detested having to be put to the task of cleaning them out with Pongo and Nadine's help every morning when she hadn't even brushed her hair or opened her eyes all the way yet.
On the first day the rocks had come, Skye had gone into the backyard to check up on her plants, still yawning and rubbing her eyes. When she fully comprehended the sight of twelve rocks lying around their yard in twelve different shapes and twelve different sizes, she immediately backed inside the house and slammed the door shut.
"Rocks coming out of nowhere is not a natural phenomenon," Skye argued.
Ryan gave her a raised eyebrow. "They're just rocks. Clean them out with Pongo or whoever, I gotta get to work." With that, he scooped up the last of his cereal, drained the milk out of the bowl, grabbed his car keys, and zoomed out of the door before Skye could pin the chore on him. "Bye!"
"Ass." Nevertheless, Skye grabbed the great ball marked with a boulder sticker on the front and threw it open. "Pongo, we've got some work to do."
Pongo was Ryan's rhydon, who moved on intelligence as well as brute strength. Her brother was ridiculously lucky to have caught one instead of yet another geodude, and a smart rock-type pokemon at that. Really, most of the Johtoans had bad impressions about rock-types by the way every single graveler that popped out in a cave wanted to blow up in front of them.
But the rocks kept coming. Day after day, Skye would wake up to find their backyard littered with rocks that seemed to multiply by the morning. Pongo would get tired after too much of the work every day (and he would start complaining, which wasn't pleasing to the ears), so sometimes Skye would have to let him rest for a couple of days while Nadine, Ryan's feraligatr, would take over for him.
The beginning of the apocalypse started out like every other normal day. Skye woke up, Ryan woke up, Skye went to brush her teeth and take a bath, Ryan fell asleep again despite Pongo's insistent stomping, Skye went out to pour cereal and milk in a bowl for her brother, Ryan sat up on the edge of his bed and fell asleep on the floor, and then Skye went out to the backyard.
That was when everything started.
"Pongo, it's your turn today!" Skye yelled as loud as she could, because being heard over her brother's snores was a feat in itself.
Obediently, but somewhat grudgingly, the rhydon trudged in and cracked his knuckles in preparation. Skye pushed open the door, already expecting the familiar sight of a bunch of rocks lying around on their yard like they paid rent, but instead of just rocks, there were… cracked rocks.
Pongo looked down at his trainer's younger sister as if waiting for her usual command, but Skye just stood there and stared at the rocks with confusion. The only really notable thing about the rocks that came every night was that they were always smooth and there was never a crack on their being. So seeing the rugged, cracked rocks looked like a slap on Skye's cheek – she was so used to patterns that if there was even one thing thrown out of place, she wouldn't be able to do anything much.
"Don," Pongo grunted impatiently.
Skye shook her head. These were just rocks, after all! It didn't matter if they were smooth or rough; the only thing that did matter was that they were taking up space in their yard and flattening her plants. "Uh – yeah. Sure, go ahead."
Pongo rolled his eyes and proceeded to roll the rocks over like he did every morning. But just as he started to move one, it split in half.
The rhydon let out a surprised roar and jumped away, the earth quaking underneath him. Skye gawked as the rock broke into two, revealing some sort of hideous abomination. It looked like a squeezed octillery that was forcefully stuck on what looked like really long and really thin bird feet. The… creature – as there really was no other way to refer to it as – was completely white, like something had sucked all the blood out of it, and had what looked like a dozen tentacles hanging off of it.
It made a gurgling sound and made to lurch over towards Skye. Panicking, she shrieked and stumbled backwards, gesturing for Pongo to do something, damnit!
The rhydon immediately grabbed a nearby rock and smashed it on the creature's head. Pongo didn't dare lift the rock until he was sure it wasn't moving anymore – that is, until a wet, slimy tentacle emerged from under the rock and formed into a harpoon. Skye couldn't even blink before the harpoon's tip was jutting out of her brother's rhydon's back.
Pongo roared. He fell to the ground, the earth shaking even more, and his hold on the rock loosened. The creature wriggled out, retracting its harpoon-tentacle out of Pongo's limp body and waved it around threateningly. It didn't seem to have eyes (visible ones, at least), but Skye could tell it was staring straight at her. Then it associated her with the rhydon it had just killed and lunged.
Skye screamed, eyes going unnaturally wide as she flung the door open, jumped inside, and slammed the door shut just as the creature's harpoon-tentacle was inches away from her chest. The tentacle was caught in the door and Skye immediately put as much as force as she could in pushing the door close.
The tentacle snapped off with a disgusting noise, the harpoon clattering to the ground, greenish blood surrounding it. The floorboards made a sizzling noise where the liquid was, and Skye could see the telltale sign of a burn mark.
"Ryan!" she yelled. "Ryan! Ryan, come here!"
If there was one thing Ryan knew about his sister, then it was that she had never raised her voice that high and that loud since she was a baby. He stumbled into the room and just barely managed to not choke on his cereal when he saw the harpoon-tentacle lying on the floor, burning a hole on their boards, and still twitching every few seconds.
"What the hell happened here?! And where the hell is Pongo?!"
Skye's breath hitched. "Pongo – they – they – he – Ryan!" He also knew that Skye didn't cry if she didn't need to, and the last time she did cry was at their father's funeral –
He pushed her out of the way, heading straight for the door, tense. His sister's reaction, Pongo's absence despite the rhydon being a clingy type of character, the strange… whatever-it-was on the ground… told Ryan everything he needed to know. "What's out there?"
"Th… Things." Skye sniffed. "They – They killed him! J-Just like that…"
Ryan peeked out the window. Outside, he could see the abominations Skye had saw, and narrowed his eyes at Pongo's still body, crimson blood pooling around his midsection. He glanced down at the harpoon-tentacle on the floor, smoke swirling into the air above it, then moved his gaze over to his trembling, shaken sister. 'She was near those… things? They're gonna get hell…'
But when he looked back outside, the creatures seemed to have multiplied; there were now at least five or maybe six of them, crowding around Pongo's body enough that Ryan could barely catch sight of the rhydon's familiar grey hide. They seemed to be talking to one another, though he wasn't an expert on translating alien screeches, and his ears were ringing from the shrill noise they made, even through the window panes. From the corner of his eye, he could see Skye curl up into a tight ball, hands firmly latched onto her ears.
"D-Don't be stupid," Skye spat. Ryan jerked away from the door instinctively, turning to look at his sister. There were still a few stray tears near the corners of her eyes, but she quickly wiped those off and glared up at him, her eyes rimmed with red. "I bet you're gonna try to be some sort of h-hero and try to kick those things out before they do anything worse. Well, too bad! I won't let you!"
Ryan paused. "Then, dear sister, how do you suppose we at least get those things out of our backyard?"
It was easy, but also very nearly triggered a heart attack for both siblings. Ryan called Nadine out, told her about Pongo as slowly and calmly as he could, and watched the feraligatr rip the creatures apart. Then when the things that hadn't been torn to shreds by Nadine yet noticed the open door, they immediately jumped to it, scaring the daylights out of the siblings. Nadine got there just in time and crushed both the aliens in her jaws.
Once most of the aliens had been taken out and the remaining few struggled to get away, Ryan ordered the feraligatr to throw them out. Nadine gave him a look that clearly said she didn't agree with his plan, but dutifully tossed the aliens (and the rocks that hadn't split open yet) out onto the street. The fence that separated their backyard and the pavement was as tall as Pongo's midsection, so it was unlikely that the aliens would be able to get back in.
The rhydon was buried right there in their backyard, mainly because neither Skye or Ryan would dare step foot outside their safe fortress (read: heavily guarded house). Nadine, his mate, didn't shed any tears, but was silent for the rest of the day.
The aliens proved themselves to be utter bringers of destruction. Through the gaps in the fence, Skye kept watch on the aliens' movements as they ambled about, gathering themselves into one big group as the other aliens from the other rocks that had landed in their neighborhood joined the group. There was a loud conversation that was mostly shrieks and screeches that would put a banshee to shame, but eventually, the aliens tottered out of sight. Skye let out a sigh of relief, patting the male nidoran beside her. West, a stray Ryan picked up a couple weeks ago, made a small noise of comfort and settled down on her lap.
Then there was a loud explosion, and the unmistakable scent of smoke.
Skye sprang to her feet, West tumbling off of her and hissing disapprovingly, but Skye couldn't care less. She looked through the biggest gap she could find and just barely swallowed back another scream; nearly half of the neighborhood had burst into flames. Charred parts of the house were on the ground, blackened remains of the young couple next door and the old man across the street – all dead.
And the dark silhouettes on the long, thin bird feet were coming ever closer.
It didn't take long to get Ryan up and on to the task. With Ryan's pidgeot, Odette, and his fearow, Rothbart, they made a simple roof over their backyard, reaching just until the tips of the fences. It wasn't much, and it would probably break easily, but Ryan had made sure that Rothbart had placed the steel and iron plates exactly where he wanted them to be.
Skye and Nadine boarded up the house with each and every material they could find. The door was barred with a heavy steel pillar that had been lying about in the basement, and the windows were laden with wood planks and a few leftover steel plates. Ryan gave careful instructions to each of his pokemon that at least two of them would always accompany Skye, and for once, the girl didn't try defying it. She wasn't going to put her life on the line just because she thought she, a fifteen-year-old girl with no pokemon of her own to speak of, could handle a bunch of aliens who had burned down half their neighborhood. Even Skye had her limits.
The aliens made several attempts to break into the house. And equally many times, the house almost caught on fire. But thanks to Nadine and Ryan's penchant for surviving crises by raising as many of his water pokemon as he could, they lived through it.
At least, until two years later.
By then, the aliens had wrought destruction on nearly every other town or city They came across. Cherrygrove was a charred, blackened version of the once bustling city it had been, its flowers no longer blowing in the breeze. Violet was more accurately called Black now – there wasn't a shred of what might have been 'violet' in it. Olivine had gone up in flames and completely wiped off the map. Blackthorn lived up to its name, as the end result of the aliens' visit there had left it much the same as what had happened to Violet City.
They had left New Bark with half of its residents burning to ashes, then abruptly disappeared after that. Really, Skye had expected more. The aliens had stayed for a few months, then left, carrying the stench of death and smoke along with them. Skye had grown used to killing them, and she knew the best places to hit it on with a gun – always on the dried-looking, shriveled mouth it had. That was where they breathed fire, and if it didn't kill them, it would at least incapacitate the thing long enough for another shot to go straight to its brain.
And yes, the things did have brains. There were apparently also varying species of them, since Ryan paid very close attention to what happened outside nowadays. Grainy video clips shared on YouTube, static-laden reports on the radio, and their barely-working TV showing the interviews on the survivors, which were few and far in between. There were some that took on human disguises, but one could easily tell which was which if shown side-by-side with a healthy person. Of course, considering that less than half the population on Johto barely ate more than two meals a day anymore, it was hard telling who the real human between the two was.
There also seemed to be signs of some kind of alien overlord controlling all of these, or whatever. The government had worked hard enough to make a scratchy translator of alien-speech, though it barely worked and had spontaneously combusted after using it twice. But one of the things the aliens had apparently said struck something in Skye; "Disobeying the Lord's orders is a foolish action."
So there definitely was an alien overlord, or something to that extent. If the Lord died, then it would most definitely be much easier to kill the rest of the aliens off. But to do that, one would need several guns, weapons, and the strongest pokemon ever raised to humankind. And only God knows how that would ever happen.
They were certainly not expecting it.
With the aliens gone if only for a day, Ryan had immediately ran out with a golduck and a dewgong in tow, and came back with arms loaded with canned goods, potions, status healers, pokeballs, and most importantly, two cereal boxes. Koda, the golduck, was dragging what looked like three gallons of water behind him on a wagon.
They had rejoiced, but it didn't last long. A fireball came down from the ceiling and promptly burned the stuff up. Both Skye and Ryan let out enraged yells, and Koda sprang upwards, ready to summon a wave of water.
But when he jumped up, the only thing that came down was a blue blur that crashed back to the floor, blood spilling everywhere on the hole in his chest. Koda was quite obviously dead.
One by one, aliens filled the room. One by one, Ryan's pokemon fell. Water splashed to the floor, cereal was scattered across the ground, and pokeballs rolled around uselessly. The aliens were much, much stronger than any other of them that Ryan and his pokemon had faced, and Nadine couldn't so much as land a scratch on them when a very familiar harpoon pierced her chest and felled her for the last time.
Skye and Ryan were cornered in Ryan's bedroom. Only West and Drew the dewgong remained, both of which were instantly thrown aside by what looked like the lead alien's tentacles. Ryan stood in front of his sister as bravely as he could manage, looking like some sort of martyr with his serene-looking expression. Any other twenty-three-year-old probably would not have been able to pull that off.
The tentacles pierced him, but he moved by the slightest inch and it just barely missed his heart. He toppled to the ground and Drew blasted the aliens with the strongest spurt of water he had ever managed. West had hit his head and lay still on the floor. Skye was by her brother's side in an instant, cradling his head atop her lap.
Like an idiotic hero, he dug out a pokeball from his pocket, stained with blood, and thrust it out to his crying sister. "Here – take it and go."
Skye couldn't even manage words, but shook her head vehemently. In the background, Drew summoned a flurry of icicles and crashed them against the lurching aliens.
"Take it and go!" Ryan cried, his voice strained. Blood leaked out of his mouth, and he normally would have wiped it away. This time, he could barely lift his arm. Skye snatched the pokeball out of his hand, if only so that he could rest his arm on his chest. Ryan could already feel the life oozing out of him (literally. His blood was practically everywhere by this point).
When Skye didn't move, Ryan growled. "What are you waiting for?! Hurry up and go!"
"But you'll – you'll–"
"Who cares what happens to me! All that matters is you! Just run, okay? Don't die – live! If not for yourself, then live for me!"
Red liquid spurted out of the dewgong behind them. Drew collapsed with one final roar. West stirred on the side, the nidoking's eyes fluttering open as he stood up to his full height, stepping in front of his dying trainer and his sister. "King – !"
"I won't let them hurt you anymore," Skye breathed, planted a kiss on his forehead, and whispered, "Sweet dreams, brother."
"See you in purgatory."
Skye pried the wooden planks off the windows and jumped out, just in time to hear the deafening roar from West and the final thud as the nidoking hit the ground.
With tears streaming freely from her eyes, Skye promised herself that as long as she would ever live, she would never have to hear that sound again – the sound of the dead as the aliens' screeches filled her ears.
Chapter length will vary.
If you're a reader of mine, then you'll know that I haven't updated my two other stories for a while. Reason: I don't have much motivation. My muse never gets up from her couch, opting to stay and watch TV all day despite my incessant nagging, and so I haven't written much for the next chapter(s). Heavy apologies here. So you're wondering - what's with your muse if you wrote this and not your other two? Answer: I've been yearning for some apocalypse scenes these days. That's it.
Omega Zekrom is cool and so her OC shall be here. As for everyone else... maybe if I like you enough.
Slacker, 8/16/14
