Welcome to Abominations. I'll be working on this alongside Requiem for Dissent.
/cue apocalyptic music. I'm willing to accept some OCs and will likely accept a few OCs through the course of the story unless otherwise noted. I adore creating characters, but there's plenty of room for additional characters that fall outside of my comfort zone; thus, I've come to pick your brains.
OCs will be handled by PM or email (for those who may not have an account, the email I use for FF should be available for you to see) and those posted in a review will be disregarded and removed. I do this for a few reasons: no one will be influenced by another's submission, each OC will not automatically be known straight off the bat if they are a turncoat condidate, and it will keep the review page nice and tidy. The form is in my profile along with some addition important notes and I highly recommend its use as it contains all the information I'll need.
The opening is a different avenue than I usually do, consisting of a conglomerate of voices from the few old-timers remaining. I had to drug my Grammar Nazi side to get it done. It kept screaming I was butchered the rules.
Abominations
Prologue
We fight.
We are the ones held captive by our tormentors. Day in, day out, they come to run their tests. They throw us into pits for some so-called "training." We fight like the Pokémon hybrids we have become. In some sessions, we fight one another to the point of exhaustion. They say it refines our newfound abilities.
We bleed.
The training halls are stained with our blood - even the best of the cleaning crew can't scrub everything clean.
We die.
They consider it a good week when only ten of us die.
We abandoned humanity, knowing full well we can never return to our former lives. There are those who refuse to believe in the nightmare. Some accept it only so far as to believe the scientists have a cure, that they can reverse these changes, but others…they are unable accept it and turn on those around them.
Those are the ones that are often putdown. They go insane believing nothing is real, everything is but a dream they'll wake up from. Maybe it is, maybe this is all just a bad dream none of us can wake up from. As they undergo the pain of genetic splicing, their minds snap and they rebel. We know this because we too suffered, but we were not weak of mind and we persevered. They are what the scientists call "almost perfect" - ones who achieve a state of being that makes them dangerous, vicious. But they lack the one important thing: control.
News echoes through our prison cells are that some of these… ferals… have proven to be useful. At least those that know not to attack the researchers and have shown some control. It is said they accept the nightmare, but still cling to the idea they can be returned. They will do anything for the scientists, anything so long as it brings a cure. With enough false promises, they would turn on their friends and families if it means a cure.
But we know better.
Those of us who have accepted this nightmare know not to tempt the fates. We live and that is enough for now.
We were supposed to be some sort of secret weapon, at least that is the word heard echoing around these cold, bleak halls.
We are that which is not supposed to be.
None of our families know where we are. Some families know something is wrong - some of us haven't been heard from in months or years. Some, like the families of a few of the latest captives, go on blissfully unaware of what has happened. There are probably some others who immediately know something is wrong, but they are too afraid to speak up.
We remember the cause of the pain.
The four major regions of Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh used to all have friendly interleague championships, but something happened. Sinnoh accused Kanto of unfair dealings, they refuted, and all the head advisors squabbled. Next thing everyone knew, Kanto and Johto allied against Hoenn and Sinnoh.
Fighting broke out, many died. Each side was too evenly matched. To tip the scales, Kanto funded a secret program using prisoners of war as test subjects, but it did not stop there. With the success of the alpha project, the true work began. No more did they take from enemy combatants, but civilians! Civilians from their own nation, from their sister nation, from nations who were once their friends!
We are here not of our own free will.
Some of us won a dream vacation, some of us volunteered to help clean parks and cities, and some of us were forcefully taken because we "fit the profile". We don't remember the events in between, just when we awoke from our drug induced coma, our bodies were not our own.
We are abominations!
Every single one of us took to the genetic manipulation differently. Some of us could pass as human, others not. There is a young man here, one who is more of an abomination than any of us. If there ever is a cure, he is the one who can never go back. His body is a cruel joke but he still cracks his jokes like he always has. It seems odd to us that he can still remain cheery given his condition, but he gives us hope; hope that we may see the sun once more. Without him, many of us would have been lost.
The fighting ended shortly after the first anniversary of the project. But they would not stop. The successes with the old timers such as us, spurred them further. When news of the war's end reached down in the prison, we rejoiced, thinking at least we could be free! We would have no place to go, but we would have one another to lean on in a world we no longer had a place in.
No.
They held us captive, but this time with new duties.
Something is going on.
They've sunk even lower, seeking out the younger teens out making a name for themselves in the league circuits. They've brought them here and dared to ask us to get them accustomed to their new home! They ask us to befriend them, gain their trust, but how can we when we are the demons? How can we tell them everything will be alright, knowing they will share our same fate?
The abominations-to-be ask us why we are sad whenever they see us. We fake a smile and say it is nothing. Then they ask us if they will become like us. It hurts to tell them the truth.
They go with us everywhere in what we call "day," the time we are awake, when the staff allows it. They go to our training sessions, they go to our tests, and they go with us to our precious recreational time.
Recreation…
From the stories we heard, the original alpha abominations went berserk with only training and tests to look forward to. We have heard the stories of some who took their own lives in their isolation cells rather than suffer here. Others we heard turned on the staff, forcing them to kill them. The non violent ones just simply lost control of their minds, babbling incoherent statements. A couple of the original alpha projects still roam the halls, partially recovered from their dance with insanity, but they are still volatile.
The times changed, but not before some of the beta studies committed suicide to escape the torture. The eldest of us remember those days. They safeguarded our rooms against suicide attempts, but most of all, they allowed us time to play! To play and interact with not only with each other, but with newly born Pokémon, something that was never afforded to the abominations under the alpha and early beta projects – for them it became rehabilitation therapy.
It gave us a reason to live.
The staff allowed us to care for one or two Pokémon apiece by submitting a written request with a few of the species we had an interest in. If available, within two weeks time we had an egg near hatching to care for. To die by our own hand now meant hurting the only tangible "family" we now had and abandoning them to whatever the scientists would do with them.
But we are not happy. We want freedom! We want to see the sun and the stars. We want to feel the wind caress our faces and to swim in the ocean.
Someday, we will be free.
They will us down and kill us, we know this, but we will risk everything.
All for the chance to see the sun again.
Someday we will no longer be rats in a cage.