"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." - H.P. Lovecraft
The room was infused with the smell of decay.
Plip-plop came the sound as something resembling liquid dripped from the cracked basins that protruded from the rust coloured walls onto the concrete floor, forming ripples as the droplets made contact with the dark, red puddle below.
If she had eaten something – anything – before this, she would have hurled all of it the second the noxious fumes entered her nasal canal. This is simply more than what she could handle.
Battling Pokémon often resulted in, more than not, fatal casualties, both purely incidental and intentional. Trainers were expected to bear such a morbid fact in mind. Getting rammed against, stomped on, hurled, thrashed, and clobbered by wild Pokémon while traversing unknown territories had already become second nature to her. She knew the risks and had still somehow made it out of them all pretty well. She thought that her journey had prepared her for any and all adversities especially when it had involved thwarting the master plan of a psychotic maniac in medieval garbs, preventing the complete dissolution of harmony between all of Pokémon and mankind, and successfully surviving the never-ending onslaught of battle-driven trainers who sought her out on a daily basis, imbued with only the murderous intent of defeating the newly-made champion of Unova.
She derailed her thought process before the revolting odour suffocated her in this god-forsaken room and dug through her bag for her Xtransciever. She clumsily punched a chain of numbers into her Xtransceiver, hoping – praying – that someone would pick up on the other end. She noticed then that everything had become deathly silent. The mechanical beeping sound of the Xtransceiver reverberated throughout the room, bouncing off the walls as if they were made some of nigh impenetrable substance X. She took a look at the Xtransceiver's screen and watched in horror as the signal slowly grew weaker and weaker.
'Looker, pick up. Pick up now!'
The contraption made one final attempt at connecting the call before finally terminating it. The dial tone, ringing in her ears, suspended thoughts as her brain tried to cope with the reality before her eyes.
Drip-drop came the sound of liquid again. A second later, the sound of padding paws followed. She swore she heard it then: something akin to the sound of nails scraping against the concrete surface. She turned, making a one-eighty, just in time to see the lingering traces of a shadow darting out of her line of vision. She took a step forward, for she is no coward as she had come to believe, and squinted her eyes to carefully examine the area where the shadow had been.
Thud.
Something moved from behind her. The sound of nails scraping against concrete returned and vanished almost as soon as it came.
She jumped to the side, careful to avoid being situated in a disadvantageous position as her right hand instinctively flew to the belt at her hips and drew forth a Pokéball.
Thud.
She threw the Pokéball and summoned her Emboar, who cautiously took his defensive stance when he sensed an eerie presence enveloping them in an invisible cloak of heightened apprehension.
Her Emboar growled as the familiar sound came again.
Was it a Pokémon? Or was it something –.
She hadn't noticed it then: her Emboar's thunderous roar as he rushed forth with a Flare Blitz attack, the awfully nauseous stench of rotting flesh, the skin cringing feeling as something hot and sticky lightly brushed itself against the side of her neck, and the scraping sound of nails against concrete.
She turned and eyes of nebulous red locked with hers.
Her eyes widened, but before she could utter a word, the darkness consumed her.
So that concludes chapter 1, I suppose. I'm certainly new to this fanfiction business although I've held an account for over 8 years now, but never actually made any attempt to fully utilise it (orz). Time constraints and procrastination being the most prevalent of all causes, but whatever. Here's to chapter 1. I hope anyone that has read this enjoyed it to some degree. Or not. Because it's still too short a piece to really make out any kind of absolute impression anyways, IMHO.