Rai back with another story! 8D And this time it'll actually be a chapter story ~ ! This is a Pokemon gijinka novel I've gotten a bit of inspiration for, and I decided to post it here in hopes of getting feedback as I go.
It is rated for mature themes that will be littered throughout the story, so just be aware of that as you read. Even though it is Pokemon-based, the subject matter can get pretty dark.
On that note, I hope you enjoy it. |D
Please R&R if you're feeling generous!
xxx
Things were entirely different from how they had been. A little over two years ago, Hisshin was a world of peace, where corruption and cruelty seemed ages away. Things had happened so quickly that it was hard to believe people who were living now had been alive to see flowers bloom under benevolent skies, and had known days when they weren't afraid to walk out of their doors for fear of being found by the SeekCop Pokemon, creatures pushed to such limits by the bad humans that they no longer knew reason.
Now, everything had changed. It had begun slowly, a revolution promised by Rathar Coles, where the humans would be able to claim their rightful place above the ones who didn't belong. It was bigotry of the worst kind – the intolerable kind. The kind where minds were so filled with hatred and a refusal to even try to understand, the kind where hearts were so poisoned by prejudice and stereotype that any hint of harmony seemed unrecognizable. No one was sure where it had come from, and why, especially in a world where things seemed to be going so well.
Were humans so easily swayed, they had to wonder. Did their opinions so easily change? Had hostilities been secretly brewing beneath the surface for so long that all it had taken was one man with some incendiary words to ignite the match that would become a wildfire? For all those involved, the emotional impact of being betrayed by the neighbors they had lived beside was almost worse than the agony of backbreaking labor.
And nowhere was this tension more noticeable than the human capital of Sarindad, a city that had once served as home for humans and gijinkas alike. But ostracism had turned to quarantine and then genocide, and now dust had settled over the paths where peace had once walked. Far below the bright, greying skies, dull voices rang out against the edges of proud brass buildings that stood in condescending shadows against the final rays of a setting sun. Within the shadows, a line of people staggered along, clothes torn, some faces bloodied, all with eyes downcast. Their wrists and ankles were chained together so that they stood not three feet from the people in front and behind them, and the very chains rattled together jarringly with every halting step. None of the captured, ranging from children who were no older than seven, to adults who were in their fifties and sixties, dared speak a single muffled word to each other when even a wrong glance could bring the cutting whip on their already abused backs.
Third from the front of the line, a young boy who looked to be about sixteen shuffled with the rest, head held obediently downward. His white undershirt was ripped and caked through with dust, and the rest of his attire was in a similar state. His clothing was so stained with dirt and blood that it barely gave him away as an Eevee anymore; in fact, if not for the pair of soft brown ears that extended from the disheveled mess of pale chocolate hair and the giveaway fluff of a tail, he might even pass as human. One of his eyes was glued shut with dried blood, and his dark skin was marred with the angry welts of injury wherever it showed through his clothes.
However, like many of his companions on the chain, pain was far from his mind now. He had come to terms with what he was headed for, and hope no longer dared to rest on his heart. He would be brought to the holding cells, and then shipped in a tightly packed train compartment for some stiflingly uncomfortable hours to the centers outside of Sarindad, from where no gijinkas had ever returned. Such was the hunted life of the gijinka while Rathor Coles was in command of the Spearhead, and he had heard enough rumors about the torment of the humanizing centers to know that once he was there, it didn't matter what he thought. He wasn't getting out again.
A sudden jerk on the chains around his wrists and ankles told him that somewhere behind him, a poor victim had stumbled and lost their footing. Things happened very quickly – at the same moment that the two Mightyena began snarling and frothing at the helpless Delcatty child, the two humans who had been flanking the line began yelling at the rest of the gijinka to keep moving. Whips cracked through the air like lightning bolts and Jules instinctively made himself as small as he could, flattening his ears against his head and trying not to tremble. He had to be strong, he kept telling himself, and yet he couldn't be. Not like this, when the screaming behind him told him that the Mightyena had begun digging their fangs into the Delcatty boy's arms to drag him up between the cries of the other gijinkas as the cutting whips found their marks.
There was a brief lull as a voice rang out behind him, and Jules dared turn to see, out of the corner of his eye, a Pidgeotto gijinka who had been in line in front of the Delcatty fan out her wings in front of the harassed boy and scream for their tormentors to stop. Jules only saw her heroic attempt for a moment before he was roughly shoved back into his place by one of the humans, but something about the fire in her eyes had startled him. She reminded him so much of his older sister in that moment that his heart skipped a beat.
But it all passed very soon, anyway. After a brief cry of "stop it! You're hurting him!" she was silenced very efficiently in the quiet that followed the sharp bang of a gun. Jules felt a cold dread slip into his bones as fear, gripping and icy, laced its fingers around his heart. How could they…? But there was no point wondering. Their progress was delayed for only several seconds as the humans quietly unlinked the Pidgeotto's now lifeless body from the line and cast her to the side, before connecting the chains again and giving the gruff order to continue walking.
In the stunned silence that followed, Jules swore he could hear his own heartbeat, heavy and paralyzed, with the Delcatty child's stifled sobs in the background. The child's wounds from the Mightyena would not be treated, and he would likely die from infection later.
Oz had told him to be brave before they had been separated, but Jules was beginning to lose faith in those words. What use is there in bravery, he questioned his brother silently, when the brave just end up dying in vain? Will Sira just end up like the Pidgeotto gijinka – the brave don't have a place here. Those eyes, that determination to protect and die even for a stranger who was being wronged, they were just a one-way ticket to death here.
Jules could only wish his brother was here to answer his questions for him.
