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The Book Of Helix
Chapter 1: Of Monsters and Men
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"... brought such woe to Helix as He watched mankind rape and pillage and plunder the good earth. And so, in the Sixth Instant, the Lord said, 'Let there be monsters. Monsters in the forests, monsters in the deep, monsters in the dark, in the fields, in the skies above; monsters to curb the vainglory of man. Let them know terror, let them know fear, let them know the frailty of life; and perchance, let them - now made the Lesser - find the courage to conquer.' ..."
Helix 00:00:00:06
An odd choice, Helix, my Lord. There was no hiding the contempt in that last word. I would have thought Your confidence would be better placed in one of Your own.
Lord Helix says nothing.
Red eyes glaring out from the dark beneath the Dome watches the inscrutable Lord as It surveyed the world between Them. Unconquerable Helix, the First to emerge from the void full-bodied and with such Grace.
Eternal presence and Infinite power. That was Lord Helix, the First. And I, the Second am neither of those things. But, the Dome reminds Itself, I am not without means.
Lord Helix is still fixated on the world below Him, yellow eyes roaming, considering. No signs of weakness. But no suspicions either. Good.
When Lord Helix makes no move to respond, the Dome continues. Very well. You have played Your gambit; now I shall play Mine.
Red eyes burn bright, and crimson light spills out in a blinding flash before focusing into three concentrated beams. Two shafts of red pierce the veil between worlds, and strike downward through the Kanto skies. The third beam, far larger and more concentrated than the others flares bright in the void, and streaks forward with a radiant power and cruel swiftness.
Directly at Lord Helix.
The three beams strike true, and in the chaos, several things happen simultaneously.
High above the clouds, in a small and sacred grove nestled between the peaks of Mt. Moon, a huddle of clefairy dance around a small pool of water as still as a mirror, reflecting the full moon.
The small creatures twirl about, hopping from rock to rock, pudgy pink arms waving around them. Their eyes are closed, but the group chants rhythmically in their own pokélanguage, as if in a trance.
A red beam of light slams down from the heavens into the pool, spraying water and shards of rock everywhere. Several clefairy are knocked off their feet, and into the surrounding bushes. The rest all run and hide.
Pairs of beady eyes peer out cautiously from the bushes, waiting for the dust to settle. Slowly, the dust cloud thins and the clefairy collectively gasp.
Where their reflecting pool once stood, now there was a crater. All the water was gone, and steam rose from the hole. Jagged rocks bordered the basin, and none of the clefairy move.
Then, one, larger than the others, comes out of its hiding place in the bushes. "Cle… fable?" As if snapped out of a reverie, the other clefairies' eyes follow it.
It walks slowly to the edge of the basin, looks into it, then hops down. Several other clefairy run forward tentatively, hoping to catch a better view.
Before they can reach the edge, however, the clefable had already emerged back out of the crater. It clutched what looked like an oval rock, brown, smooth and domed, with two small concavities on opposite sides. Two small dots mark the edge near the top.
The other clefairy move closer to get a better look, some even reaching out to touch it.
The clefable jerks the rock away, baring its teeth and hisses. It's eyes flash red.
The clefairy recoil and stare wide-eyed at an awful transformation: inky tendrils emerge from the clefable's shadow, latching onto it's feet. Frost spreads outward. The shadow slowly creeps and worms its way up the clefable's body like miasma, gradually gaining a deep purple hue. The clefable's grin grows wider, unnaturally so for one of its species, and its teeth sharpen and curve to a wicked point. Its beady eyes become slanted, and flash a crimson red. As the purple miasma completely covers the previous pink flesh, purple spikes jut out from the creatures back, and the clefable's round and fluffy tail is no more.
The thing shrieks, a guttural sound, low in pitch but blood-churning in intensity. The apparition pounces on a nearby clefairy and sinks its long fangs deep into its side. Silver blood sprays everywhere, and the gengar rends a chunk of flesh from the dead clefairy, chewing sadistically, its smile never fading from its face. Once it swallows, it tosses the rest of the creature into the air, levitates into position and snatches the carcass up in its gaping maw.
The rest of the clefairy scatter, tripping over each other in a desperate attempt to escape the demonic creature that had so ruthlessly devoured one of their own. They flee deep into the cracks and crevices in the surrounding rock, hiding in the mountainous caverns below.
The gengar savours the last bits of its meal, licking the silvery blood from around its lips and off the ground with a red, slobbering tongue. The gengar soon follows after the clefairy, clutching the brown, domed rock closely, that sinister smile never leaving its face.
On the promontory north of Cerulean city overlooking the eastern sea, a shaft of light strikes a small cabin, illuminating the cape in an eery red.
Then, in one instance, the crimson glow filters into the cabin through the windows, and compacts into a crackling electricity that invades a mess of electronics attached to a monitor set on a desk.
Seated in front of the monitor, Bill jerks awake and the furry brown mass sitting in his lap does the same.
"Wha' wuzzat?" he mutters, rubbing his eyes and looking around. All was quiet.
"Vee?" issues a small anxious cry from his lap.
Bill looks down. An eevee fidgets and shifts about, licking its fluffy mane. "Oh, it's nothing little guy, sorry to have woken you. Don't know why I'm up myself."
The monitor blinks on. Letters flash across the screen.
Do you wish to deposit your pokémon?
Bill looks up, and stares wide-eyed at the message. "Huh? What's this? Wait… it's… it's working?!"
Eevee hops down to the floor, mewling a mild complaint as Bill explodes into motion, running to retrieve a pokéball from his trainer belt. "Alright eevee, back in your ball, we're gonna give this another try!"
At the press of a button, eevee is dissolved into pure energy, and is stored back in his spherical container.
Bill places the pokéball containing eevee underneath what looks like a three-pronged claw, and ambles back to the monitor. He types in a command. Deposit pokémon.
The three points of the claw crackle with electricity that shoots down and strikes the pokéball below. The pokéball starts glowing white.
Bill alternates glances at the increasingly bright pokéball and at a jumble of charts and bars on the monitor. "Come on… energy levels are stable… state transformation almost complete… commencing transport..."
A blink of an eye, and the crackling light and pokéball were gone. On his monitor, a small circular icon, top half-red, bottom half-white blinks into being.
"YES!" screams bill, pumping one fist into the air and jumping out of his chair in celebration, before quickly settling back into his seat. "Ok good, so deposits work fine. Let's see if I can withdraw."
Bill moves a cursor over the small pokéball icon, selects it and types in another command. Another burst of light from the terminal, and eevee's pokéball rematerializes underneath the three-pronged claw as if it had never left.
Thumbing a button on the pokéball releases eevee, red pokénergy solidifying into the fluffy creature once more. Bill scoops it up into his arms, and rejoices. "YES! Yes yes yes yes yes! Hahah, it works eevee, it works! Everything is going to be ok now! No more second rate pokéchow for you, we're gonna be having tauros steaks from now on! Right eevee? Eevee?"
Eevee wasn't looking at Bill though. His gaze was on the monitor.
Bill's brow furrows in confusion. "What's wrong? Did I miss something?" He walks over to the desk with eevee still in his arms.
Looking over the open windows, Bill looks for any sign of error. "Everything seems to be in order. Power levels are good, no left over data, proper records of your physiological state before and after." He casts a quick glance at eevee, who is looking at him expectantly now, and turns back to the monitor.
Red piercing eyes appear on the monitor and stare into his, paralyzing Bill in place. He wants to scream, wants to turn and drop eevee and tell him to run, to move, to be anywhere but here in this moment. Staring into those round, crimson eyes, Bill learns for the first time in his life, a genuine and terrible fear.
Now, our game begins in earnest, Helix.
The crimson light of the third beam dissipates into the endless reaches of the void, scattered after having struck Lord Helix full on.
What… what have you done? Lord Helix hung suspended in the void. The normally stoic deity's immense frame was wracked with tremors.
What you didn't have the guts to do all those eons ago.
From the point where the red beam had impacted, a fissure tore across the surface of the spiral shell. As the tremoring grew in intensity, that one crack spread along the whole of the Lord's image, until Its form resembled an unshattered, though fragmented pane of broken glass. Shimmering, brown fragments fell from the massive spiral, and His many thousand blue limbs thrashed in conflicting motions. Some had become detached as well.
We had an agreement, Dome! Or have You forgotten? That Our last open battle almost destroyed all that We have created! For the sake of Our creations, we agreed to keep Our powers in check!
The Dome just watched, unmoving. You agreed, Helix. I said nothing.
WHY? WHY WOULD YOU FORCE OPEN CONFLICT UPON US ALL?! boomed the now faltering Lord Helix.
Because I am not You. I owe these mortals nothing. I will not spend eternity tethered to the void, or have You forgotten? I am not fully formed, oh blessed First; I do not share Your freedom. And I will not suffer My chains and this prison for the benefit of lesser fools!
A pause, as both digest the meaning behind this exchange. Furious yellow eyes glared at hollow red ones.
After a moment, Lord Helix seems gathers himself together. You will not succeed, Dome. This is no longer just Our world. I will stop You.
We shall see. Try as I might, I cannot destroy You. But the damage is done, and just as You are shattered, Your precious chosen one will be as well. There is nothing more you can do for him.
You give Our creations too little credit, Second. They will stop this. They've succeeded before.
Only by Your mercy. Let them try again. Let them try Me.
A maniacal laughter echoed through the void, for the Adversary, the Second, the Dome had achieved a devastating victory. But so it was, that during his boastfulness, He failed to notice one severed blue tentacle inch its way toward creation, slip beyond the veil, and fall down to Mt. Moon where it coils into a spiral and hardens into stone.
The infant Red wakes screaming. Delia startles upright in her own bed, and races into his room.
A quick glance into the room at Red, and Delia can tell that something is wrong.
Red is thrashing in his crib, tiny limbs flailing about. His legs smacked and kicked at the mattress with an unexpected force, while his stubby arms flailed, clamping tight over his ears and kneading at his eyes.
"Oh, not again!" says Delia, picking up her fighting child and holding him close. I thought things were getting better.
Over the past week since bringing him home from the hospital for the third time, Red's condition - still an unknown mystery to the medical professionals - had been gradually improving. The infant seemed to have learned to ignore, or at least tolerate, whatever it was that had him so distressed. He'd been able to start feeding, and sleep regularly, and though he still made a fuss sometimes, there was now an observable reason.
So, what had changed? Why is he relapsing?
Delia swaddled Red in a tight blanket, tiny limbs still fighting inside the bundle, and strapped him to her front in a sling. Alfred, Delia's mistermime quickly drapes a long jacket over her shoulders as she hurries about. Grabbing her keys, she leaves the house, stopping only to lock the front door. By her small wooden gate, she fumbles in the dark for a moment, unlocking her bicycle, which she quickly mounts and sets off for the small hospital.
Red's wailing echoes through the night, setting murkrow to flight from the road sides with indignant caws. Startled growlithes start barking and howling in nearby homes as she passes.
Gradually, the red roof of the giant Pallet town pokécenter rises into view, adorned at the entrance with the signature red and white pokéball. The lights are on, and even this late at night, Delia can see a busy hustling within.
But Delia rushes past the pokécenter entrance, headed for a smaller, adjoining building. The hospital for humans. White, and topped with a red cross at the top, she abandons her bike near the entrance and rushes into the emergency wing.
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"I want the full set of diagnostic tests performed. Rule out nothing. Scan his organs, his limbs, his bones. I want fMRIs of brain activity, stool and urine samples, a blood test. Anything and everything you can think of. Let's shut this baby up."
But eighteen hours later and after another battery of tests, the head of pediatrics and his defeated team of doctors could not find anything. Red is discharged from the hospital, the only difference being that his initial wailing had died down to a steady whimper, and Delia take him home like all the other times before.
"Dr. Uchi, I think you should take a look at this."
The head of pediatrics's concerns about the wailing baby case are momentarily put aside, as one of his fellows approaches clutching a few sheets of transparent, black and white images.
"I thought you'd never ask, Dr. Hadley, though I didn't think you'd want to ruin our employer-employee relationship. Not very professional," says Dr. Uchi, making a motion to unbutton his shirt.
Dr. Hadley, tall and brunette, resembled more a model than a doctor. She rolls her eyes, ignoring the dig, and pressing on.
"I noticed something unusual in the infant's brain scans." She spreads out the black and white images across Dr. Uchi's desk. Several representations of an infant brain, viewed from multiple angles are time stamped. Small smatterings of colour are present in isolated brain regions. Pointing at these, Dr Hadley continues, "Look here. There's activity in the superior lateral temporal lobes. Auditory cortex."
"Congratulations, Dr. Hadley, you've finally figured it out; the baby can, in fact, hear which means it must just be a case of extreme narcissism - it likes the sound of loud incessant wailing." If it were any other person, the sarcasm would've punctured a kidney.
"That's the thing," Dr. Hadley continued, "the child was sedated for the MRI, which means it wasn't crying. And no one else was in the room during the test. The kid's hearing things."
She pulls up another of set of images. "Now look at these. These are the MRIs from the tests we did a week ago. There was activity there even then. But if you compare that to the tests we did today-"
"The activity's increased. Dramatically." Dr. Uchi finished. His playful demeanor was replaced with a straight and focused attention on the images before him.
"That could explain the kid's relapse."
A long moment passed as Dr. Hadley waited for Uchi's opinion. Slowly though, Uchi slumped back into his seat, looking defeated.
"It's a good catch, Hadley. But it still doesn't make sense. Auditory hallucinations indicate psychosis - a common symptom of schizophrenia. But the kid lacks all other indications: no atrophy around the lateral ventricles or any other structural deformities of the brain, normal cognitive response rates and reflexes, not to mention he's twenty years too early to be developing any signs of psychosis. It just doesn't fit, and more importantly, if all that's happening is him hearing voices, we can't do anything to treat it. Whatever it is, the kid's out of luck."
Dr. Hadley was put out, but she knew her boss was right. There was nothing to be done.
"Go home, Hadley. We all need some rest after today," says Dr. Uchi, in an uncharacteristic gesture of good will.
She nods and turns to leave.
"Unless you want me to come 'rest' with you."
She scowls at Uchi half-heartedly one last time and is out the door. Some sleep would be well-deserved. The child - what was his name? Red? - he'd kept the entire team up through the night and late into the next day. Yes, some sleep would be good.
Still, she thought, the case was bizarre. Other than the obvious distress, there was nothing truly wrong with the child. What could be causing the brain activity, and why had it increased in the past week?
Dr. Hadley crawled into bed, not even bothering with her clothes, and pulled the covers tight over her. Brain region nomenclature and MRI procedures floated lazily around in her mind's eye, as she slowly drifted off. But before sleep could overtake her completely, she had one last thought.
What could he be hearing?
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Fifty-thousand voices were screaming inside his mind.
He had been aware of Them for more than a week now; loud and booming. Gradually though, he began to tune Them out, ignoring Them until They settled into the back of his mind as a dull but constant buzzing; manageable. He even figured out that following Their orders could dull the noise.
But something had changed. Before the voices had spoke as One. Now they were many, myriad, scattered. Diverse. Each one screamed it's own command, and there was no way to follow them all.
'…lefleftlefttrightupleftdowngoforwardbackwardwehavetobeatmistymovestopfightrun...'
No way to dull the noise. So he screamed and he cried and he wailed, hoping that eventually, he'll be able to manage the voices, dull their edge, and curb that unending noise.
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Pokédex Entries:
#36 Clefable: The fairy pokémon. Fairy-type. A recently reclassified species, clefable and its pre-evolution clefairy are rare and timid creatures found only near meteorite impact sites. Its powers seem to coincide with the wax and wane of the lunar cycle, which is logical as direct contact with a moonstone will induce its evolution. Its silver blood has many medicinal qualities, but its use and collection is heavily regulated. The Kanto League has designated them a protected species to prevent over-hunting and potential abuse. The clefable's cute demeanor and tender kindness make it a popular choice with children, but despite its relatively small size, it can reproduce powerful and spontaneous attacks with its fairy powers, marked by a waving of its forefingers.
#94 Gengar: The shadow pokémon. Ghost/Poison-type. A powerful and malicious carnivore that delights in trickery and pain. Unlike other ghost-types and its pre-evolutions, gengar will readily and unhesitatingly attack humans more so than it does any other pokemon. It hides in the shadows of its victims before attacking violently with its sharp fangs and its manipulation of dark energies. No one knows the true source of its origins, though legends claim it can only be born from an act of pure evil, associated with the corruption of those with purest and noblest intentions. The only registered specimen in the Kanto Region is one commanded by Agatha, of the Elite Four, though how she came upon it remains unknown.
#133 Eevee: The evolution pokémon. Normal-type. A small, rare mammal with both feline and canine-like qualities. What makes this particular species so interesting is its highly variable genetic code. The volatile sequence will adapt and change to best fit its environmental surroundings. Since its first discovery, eight different evolutions have been discovered, and there will very likely be many more. Though a highly social and loyal pokémon, it is not particularly remarkable in battle until after it has achieved one of its many evolutions.
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Dramatis Personae:
Lord Helix aka The First, Great Spiral in the Sky - A deity, supreme being of ancient and cosmic power. In the First Instant, the Lord willed Himself into existence, full-bodied and whole; separate from the void. A gargantuan spiral shell topped with spikes from which emerges a swarm of thrashing blue tentacles and two eyes with narrow slits for pupils. In the Third Instant, Helix created the universe with the assistance of the Dome and in the Sixth Instant, populated it with monsters known today as pokémon. Has been in contention since with the Dome over the release of mankind into the world.
The Dome aka The Second, The Adversary, The Other - In the Second Instant, the Dome came into being after Lord Helix. However, it was not a complete success: unable to maintain full form, the Dome bound Itself to the very fabric of the void in order to remain tethered to existence. As such, part of the void exists underneath Its humongous brown dome of a shell, from which the red eyes and yellow mandibles emerge. The Dome created mankind in the Fourth Instant, and released them into the world in the Fifth, which resulted in Helix's creation of the first monsters. Though His reasons for doing so are unknown, in the era following the first Instances, the Dome, envious of Lord Helix's power and freedom, seeks retribution.
Red - an infant child born to Delia Ketchum. Touched by the will of Lord Helix while still in the womb, he is blessed (or cursed?) with the burden of carrying out Lord Helix's will on earth.
Delia Ketchum aka Red's mother - a soft-spoken, young single mother. She is a kind-hearted woman who takes every care to raise her son. She is constantly worried and anxious over Red's mysterious condition.
Alfred - Delia's mistermime.
Bill - a brilliant young pokétechnologist, who's main goal is to create a mass pokémon storage device.
Dr. Uchi - Head of the department of pediatrics for human medicine at the Pallet town Pokémon center. A sarcastic, ill-tempered, immature, but brilliant doctor. Though referred to by friends and enemies alike as an unadulterated asshole, Dr. Uchi has been head of his department at the Pallet town pokécenter for many years. Human medicine has been pushed to the sidelines of science as pokémedicine is much more lucrative and unexplored a field. Nevertheless, all pokémon centers are required to maintain a support unit for injured trainers, though often operating with very little funding and government support, which may contribute to Dr. Uchi's gruff demeanor.
Dr. Hadley - a relatively new fellow of the department of pediatrics for human medicine at the Pallet town Pokémon center. A beautiful, tall brunette, she has a sharp and focused mind that lets her rebuff Dr. Uchi's zany antics.
AN: OK so I lied; the real story of Red's journey starts next chapter. This one just got too long so I figured it would be good to end it here. Let me know what you think!