"This can't be happening…" Erin said to herself slowly. "This can NOT be happening…"
Like they had believed earlier, the group reached the town before the rain did and all were in high spirits: Erin and Abadon from the refreshing flight, but Chasm because it was finally over. Night was closing in and they had made their was quickly to the nearest Pokecenter. Their travels had slowly brought them on a path toward the ocean, and this town was almost directly on the wharf. The towns and cities along the coast line had not become as corrupted as those closer toward the mainland, and so the outskirts of the city they had entered was not near as bad as the ones Erin had entered previously. The skies were darkening and the rolling thunder threatened to let loose on them if they didn't run faster. The first drops were already making their was down from the clouds as they reached the doors and hurried inside.
They tried their hardest to stay unnoticed, but it wasn't usually normal for people Erin's age to have one or two pokemon, let alone allow them to wander around out of their pokeballs. And if their stares lasted a bit linger to watch the mighty Char, what of it? All in all, each of them had thought the day had gone rather well.
But of course that's when things usually tend to go wrong.
Erin had been at the counter talking to a nurse who hardly seemed old enough to be out of nursing school about food and boarding for the night. Abadon had been standing in the middle of the room holding onto his tail and looking about warily as if a table or chair would soon leap at him to purposely catch itself on fire. Chasm stood indifferently near Erin, although not too near, in case someone should mistake her indifference for affection.
That was when the door opened to allow an extremely wet trainer and her pokemon, a zangoose, to enter.
"Man, Zangoose, is it pouring outside or what?" the trainer asked rhetorically. Her Zangoose made no attempt to answer. The trainer shook her head full of shoulder-length blonde hair in hopes that it would make a difference in how wet she felt. It didn't. The trainer stood in line behind Erin, patiently waiting her turn. Her Zangoose looked around the room with little or no interest at all. Then his eyes fell on Chasm.
He wandered over to her. "This your trainer?" he asked gruffly, nodding his head in the direction of Erin.
"I don't have a trainer," Chasm said coolly. "She is simply an acquaintance, a traveling partner."
"Getting a little touchy there, aren't we Umbreon?"
"My name is Chasm, not Umbreon," she replied with spite.
"Oh," said the zangoose in mock-awe. "So you have a name like a human, aren't we special?"
"No. I have a name like a pokemon. If you allow yourself to be called by your species then you are obviously lab-bred and I have no further interest in conversing with you, that I don't."
If Erin or the zangoose's trainer heard the argument that was beginning at that very moment, they would have rushed to break it up, each knowing the extent to which their friend could take it. But, as it were, neither did and so the argument flared, almost as if it were Abadon's tail flame brushing against a table once more.
Neither pokemon was prone to shouting, so they hissed and spat their ridged insults back and fourth, but the words would inevitably lead to attacks… which they did.
The two were to the side of the long nurse's counter, where the hallway to the rooms began. The zangoose decided to go all out in the beginning, and tried to get in close for a fury swipes attack. Chasm was appalled by his audacity and retaliated with a dark meld. A Dark Meld is an attack that only dark type pokemon are able to perform. Something of a liquid darkness appears around them, literally pushing out all light from the area surrounding them. An opponent is not able to get too close for fear of becoming paralyzed quite painfully.
This is what Chasm performed, causing the floor and walls around her to be consumed in an unnatural darkness. The zangoose had never seen this attack before, so instead of halted in fear, he halted out of surprise. It did not matter though, for the end of his clawed foot still touched the dark matter and his whole leg became paralyzed. It also felt to him like his leg would soon explode extremely painfully from the inside out, and this did nothing to ease his disposition. Instantly he pulled back and began howling while hopping on his one good leg and holding the other in his paws.
At once everyone in the room glanced, startled, in his direction. But he didn't stop there; in his pain and fury the zangoose threw himself at Chasm, no longer caring about the paralyzing darkness on the floor. Chasm had not been expecting this and was thrown backwards as the zangoose swiped at her sleek coat. In a rage, Chasm hissed and sunk poisonous teeth into his arm, but his fur was too thick, so she braced herself and body-slammed the zangoose in the same way she had Abadon, when he had still been a charmeleon.
The result was catastrophic as the zangoose was hurled backwards into a table, splintering it. One of the larger splinters made its way crashing strait into a vid-screen. The zangoose didn't move from his spot on the floor and Chasm stood, also unmoving, ridged and seething in anger. It was then the nurse broke into tears. She had just been relating to Erin what a stressful week she had been forced to endure and how glad she would be when she could finally relax that night.
The nurse would have no more of it, she wailed through her tears. She now had to purchase a new table and video screen, as well as stare at a dark meld attack, which would take weeks to properly clean up. No, she would certainly have no more of it. Both Erin and the other trainer were banned from ever entering that Pokecenter again.
If looks could kill, Erin certainly would have died on the spot from the glare she received from the zangoose trainer as she returned the pokemon to its pokeball. "Bloody hell, thanks a lot!" was all she said before storming out into the rain once more.
But Erin and her group weren't far behind, courtesy of the Pokecenter nurse. She literally shoved them out the door, still in tears. It all seemed like great déjà vu for Erin and Abadon.
So this was why Erin was standing outside the Pokecenter at this precise moment, completely drenched and saying, "This can NOT be happening…" She turned to glare at Chasm.
"I will not apologize," the umbreon said, miserably wet and shivering, "for what I did to him. He insulted me first, and he attacked me first, that he did. He got what he deserved."
Erin looked back inside the window to the dry couch by the ruined table. "I'm cursed," she said, sighing deeply. "It's the only explanation." She sighed once more, turned, and began to walk up the street. "Come on, let's find a hotel…"
"So much for beating the rain…" Abadon mumbled from the back.
~*~*~*~
They did indeed find a hotel to sleep in, but it was in such bad shape that it might have been more beneficial to them to have just slept outside again, except for the fact that it was raining and Erin needed a hot shower. The hot water wouldn't last long in a place like this, she knew, but she would let it continuously beat down upon her head in a course stream as long as it did. It also gave her time to think by herself. What a disposition she was in, she thought. Erin had given away the last money she had to her name to guy at the desk, and she knew by his look that if that was all she had, she would not be welcome to stay another night. Pokemon were not allowed at the inn, so she had to sneak Abadon and Chasm in through the back window. Chasm was easier.
She wondered silently to herself what the students at the academy would think of her now. Once on her way to being a great martial artist and fighting pokemon trainer, she now stood broke in a hotel with walls that were barely paper-thin. On top of that, what would Professor Chronal think? She definitely could not tell him. If things began looking up for her, she might give him a call, but not until then.
The water flowing from the showerhead had begun to get colder, so Erin reached down and turned the knob off, sighing as she did so. What was she going to do? Well, sleep might help; it couldn't hurt, at least. Maybe some great epiphany would come to her in the night and she would know exactly what to do to escape from her problem.
Drying off and dressing for the night, she made her way into the bedroom. Abadon had stolen a pillow and was on the floor, already asleep. He had the right to do so, for it was he who had flown the other two the whole way there. Chasm was sitting calm as ever on the windowsill staring out into the darkened sky. Erin yawned and gave away just how tired she was without knowing it. Chasm looked her way.
"Do not worry yourself about what life brings. It will throw at you whatever it chooses, the only great task for you is in how you will respond to it."
Erin stopped mid-yawn. How did she know what she had been thinking? She sat on the bed, which was hard as a rock, yet creaked horribly none the less. "Chasm," Erin began quietly. "Can you read my mind?"
"No," the pokemon responded, staring once more to what was beyond the window. "But you humans are rather easy to read. No matter how hard you attempt to hide you feelings and thoughts, much of it leaks out anyway. You were deeply troubled when you emerged from the bathroom, that you were, and I simply guessed at the cause."
"Well, you're a darn good guesser. Good night Chasm." Erin turned off the light and crawled under the covers of the bed, oddly comforted. Chasm continued to watch the night.