Chapter One-Faded

Kojau was running as quickly as her paws would take her. Heavy thuds in the thick undergrowth behind her signified that her tormentor was still in hot pursuit. The terrified mightyena yelped in her fear and bounded ahead, feeling the branches of trees slap at her face. Her whole body felt battered, and she couldn't seem to think straight. The forest was unlike any she had ever seen. It was so dense, with the trees closing together and the greenery so untamed, that Kojau feared she would fall and become tangled hopelessly in them. Her head hurt. She didn't know why that was. She didn't know anything. She had no idea why the arcanine and his trainer were chasing her. He certainly wasn't bent on capturing her, for he had ordered his pokemon to kill.

She remembered up to a point…but then it stopped. It stopped before she had evolved, with only hazy fragments of her life afterwards. And even these weren't very clear. She had a vague recollection of something happening to her when she was a poochyena…but she could never quite grasp what it was.

There was nothing, she supposed. If she didn't remember anything, why bother to even live at all? Why live a life of confusion? Why even hope? She had heard that dark types weren't supposed to hope. They were supposed to be the most vicious and unpredictable pokemon of them all, probably largely because not much was known about them. That was their reputation, at least. They weren't hated, just…thought of as dangerous.

She didn't think of herself as vicious. Sure, she preyed upon things, she fought…or at least, she thought she remembered fighting, somewhere. She just couldn't seem to remember, though…not past a certain point, anyway. Or maybe there wasn't anything there to remember? Maybe her life hadn't actually happened? It was certainly an odd thought, that she somehow didn't live past her poochyena years. But how could that be?

Kojau yelped in fear as a torrent of blazing fire shot through the bushes toward her, singing the greenery only a little ways behind her. Its intense heat reflected off her face as the smell of burning greenery came faintly to her nose.

The wolf like pokemon pushed herself to run faster, to stretch her body to its limits. She didn't want to die, even if she wasn't quite sure what she was living for. She felt so lost and confused…

The sole reason the arcanine had not caught her yet was probably because he was larger than herself, and was having a harder time with the forest maze. She didn't have much energy…but, oddly enough, it didn't seem to be running out on her, either.

Her paws hurt. She had been running for ages, it seemed. Running from a scene she barely remembered, and, for all she knew, might not have involved her at all or even happened. There had been blood on her muzzle and claws, and she remembered carrying something. She was at a loss as to what it had been she was carrying, however. It seemed to have been attached to her somehow. Had it been ripped away?

Something to do with her head. Yes, that was it…perhaps that was why her head hurt like this in the first place. A deep pain, to be sure, as if…as if…

"Arr!" A snarl behind jerked Kojau out of her wonderings as another stream of flame, more accurate than the last one, burned the bushes close by her.

The wolf like pokemon knew it wasn't a good idea to look back. But perhaps it was okay. She was going to die anyway, right? So it was okay to look back. And she did.

She nearly yelped at the sight behind her. There was an arcanine there, yes, she could see him through the undergrowth he had burned in an attempt to get to her. There was something awfully wrong about him, though. He reeked of an unknown odor, somewhat like burning plastic, and his eyes had an odd, spaced look to them. It took her a few moments to realize that he had no pupils.

Had he been a normal arcanine, Kojau may have given up. But the horrible, unnatural aura radiating off him repelled her. There was something wrong about him. She didn't want to be any nearer him than she had to be, for she did not understand him. He was not right. If he killed her, did that mean she would be the same?

So it was that she turned and ran once more, paws somehow pushing her onward through the twisted greenery and trees ahead of her. They were thinning out somewhat, though Kojau couldn't decide if this was a good thing or not. The evening light illuminated everything in an eerie, gloomy way. Kojau didn't really like it, but then, weren't dark types supposed to be in their element at this time?

Sounds ahead of her echoed in her ears. Faint sounds, to be sure, but she welcomed them all the same, for where there was commotion there was a chance to loose her pursuer. And the smell. Smell of human. Smell of cooling asphalt. Smell of gas and metal and rubber.

Kojau pushed herself faster through the thinning forest. The trees were definitely thinning out now; the greenery wasn't so dense.

She knew this wasn't good for her. The thing behind her and its trainer would be able to get her easily now. And she was tired. But it was an odd tiredness, perpetual and never getting any stronger or weaker. In a way, she wished she wasn't so afraid. Then, perhaps, she could surrender, and this whole confused muddle that was her life would end.

But dark types were resilient creatures. Weren't they? She had heard somewhere that they were supposed to be hardy. She herself didn't feel too hardy at the time. She felt fragile, as if the wind might blow her away.

She could feel herself nearing the road. A hill loomed before her, completely cleared of trees. The grass shone pale in the oncoming night, and tiny bugs shot up around Kojau's tired paws as she made her greatest effort yet.

Another stream of fire blasted out at her, lighting up the whole hill like some surreal battlefield.

Kojau leaped to the side, flinging herself up and forward as the intense heat of the fire blast radiated off the burning grass of the hill. A few stray licks of flame caught her across the muzzle, and she yelped in pain as her eyes watered uncontrollably.

She didn't stop as she came to the top of the hill, though perhaps she should have. The freeway here was busy, as freeways tend to be. It seemed odd to Kojau that there was a freeway in the middle of a forest, but this particular one was meant for taking a quick detour to the next city. Both cities were very busy and large, so there was a constant flow of traffic between them. The city this freeway came from was just a few miles to the west, and the wild pokemon around it had been thinned out dramatically to reduce dangerous accidents. Only pidgey and other birds remained. Kojau didn't know this. She didn't even know how she knew what a freeway was. She just knew.

The cars roared by on double lanes of traffic as Kojau leaped forward. She didn't hesitate at all. The arcanine was closing on her from behind, and death on the road was preferable to death at the fangs of the not-creature behind her.

Everything seemed to be a jumble from there. Breaks squealed as the lone mightyena shot out onto the road. Light nearly blinded her as she ran. The arcanine's trainer shouted but didn't recall the beast as it followed Kojau single-mindedly out onto the freeway.

Kojau, however, didn't have time to worry about the arcanine anymore. She dodged the oncoming cars in the first lane of traffic, horns blaring and breaks squealing in her ears. Miraculously, she wasn't hit, but a thudding sound behind her and a strangled gasp let her know her pursuer hadn't been so lucky.

The mightyena jerked to a stop on the little grassy stretch between the two lanes as a great sound of metal crushing metal assailed her ears. Her eyes widened in horror as she risked a glance behind herself.

The freeway behind her was in mayhem. Several of the cars had collided at high speeds with eachother, and a few were even turned over on their backs like great, helpless beetles. The other cars rushing by were trying to avoid hitting them, but this only resulted in more collisions with one another.

And the arcanine was still there. He had risen to his paws, and one of his legs was bent at an odd angle. Bloody froth boiled up from the corners of his muzzle, but he made no sound of pain as he staggered forward once more, dead eyes glinting eerily in the shine of headlights.

Kojau practically threw herself out into the second lane of traffic. What did she have to lose? Falling to the fangs of the creature, in her mind, seemed a fate worse than death. She would do anything to escape it.

A horn blasted right in front of her, and she leaped upward in reflex, claws coming down and sinking into the metal of a van's hood. The man's face behind the window was as horrified as her own, and she felt a stirring of pity for him. Perhaps this was odd. She had heard dark types weren't known for showing remorse.

She leaped off of the van, a gray shadow as her paws took her across the second lane. Cars swerved all around her, and something hard banged into her shoulder and sent her sailing to the other side of the freeway.

She hit the turf and rolled, fangs biting painfully into her tongue. Her shoulder and side ached, but still she lay there, prone on the earth, eyes closed tightly. She could smell her own fear.

There was a great commotion going on on the freeway lane she had just exited. The sound of breaks and metal colliding with something soft and giving came to Kojau's ears, and she blinked her eyes open, stiffly getting to her paws.

The arcanine was a furry lump in the middle of the road. The side of his head had cracked open, and his front legs were slightly flattened. There was something about his head that Kojau couldn't place, and even in death he trembled and seemed to be trying to inch his way toward her. Then, in a blast of red light, he was gone, leaving only a smear of red on the scuffed asphalt.

Kojau stood there, blinking and trembling. The mayhem on the freeway had calmed down a bit, but the humans seemed to be all talking excitedly among themselves, rushing about to try to stop the oncoming cars in advance. The whole scene had a surreal feel to it.

I caused that…? Kojau felt herself backing away as one of the humans saw her and pointed. She felt oddly detached, as she wasn't quite there. I didn't want to…

And then she was running, away from that horrible scene, away from the confusion and horror that had engulfed her mind…

Nighttime. Kojau's shoulder ached as though…well, as though it had been slammed into by a car. She limped along up a deserted road she had run into after freeway incident. Her feet hurt from the constant running she had been doing.

How long had she been running, exactly? She really didn't have any way of finding out. She only knew she ran been on the run a long time. But what had she been running from? And why? Those questions plagued her mind. All she could remember was that she had been running and then the trainer had seen her and sent out that thing.

She must have been going a long time, though, from her condition. A rather fragile looking wolf to begin with, she now looked as though a breeze could blow her away. Her legs were like sticks, her ribs showing like hoops through her skin. Her eyes were large in her sunken face and unusually bright. Now that everything about her had shrunken, those eyes seemed a bit to large to fit her body. Her fur was matted and dirty, and various sticks and the like clung to her fur.

Come to think of it, she supposed she shouldn't really even be alive. If she had gone without food for as long as she thought she had, then by all rights she should be dead. But she wasn't.

She didn't feel too bad about this, either. Hunger didn't gnaw at her belly, and thirst hadn't bothered her for quite some time. Perhaps it had before her memories of her past clouded up. She wondered what had happened to cause that.

The trees on either side of her swayed in the slight wind, and Kojau shuddered. She didn't much care for nighttime, she decided, and she wondered if she even was a dark type. Mightyena were dark types, she knew that, and she was a mightyena, right? She was sure she was.

Dark types were supposed to feel at home in the night. She knew that from somewhere. She was supposed to be in her element. But she was afraid. She was afraid of the shadows stretching out from the forest that twisted around her frail body and threatened to entangle her and drag her off into the forest. She was afraid of the things that might be lurking in the forest, and of what they might do to her if they found her here, alone and unprotected. For she knew, in some vague sense, that she was not normal. And she was afraid of fear itself, which would drive her to madness and suicidal thoughts if she didn't focus on putting one paw in front of the other.

The night seemed to be reaching out for her. It wanted to claim her. Even the wind was trying to force her into the darker shadows of the forest on either side of the lonely, empty road she now trod upon.

The moonlight glinting off of the rocks intrigued her, and she focused upon it. She had seen that sort of silver glint before, right? She had seen it…somewhere. Or had she felt it? Yes, perhaps she had felt it. But how could you feel something you had seen? Perhaps it was like the way you could taste something in the air.

Kojau focused on the glint and continued on. She knew she should have collapsed by now, and had no idea why she hadn't yet. It defied the laws of pokemon in general. Apart from magnemites and the like, pokemon couldn't keep on like this without nourishment or food. And yet here she was, padding on grimly toward whatever the future had in store for her.

She didn't have any energy. She felt tired, yes, a deathly tiredness, but she could push this to the back of her mind almost unnaturally easy.

She thought she might have been chased by that arcanine she had seen earlier once before. She was quite sure she had been chased by something or other for a very long time. Perhaps several somethings…? At any rate, the freeway incident had been nothing new.

Fear itself was nothing new. She had feared many times before. She feared even now. She feared the unknown the most, because everything was the unknown. She decided her fear of the night tonight almost amounted to a phobia. But, still, it was a dull fear, something she didn't need to focus on. She didn't need to focus on anything, actually. She didn't even really focus on her memory loss, though she did wonder what her past had been like.

Thinking of the arcanine, Kojau decided she didn't really want to remember.

The only thing she could really feel was the ever present dull ache in her head. It had been there ever since she could remember now, and it never fluctuated in its constant pain. It was just…there. A part of her. But it was not natural.

Nothing was really natural, not to Kojau. The night around her seemed evil and deadly. The stars and moon above were unknown. Even the road seemed odd in that it had nothing traveling along it.

Perhaps it was her who was making everything unnatural around her, though, and not the other way around. Maybe it would be better if she was just gone.

As it was, though, she was here, but not in the sense that everything else was. While everything else lived and toiled and lusted and was joyful, she was simply here.

And she was faded…so faded…

Once upon a time, across the sea, there were two kingdoms that lived peacefully with one another. They were divided by the river Homar since ancient times, and its waters, flowing clear and true, signified continued peace between them.

So it was that things stayed that way, and brother and sister land coexisted peacefully with each other up until the present day.

But deception was brewing, and something dark had arrived upon the land. Even the people felt it, and kept their children indoors. The pokemon were acting oddly, and the amount of wild dark types seemed to suddenly be thinning out dramatically.

And, as certain unexplainable things started to happen, the kingdoms turned upon one another and engaged in fierce combat. The river Homar, for the first time, ran red with blood. Brother fought against brother and friend turned against friend… Soon, it was impossible to tell what exactly had really happened, and truth mingled with deceit…

A tall building stood in the middle of a huge city nearest to the sea, in the kingdom of Akhorra. It had a grand old look to it, and gargoyles crowned its top, looking even more sinister than ever in the evening. The building was obviously important.

At the very top of this building was a small room. Voices could be heard emanating from it, sounding low and conspiratory in the darkness.

"It failed, hmmm? Well, if at first you don't succeed, try try again…" The first voice was low and melodious, though it had a subtle feel of danger to it.

"And what of the…what of number 89?" The second voice was obviously nervous, and sounded frightened and small.

The first voice paused a moment before answering, and when it did, it was full of unconcealed malice. "Continue working on it…its purpose will soon be revealed…"

(So, what do you all think? This is my first attempt at a more detailed, involved story, so reviews are very much appreciated. I'd also like to thank Act, who was my beta for this. )