Shadows and Ash--Ghost in the Machine Chapter 1: Movie Night, a pokémon fanfic

Hello, Pokémon-people, and happy Ash Wednesday! Which is entirely unrelated to Ash Ketchum, but I figured it was as good a time as any to publish this and thus begin my journey into the Pokémon branch of fanfiction publication….

This was written as some background/a prequel for a larger piece I'm working on, which I started because I looked up fanfics with Ash and Darkrai and wished that there were more stories featuring the duo that didn't pick up right after the movie. So, depending upon how well this one does, I may share the larger piece starting in October (I have other fanfics to finish first -_-).

So, without further ado, please enjoy this story featuring a young Ash, a grumpy Darkrai, invading Bellsprout, TV Tropes terms, nineties technology, and assorted references to Calvin and Hobbes, Digimon, The Iron Giant, and Bill Cosby's "Chicken Heart" story.

It was that time of the month again. No, not that time of the month.

Once a month, after the bills were paid and a little extra was saved up, Delia Ketchum would go out with a few of her friends to a little restaurant in Pallet Town (which in and of itself was an accomplishment, as everything in Pallet Town was small). She missed going out on the town in the bigger cities, but she had a small obligation now.

"Brush your teeth before you go to bed, make sure the front and back doors are locked, no junk food," she stressed, glancing at her son Ash as she did up her hair. "And absolutely no scary movies—the last time you watched one you booby-trapped the whole house and spread Jell-O on the floors."

Her seven-year-old son nodded—when she looked back on these early years, she would be horrified that she had ever left him alone by himself (and at times seriously questioned letting him go off on a journey with a disobedient Pikachu), but it was a simpler time: the War had recently ended, and everyone was settling back into civilian life and getting used to not diving for cover at a loud sneeze.

Later, she wouldn't dare leave him alone at home at night, and often stayed up with some of her Pokémon, fretting over the news of robbers and marauders roaming the regions still recovering, Kanto included. She got her sleep during the day when he was at school, after locking the house up—and every single day, she would curse the fact that he left his window not only unlocked, but open. Anything could get in like that!

There was a knocking at the door—her friends were here. "Now you're sure you'll be all right?" Delia asked, crouching down to look her son in the eye.

"No problem, Mom," Ash said, pushing up the League cap he had recently won so he could see. "I'll be fine. Honest."

"Good boy," she said, taking off his cap so she could kiss him on the forehead. "Lock up after I leave."

"Okay, okay…."

"Good. Love you."

"Love you too!"

She exited the house, said hello to her friends, and lingered on the doorstep until she heard the lock click. Good boy.

She'd feel better if one of her Pokémon were there to keep an eye on him, but they were at Oak's for their annual check-up—she only had two, and Faraday the Farfetch'd would cry if her old grizzled Raticate weren't there with him.

But he'd be fine for a few hours.

She'd just have to be on the lookout for booby-traps when she got home.

Ash dutifully locked the front door when his mom left—if he didn't do it right away, she'd stick her head back in and ask "Well, what are you waiting for?"

He went to the living room, watched her leave with her friends after one last glance back at the house, and then immediately went to the back door and opened it.

Something big and dark loomed just outside.

"Didja get it?" Ash asked, grinning brightly.

The pitch-black monster brought its claws forward, free hand tapping the VHS tape it was holding.

"I did," Darkrai said, floating in. "Are there proper refreshments this time?"

"Yeah," Ash said, already throwing a bag of popping-Cornn into the microwave. "Mom's gotten off her health kick."

Darkrai, meanwhile, had made a Combeeline to the bread drawer, using a single claw to slide the drawer open. "Ah, bless," he opined, eyeing the Twinkies within. "I was getting sick of rice cakes."

"At least you didn't have to eat them," Ash said, pulling the canned whipped cream and a couple of sodas out of the fridge and holding them up. "Are we ready?"

Darkrai transferred the Twinkies to the crook of his elbow and pulled the popped-Cornn out of the microwave. "Contact."

Within short order, they were camped out in front of the TV, watching the previews and steadily munching away on popped-Cornn.

"So what's the movie?" Ash asked, not having the chance to look at it before Darkrai popped it into the VCR. The sleeve was no help—it simply advertised the local movie rental place.

"'Zombie Psychic Brains,'" Darkrai quoted. "I hear it's an art film."

"Is it scary?"

"You're going to have some very entertaining nightmares tonight."

"If I get to sleep—Mom said I wasn't allowed to booby-trap the house anymore."

"To be fair, your earlier attempts weren't all that good—Jell-O on the kitchen floor?"

"Hey—I heard on the radio that that's a very good monster deterrent."

"And what if they're like me and just float over?"

Ash was quiet for a few beats. "I…hadn't thought of that…."

Darkrai chortled to himself. "And in three years they're going to give you a Pokémon and send you out into the wild. And they call these 'Pokémon Professors' smart."

Ash threw a few kernels at him.

About an hour later, they were firmly entrenched in the movie. It was finally getting good—the monster was about to show up.

Ash filled a Twinkie with whipped-cream as he watched the black-and-white picture—which was Darkrai's choice entirely. Darkrai loved old radio shows and old horror pictures—he said they had more fright potential than the "newer tripe."

After watching a newer hack-and-slash zombie flick with some of the other kids at school (they had pulled a bait-and-switch and snuck into the horror film after the Deerling-centric Bambi—which was the movie they had bought the tickets for—started playing), Ash had to admit he had a point—the older shows had more flair, and a slower buildup. It was the waiting that was the most horrifying part, Ash realized.

That, and the knowledge that the monster was intelligent, and simply and quietly considering you before attacking.

"And here is the central nervous system of an Alakazam," movie-dude said, in the typical stilted voice of the B-horrors. A brain and a web of nerves was shown, suspended in liquid—fake, obviously, but it'd make the coming fake-out all the better. "We postulate that by implanting some cells into human brains, we could gain the ability to read minds."

Ash filled up another Twinkie with a loud phhssst and then handed it to Darkrai; he then used his free hand to stuff the rest of his own Twinkie in his mouth as movie-dude went on with the description and then tried to move into gushy stuff—which knocked the brain-jar to the floor. "Drat," movie-dude said. "A perfectly good brain wasted. Well, we'll let the janitor handle it—what do you say to a nightcap, say, my place?"

"Bleech," Ash noised.

"I told you it was a horror movie," Darkrai said.

Movie-dude patted his pockets. "I seem to have left my keys in there—I'll be just a moment." He tried the light upon entering—it didn't work. "Hmm…."

"You're gonna get it," Ash sang as Darkrai cackled.

But just as the monsterized zombie brain attacked, the tape went screwy.

"Hey," Ash moaned as Darkrai unplugged the VCR to stop its manic whirring. He pulled out the tape to find that it had been unspooled.

"Well…maybe there's something else on," Ash said, grabbing the remote and flipping through channels as Darkrai wound the tape back into the cassette.

Five minutes later, Ash had to concede that every last channel was static.

"Stupid antenna," he muttered, glaring at the ceiling.

In short order, he and Darkrai were outside, Ash armed with a flashlight, since he couldn't see in the dark. He shone the light up to the corner of the house.

"Well, that's still there," Darkrai observed.

"Huh," Ash noised. "I thought the town Dodrio sat on it—it looks fine."

And then the kitchen lights turned on.

Ash snapped the flashlight down, wide-eyed.

Nothing more happened.

"Distraction and then gaslighting," Darkrai said after a moment. "I approve."