Pokemon Fan Fiction / Pokemon Fan Fiction ❯ Charon's Pursuit ❯ Descent ( Chapter 18 )

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Well, that was a painful interval. D: For those of you, who have been following the story: let me promise you that I won’t let this story go without an update for another three months.
If you wish to blame something, blame my college classes. :P

Chapter Eighteen

The cloudless sky above, robbed of its sun and moon, bore the color of spilled blood. Its crimson light basked down upon towers dotting a landscape of asphalt and steel – a human city. The teeming masses of men, women, and children, however, are nowhere to be found. No evidence existed that any life graced the city at all, not even a blade of grass. It was the kind of static, eternal existence that could only be born from true apocalypse.

Charon awoke in this dead city, his rodent body sprawled in a dark alley. The red sky, the first thing to invade his vision, quickened the pace of his heart. “Where am I?” He whispered. The growing anxiety was quick to seize his nerves.

Reluctantly he lifted his back off the ground, rising to stand upon his two thick legs. His long tail unfurled from his body, shaking off the invading grains of dirt before its jagged head hung behind him like a cobra. His senses absorbed more of the scenery around him. It only disturbed him more.

There’s something wrong with me, Charon thought, as he rubbed his eyes in a futile attempt to restore his sight, Everything’s red and blurry, even my fur, and I can’t hear anything! And this looks nothing like a forest at all.

Ahead of him the raichu spotted the exit out of the alley, leading out into the empty streets. Stepping forward a foot at a time, he cautiously walked down that alley until his soles touched the cool, flat sensation of cement. His steps in the absolute silence might as well have been the crack of gunfire. Fear of what may be hiding in the inhospitable landscape muffled his breathing, but he could do nothing to ease the ever-louder throbbing of his heart.

This place…I don’t know how, but it feels familiar. But why? Charon worried. The raichu bit down upon the flesh of one of his paws, leaking out his anxiety through the force of his teeth. However, he nearly tore that paw asunder when convulsions struck his chest. “Agh!” He cries out, grabbing himself where he suffered the jolts of pain, one paw upon the other in an attempt to stop his bleeding.

The agonizing seconds continue to pass on as something pounded fiercely against his ribcage from within. Forced back down to the ground upon his back, he pressed as hard as he could against his chest as he continued to writhe, grinding his teeth in the process. That proved futile, for his eyes widened in panic when a disturbing mound beneath his flesh suddenly shot upward, casting off his hands with little effort.

“AAAAAAAAH!” Charon shouted. Immediately he began pounding the mound, screaming all the while, trying to kill whatever was violating his body before it had a chance to burst out of him like a parasitic alien. This, too, also proved futile. He then tried grabbing the top and pushing downward like…well, like his life depended on it. But how surprising! This, too, proved futile as well. In fact he could feel the appendages of the creature inside pushing back against him!“Dammit, why won’t you die?!” Charon cursed. Desperate to keep his body intact, he rolled over upon his stomach. Shoving against the cement sidewalk as if doing clap pushups, Charon adopted the routine of dropping his chest harshly against the ground, pushing back up, and repeating the same process again and again at a frantic pace. He hoped the force of gravity would prove to be more than enough persuasion for the little demon squirming beneath his ribcage.

“Do you like it? *whap* Huh? Do you? *whap* Do you? *whap* I bet you want *whap* more! *whap* I sure as *whap* hell won’t stop! *whap* That’ll teach you, *whap* you little bastard!” Charon continued to curse, quite determined to squash the bugger.

Several minutes pass as the raichu continued his attempts to kill the creature inside him. After a few dozen or so whaps to his chest, he collapsed upon his stomach, having effectively pummeled himself to form a nice bruise at the point of impact. Gasping for breath, he rolled upon his side. Stroking his paw across his chest, he found no evidence of the demon resisting him.

Finally. I thought it would never stop, thought Charon. His breathing slows down, his nerves and tendons at last relaxing, but only slightly. I got to figure out how to get out of here before anything else ha-

His train of thought is violently interrupted as the creature inside him sprang back to life again. “GAAAAAAAAAAH!” Charon screamed, as the creature finally exploded out of his body. He shuts his eyes tight, expecting his tender chest to be ripped apart by a gaping hole. Blinding light burst forth from his body as the creature’s velocity lobbed it quite a distance away. By the time that light faded away, the raichu’s breath stuttered from the trauma of the moment. He impulsively grabbed for his chest, feebly attempting to cover the mortal wound that had to be there, expecting pints of blood to flow freely upon his paws. Charon’s sense of touch, however, discovered something horribly wrong.

“J-j-just how deep is this w-w-wound?!” Charon exclaimed. His eyes flashed open as he bent his neck upwards in order to see for himself the nature of the hole. Yanking his paws out of the way, he quickly realized that not only was there no bleeding, but he could also see the ground through himself in a hole nearly the size of his head.

An adrenaline rush shot Charon straight back up to his feet. He cursed and spazzed repeatedly, pacing about, alternating between shouting obscenities to the blood-red sky and shouting aforementioned obscenities through the humongous hole in his body, which disturbed him and sullied his language even more due to how it looked like the aftereffects of a cookie-cutter. In the midst of the mostly unintelligible outburst, however, a view through himself caught sight of the creature that had burst out of him. This restored some of his intelligence, but did little to quell his emotions, as he at once rushed to the creature responsible for his dismal state. Originally, he was going to verbally bite the creature’s head off before forcefully interrogating him on the freakish world the raichu awoke in and its apparent defiance of basic logic; but when Charon came close enough to acquire a definite gaze upon the creature, he was mentally jarred when he realized that it was a pikachu that had burst out of his body. This halted his stomping upon the warpath as the raichu’s anger succumbed to confusion and anxiety. He continued to close the gap between him and the smaller rodent with caution, more so when he noticed the limpness of the pikachu’s body. When at last he stood before the pikachu, looking down upon him, the raichu’s paw was clenched in his teeth once more.

This is getting more disturbing by the second, thought Charon, I don’t have clue who this guy is, or why he possibly could’ve burst out of me. I don’t even know if this guy’s still alive. Hell, I still don’t know why I’m even here! Those ghosts…they’re all I can remember. They swarmed around me, and then I blacked out...

His teeth broke through the skin. Am I…dead? Oh shit, my paw! Charon pried his mouth open, yanking the paw out of his mouth. The crimson light that shined on every surface of that world concealed the light bleeding of that punctured skin, but the pain cleared any doubts of the injury he inflicted upon himself.

“I can’t do that anymore,” Charon told himself, as he placed that paw upon the side of his body, “I have to get to the bottom of things if I want to get out of here, not gnaw myself to death.” He fixed his sights upon the pikachu before him. With his good paw, he grabbed hold of the rodent’s shoulder and gently shook him. “Hey. Hey! I need you to wake up,” He spoke firmly, “Wake up!”

Soon, the pikachu began to stir. Charon was quick to pull his paw away from him, unsure how a fellow male may respond to his touch, despite the necessity. The yellow rodent let out a yawn, stretching his back in an arch. Much like the raichu beforehand, however, he was soon caught in the iron grasp of fear. It took little time for him to start talking, his voice quite high-pitched and sweet, compared to the grating, hoarse friction of the raichu’s own vocals.

“W-w-where am I?” the yellow rodent stammered, “What am I doing here? This isn’t home!”

At this point, the smaller rodent had not noticed the raichu next to him. Had Charon remembered the innate intimidation of his stature, all the more augmented by a giant hole in his chest, he probably would’ve backed away and followed the pikachu in the shadows. Alas, poor Charon, having not interacted with any one of his fellow mice in the longest time, proved a bit too eager to make his presence known. He promptly questioned the yellow rodent on his wellbeing. The pikachu merely had to turn to face the towering, orange mouse before at once freezing on the spot.

“Oh, sorry,” Charon stumbled, as he hastened to cover the hole in his chest with his arms, “You’re the one who did this to me, though, so you shouldn’t be surprised.”

A moment of silence passed between them, before the pikachu finally exclaimed, “You have a huge hole in your chest!”
At this the raichu groaned. “Gee, you finally noticed?”

The pikachu stood up upon his hindlegs, thrusting a pointing finger at the hole. “I could never do something like THAT!”

“Well, you did anyway,” Charon replied, trying harder to cover up the gap in his body, “And for some reason it didn’t kill me. You gave me a hell of a time bursting out of me, though.”

Charon soon noticed that the frightened pikachu was starting to backpedal. “Wait a minute, where do you think you’re going?” the raichu questioned, starting to walk forward to the pikachu, “I’m in as much trouble as you are, don’t you see?”

“I’m sorry, ok?!” The pikachu suddenly shouted, overwhelmed by panic, “Just don’t hurt me!”

“What makes you think I’m going to hurt you?” Charon rebutted in agitation, continuing to move forward, “Right now I need help, and you’re the only one around who can give it!”

“Get away from me!” cried the pikachu. Quickly turning around to drop to all fours, the rodent at once scurried down the road of the abandoned city. Aimless in his flight, all the yellow rodent cared about now was escaping from Charon, to whom the pikachu had caused great harm without knowing it, thus expecting the raichu to unleash his wrath.

Charon growled in frustration, cursing his own idiocy. At once he began to rush after the yellow mouse. Having a much larger body, he possessed a greater stride, thus he could match the pikachu’s speed with ease. The pikachu proved unpredictable, however, diving into various alleys in an effort to throw the raichu off-course, and the blurry nature of the air made it difficult to pinpoint his body. The sound of the pikachu’s scurrying feet, however, more than made up for the visual impairments, proving quite easy to track in the silence of the abandoned, crimson city.

“Stop running, dammit!” Charon called out to the pikachu, as he began to close in upon the yellow rodent’s position, “This won’t help either of us!”

Of course, this elicited no reply from the pikachu, too busy running for his life, not that Charon excepted a sudden change of opinion anytime soon. However, not even the adrenaline rush could push the pikachu’s endurance beyond Charon’s limit. The pikachu’s overworked heart seemed ready to burst out of its own ribcage, while his small, but dexterous legs were ready to collapse like the limbs of a fallen marionette. He only had to round one more corner on the road before his footing slipped, throwing the pikachu into a biological train wreck.

Charon stopped in place, gripped by the horror of seeing the pikachu’s body crash into the ground in such a sickening way. The ordeal of escaping from the raichu had left the pikachu battered and virtually paralyzed on the long, empty road. Left with no other options, the pikachu at once started to bawl towards the sky, begging for mercy from his pursuer.

“Please…I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why I’m here,” He cried, “I never tried to hurt anyone in my life!”

Charon, for the longest time, was anchored to the point where he had stopped, for the dilemma of the situation tore at his conscience. He sympathized for the pikachu so much that it was as though he knew that little yellow mouse all of his life. He wished he could walk up to the small rodent, apologize, help him to his feet or even carry him until he regained his strength. But this would be a pipe dream in light of the first impression that cursed him since the moment of his evolution. He could avoid the all-too-familiar pains if he walked away. But leaving one of his kind here isolated in that harrowing world seemed an even worse crime.

If I keep calm and not let his fear get the better of me…I might be able to do this. I just have to ignore that hole, Charon finally surmised, I need support as much as he does right now, or else we’re both doomed. Alright…here goes nothing.

The raichu began to slowly walk towards the weeping pikachu. Already he could see the tension coursing through the yellow rodent, all the more obvious in the sudden gasp of breath. Charon’s stride, thus, became sluggish, as though the few yards that separated them suddenly became miles. However, he was barely halfway to the pikachu when his ears suddenly picked up the sound of a rapidly falling object.

At once Charon looked up. Immediately after he wished he hadn’t, for from out of nowhere the hind legs of yet another pikachu drove its feet right into the brow of Charon’s skull. “Agh!” He cried, staggering backwards as the apparently hostile free faller sprung from his head towards the exhausted pikachu on the ground. Charon, had he not been reeling from the concussion wracking his brain, would probably be taken aback by the way the prone pikachu’s gaze quickly lit up. Instead, the raichu was understandably more than a tad pissed.

“What the hell was that for?!” Charon snapped, his vision all the more dazed as he struggled to retain consciousness.

“I’m not letting you hurt him!” proclaimed the newly arrived pikachu. It stood in-between Charon and the other pikachu, standing straight and all with cheeks visibly sparking.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt him in the first place!” Charon rebutted. As the concussion passed, his vision soon started to regain some clarity. “It’s just a huge misunderstand-!”The raichu cut his words short, as the new pikachu that stood before him suddenly became all too familiar. The voice, the posture, the scent, all of it set his heart racing. They highlighted the traits of femininity he could recall as if she were by his side only yesterday. Yet, this female, the only such female he intimately knew, was supposed to be long dead. Was it some trick, a hallucination from the crimson atmosphere? No. It had to be her. It had to be. He had to confirm it, no matter how foolish the notion.

“Azelia…is it you, Azelia? What are you doing here? Don’t you remember me?” Charon asked meekly.

The inquiry nearly made the female recoil. “How…how do you know my name?” She stammered in return.

“It’s me, Azelia! Charon! We were close ever since we were pichu!” The raichu exclaimed, unable to restrain his excitement for their reunion. The feeling, however, will be short-lived, as Charon will soon discover.

“N-no! You can’t be Charon!” Azelia rebutted anxiously. Pointing behind her while keeping her eyes glued to the raichu, she proclaimed, “Charon’s right behind me!”

The male pikachu, at this point, had summoned the energy to finally rise to his feet. He approached Azelia, taking position by her side. The way his face was beaming as he looked to the female almost made Charon’s heart sink.

“No, Azelia! I’m Charon!” The raichu insisted. Pointing accusingly at the male pikachu, he exclaimed, “That guy burst out from my damn body! I have no clue who he is, but he’s definitely not me!”

“But that is my name,” The male pikachu replied weakly, shuffling to stand close behind her.

“Then you’re not the Charon she’s looking for!” Charon cried.

“No! He is the one I’m looking for!” Azelia yelled back, “He’s the Charon I knew!”

The statement threw the raichu into utter dismay. “But Azelia…we were together when we were shipped away from our owners! We sought comfort in each other until the moment they pulled us apart! Every moment in that terrible place I spent only thinking of you! I stayed strong and kept my willpower so that I could see you again someday, no matter what the humans tried to make me do!”

By the time Charon had finished talking, Azelia had already begun to burst into tears, her head dipped down as she covered her ears, trying to drown out the raichu’s voice. Each word he spoke fueled the fire of animosity in her mind, leading her deeper into despair. She didn’t want to hate the raichu, and neither Azelia or Charon wanted to face the truth; but in that moment of confrontation the pikachu couldn’t fool herself any longer.

She wailed to the raichu, “The Charon I knew would’ve never killed me!”