Required
Lot 10 Underground Editor/Head Writer
I like Pokemon. I like writing. I'm not great at it, but I'm getting better. Read. Review... repeat?
“Hello there!”
Red turned, shielding his eyes against the intrusive sun to see an old man walking up the gravel path. The visitor’s feet shuffled slowly, kicking up puffs of red dirt. His shadow stretched ahead of the setting sun, reaching Red well before the old man did.
The two of them, shadow and boy, waited silently for the old man to finish his slow trek towards them. Red had been sweeping off the brick path leading to his house so he settled the broom against his home and leaned up against the remains of a picket fence.
The old man stumbled under the thin shade of a dead elm tree, taking refuse under the trees leafless branches, which stretched towards the hazy, purple sky overhead. He smiled, and even though he was old and had an almost broken quality about him, his smile was so joyful that Red—who was naturally distrustful—relaxed a little.
“How are you?” The old man asked.
Red had been working all day under the harsh sun and hadn’t rationed his water as skillfully as he typically did, so he was thirsty, and suffering from cotton mouth. He had to lick his lips carefully before he spoke.
“Good,” he replied. “Yourself?”
“I’m doing better now that I have a little shade.” The old man turned over his shoulder to look back wearily towards the path he had been traveling on. “It’s a terribly hot journey between here and Viridian.”
The ease Red has felt towards the man earlier suddenly wore thin; Pallet Town didn’t get many visitors, even before the Cataclysm, and the harsh, burnt landscape since hadn’t exactly created a boom for tourism. He didn’t know what business anyone would have walking from Viridian to Pallet, especially a man so old and frail, but it couldn’t be good.
The old man settled down slowly on to the bare earth. He was wearing a traveler’s cloak that was caked in dust and a Panama hat casted shade over his face so that Red couldn’t quite see his features—aside from a tuft of white hair that hung out the back.
He took off his shoes and spilled out a pile of pebbles into the bleached yellow grass that was once their yard.
“Some unwanted hitch hikers, I’m afraid,” the old man said, smiling.
Red stared back at him, but didn’t reply. He wanted the man to go. He didn’t trust him; he felt like trouble.
If the old man noticed, he didn’t seem to care. “What’s your name?”
“Satoshi,” Red lied. He wasn’t sure where he had got the name from—he had read it, somewhere, though he didn’t have the slightest idea where.
“Satoshi. That’s a peculiar name. Do you know where it comes from?”
Red was about to reply in the negative when his screen door sprung open and his mother peaked her head out. “Red!” she cried, her greying brown hair falling over her face, “finish up and come in for supper.”
Red spun away from the old man, embarrassed to have been caught in a lie, and behind him he was sure he heard the old man kerfuffle under his breath. His mother, still hanging halfway out the frame, tucked her hair behind her ear, and upon noticing the old man looked surprised.
“Oh my—a visitor,” she said, stepping out on to the deck. The rotting wood creaked under her weight but held as she hurried up to where Red was standing. “Red, why didn’t you tell me we have a visitor.”
“We don’t. He’s just passing through,” Red said, trying to catch his mother’s eyes so she would understand that the old man was unwanted.
“Oh nonsense,” Delilah Pallet said. She held out a greeting hand towards the traveler. Red started to argue but she shot him a dark look and he knew better; he swallowed the thought of contempt, and instead glared at the old man, who was busy smiling at his mother.
His mother introduced herself, and the old man introduced himself as Mark Mason.
“Well I have supper prepared—it’s not much, but you’re welcome to take part.”
“Oh no. I couldn’t,” Mark said, shaking his head vehemently, as if the thought was absolutely reproachful.
Red wished it was settled at that, but he knew his mother better than that, and she confirmed his suspicion when she said, “No, I insist Mr. Mason. It is hot out, and you look awfully tired. Come in, rest your feet, and eat with us. I mean it. I won’t accept no for an answer.”
And so Delilah led Mark Mason into their house and Red begrudgingly followed. Inside he was finally able to escape the direct heat of the day, which made it all a little more tolerable. The air in their home was stale with warmth and thick with dust; the windows were boarded up in an attempt to keep the sun and wind at bay—a strategy that worked, but just barely—and the whole house was casted in thick sheets of dark shadows.
Later, when night settled completely on the town, they would use oil lamps, but presently it was too hot to ever imagine adding to the warmth.
“I’m sorry about the mess,” Red’s mother said as she led them into the kitchen, grabbing a dirty rag to wipe off the new dust on the table. Red hurried to help her set the table, and Mark watched from the entryway, looking warmly upon the scene.
Supper was vegetable soup, bread, and a strip of jerky that they split between the three of them. His mother was a wonderful cook, and even though the Cataclysm had left them bereft of ingredients, she still managed to make sure that her meals were not bland. The broth was rich without being too salty, the vegetables were filling and flavorful, and the bread was the perfect combination of warm and sweet. The promise of it all was enough to make Red settle into his chair a little more, even though he felt the need to watch Mark Mason carefully.
Delilah made small talk with Mark: he had lost his home in Viridian and was traveling until he found a spot that seemed like a good place to plant his new roots. Before the Cataclysm he had worked at a book press, but now he just tried to make money as a hired hand whenever his funds were low enough to require replenishing.
“Well I don’t think you’ll be spending very long in Pallet,” Delilah Pallet said with an empty smile—Red was certain he heard a quiver of sadness in her voice, and he knew she was thinking in that moment of his father. “Pallet has always been slow moving, even before the Cataclysm, but that was part of its charm. Now I am afraid that there is no reason to stay here.”
Mark raised his brow curiously. “Oh? You both stay and make the most of it. It hasn’t seemed to send you for the hills like Viridian did for me after the fall.”
“That is because it’s our home!” Red said defensively from his chair. It was the first contribution he had made to the conversation aside from a few head nods and vaguely polite smiles. “You wouldn’t get it. My mother is right. You should keep moving.”
His mother looked aghast. “Red Pallet,” she said, her eyes wide in shock. It appeared to Red like she wanted to say more, then thought better of it and turned to Mark. “I have to apologize for my son—he doesn’t mean to be rude, not really. He is just struggling with coming to terms about his father’s—“
“Mom!” Red cried. He sat up, his chair squeaking loudly as it scraped against the dusty floor. “Don’t talk about that. We don’t even know him. What is he doing here? How did he travel the route without an escort?”
“Red that’s enough,” said Delilah Pallet.
“No. If Team Rocket didn’t get him the Pokémon should have. I think he’s trouble mom. He needs to—”
“Red,” she said sharply, and she looked at him with a glare that dared him to say more. He held his tongue. He was brave, but not brave enough to challenge his mother when she got to this point.
He dropped his head in frustration, and was about to turn and sprint out of the kitchen and up to his room when Mark, who had been quiet during the length of their improv argument, said, “no, it’s quite alright. No child should feel the weight of losing a parent. It is none of my business really, but if I may step far past the line of appropriateness and ask how he… well how he was lost?”
Red was thrown off by this enough to fall silent. Why did Mark want to know about his father?
“My husband’s family founded the town, and as the eldest son he was the de facto leader of the town. It was more of a paper title than anything real; you know, welcome people when they moved here; settle disputes over fence heights; give a speech once in a while; that sort of thing, but everything changed after the Cataclysm. Everyone in the town was in real danger. The weather was terrible, and the Pokémon had gone—well…”
His mother always had a hard time talking about the Cataclysm. It was, of course, the event that took her husband’s life, but it was more than that; Delilah Pallet had been a Pokémon trainer in her day, and had counted many of the infamous creatures as friends: on the day of the Cataclysm, when the Pokémon turned against the people of the world, it hit Delilah harder than most.
She recovered quickly, as always. Nothing kept her down, not even the utter disappointment of life in their small Kanto town. “You know the events of the Cataclysm as well as anyone else, I am sure. Things got tough around here. My husband and a few other men from the town left for Viridian to try and get the Gym Leader there to come and help protect the town. News was slow and unreliable then. We hadn’t heard Viridian was worse off then us. If we had, I don’t know what he would have done. Head to Johto, probably, but they left for Viridian, and--they never made it, obviously. A wild Pokémon swarm found them... It was three years ago; last week.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” Mark said—and even though Red wanted to be mad at him, there was something genuine about the way he said it. Red relaxed a little, the anger inside of him flattening; he sat back down, feeling a little embarrassed for acting so childish… but still, he didn’t trust Mark, not completely, because his father had died traveling the route between Pallet and Viridian and Mark was just an old man and yet he had some how made the journey safely.
“Thank you,” said Delilah.
“Red was right,” Mark said, surprising Red. “I have over stayed my welcome. You have been far too kind and generous already. Life is hard everywhere now, and the necessity of survival has chastised the simple act of treating a tired old man kindly. I am thankful for what you have done, but I don’t want to take advantage of you. Don’t waste your resources on me.”
“Nonsense,” said his mother. “It will be dark soon, and the Pokémon tend to venture closer to the town. You’re safe here, for the night—or longer if you’d like.”
Red looked at the boarded up window. They had once looked out to a yard that had housed an apple tree with a tire swing and a small rose garden that his mother had cultivated through the years. Now all he could see we a crack where two boards met and allowed in the faintest sliver of the dull purple-reddish colors that shone in from the setting sun. Even he couldn’t kick an old man out to face wild Pokémon.
“I couldn’t,” said Mark.
“You will,” Delilah replied. She looked to Red. “Show him where he can stay, and wash up dear, then come and help clean up.”
Red nodded in agreement, and then showed Mark to their guest bedroom upstairs, and then to the bathroom that Red normally had to himself. Red was conflicted, torn between the gut feeling that Mark was hiding something, or carrying trouble with him and the moral compass that his mother and father had instilled within him which made it impossible for him to be okay with a man being mauled by a Raticate, or stung to death by a Beedrill.
It was this conflict that caused him to lay restlessly in his bed that night. And it was for this reason that he was still up, several hours later, during the quiet night when every sound traveled farther than normal that he heard Mark Mason sneak out of his home.
He should have let it go; Mark was gone, which, in the end, was what he had wanted all along. But the only thing that could over power the gut feeling of distrust that he felt for Mark was the burning curiosity that he felt raging from his heart and pulsing through his veins. It was a feeling universal amongst boys and girls his age, especially those born in a small town who never got a chance to see the world outside; it wasn’t even something he recognized on most days, the desperate need to be a part of something something more than the every day monotony of simply surviving. On most days he only thought of staying safe, and making sure he and his mom had the means to meet the next day; he worked hard, and he stayed away from anywhere that a Pokémon might wonder, because the creatures of magic and extraordinarily cruel powers would have killed him as indiscriminately as they had killed his father—and yet, on the rare night like tonight, he found himself laying in bed and dreaming of a life of adventure. A life outside of Pallet.
And so, when he heard Mark sneak out of the house Red rose, almost subconsciously, out of his bed, snuck quietly across the dusty floor boards, and followed him out into the dark night a few moments later.
He felt alive, and terrified.
This fic contains some graphic violence, light amounts of swearing, and implied violence that some readers may find troubling. Check with your doctor if you think it is right for you.
Chapter One:
The Old Man
The Old Man
“Hello there!”
Red turned, shielding his eyes against the intrusive sun to see an old man walking up the gravel path. The visitor’s feet shuffled slowly, kicking up puffs of red dirt. His shadow stretched ahead of the setting sun, reaching Red well before the old man did.
The two of them, shadow and boy, waited silently for the old man to finish his slow trek towards them. Red had been sweeping off the brick path leading to his house so he settled the broom against his home and leaned up against the remains of a picket fence.
The old man stumbled under the thin shade of a dead elm tree, taking refuse under the trees leafless branches, which stretched towards the hazy, purple sky overhead. He smiled, and even though he was old and had an almost broken quality about him, his smile was so joyful that Red—who was naturally distrustful—relaxed a little.
“How are you?” The old man asked.
Red had been working all day under the harsh sun and hadn’t rationed his water as skillfully as he typically did, so he was thirsty, and suffering from cotton mouth. He had to lick his lips carefully before he spoke.
“Good,” he replied. “Yourself?”
“I’m doing better now that I have a little shade.” The old man turned over his shoulder to look back wearily towards the path he had been traveling on. “It’s a terribly hot journey between here and Viridian.”
The ease Red has felt towards the man earlier suddenly wore thin; Pallet Town didn’t get many visitors, even before the Cataclysm, and the harsh, burnt landscape since hadn’t exactly created a boom for tourism. He didn’t know what business anyone would have walking from Viridian to Pallet, especially a man so old and frail, but it couldn’t be good.
The old man settled down slowly on to the bare earth. He was wearing a traveler’s cloak that was caked in dust and a Panama hat casted shade over his face so that Red couldn’t quite see his features—aside from a tuft of white hair that hung out the back.
He took off his shoes and spilled out a pile of pebbles into the bleached yellow grass that was once their yard.
“Some unwanted hitch hikers, I’m afraid,” the old man said, smiling.
Red stared back at him, but didn’t reply. He wanted the man to go. He didn’t trust him; he felt like trouble.
If the old man noticed, he didn’t seem to care. “What’s your name?”
“Satoshi,” Red lied. He wasn’t sure where he had got the name from—he had read it, somewhere, though he didn’t have the slightest idea where.
“Satoshi. That’s a peculiar name. Do you know where it comes from?”
Red was about to reply in the negative when his screen door sprung open and his mother peaked her head out. “Red!” she cried, her greying brown hair falling over her face, “finish up and come in for supper.”
Red spun away from the old man, embarrassed to have been caught in a lie, and behind him he was sure he heard the old man kerfuffle under his breath. His mother, still hanging halfway out the frame, tucked her hair behind her ear, and upon noticing the old man looked surprised.
“Oh my—a visitor,” she said, stepping out on to the deck. The rotting wood creaked under her weight but held as she hurried up to where Red was standing. “Red, why didn’t you tell me we have a visitor.”
“We don’t. He’s just passing through,” Red said, trying to catch his mother’s eyes so she would understand that the old man was unwanted.
“Oh nonsense,” Delilah Pallet said. She held out a greeting hand towards the traveler. Red started to argue but she shot him a dark look and he knew better; he swallowed the thought of contempt, and instead glared at the old man, who was busy smiling at his mother.
His mother introduced herself, and the old man introduced himself as Mark Mason.
“Well I have supper prepared—it’s not much, but you’re welcome to take part.”
“Oh no. I couldn’t,” Mark said, shaking his head vehemently, as if the thought was absolutely reproachful.
Red wished it was settled at that, but he knew his mother better than that, and she confirmed his suspicion when she said, “No, I insist Mr. Mason. It is hot out, and you look awfully tired. Come in, rest your feet, and eat with us. I mean it. I won’t accept no for an answer.”
And so Delilah led Mark Mason into their house and Red begrudgingly followed. Inside he was finally able to escape the direct heat of the day, which made it all a little more tolerable. The air in their home was stale with warmth and thick with dust; the windows were boarded up in an attempt to keep the sun and wind at bay—a strategy that worked, but just barely—and the whole house was casted in thick sheets of dark shadows.
Later, when night settled completely on the town, they would use oil lamps, but presently it was too hot to ever imagine adding to the warmth.
“I’m sorry about the mess,” Red’s mother said as she led them into the kitchen, grabbing a dirty rag to wipe off the new dust on the table. Red hurried to help her set the table, and Mark watched from the entryway, looking warmly upon the scene.
Supper was vegetable soup, bread, and a strip of jerky that they split between the three of them. His mother was a wonderful cook, and even though the Cataclysm had left them bereft of ingredients, she still managed to make sure that her meals were not bland. The broth was rich without being too salty, the vegetables were filling and flavorful, and the bread was the perfect combination of warm and sweet. The promise of it all was enough to make Red settle into his chair a little more, even though he felt the need to watch Mark Mason carefully.
Delilah made small talk with Mark: he had lost his home in Viridian and was traveling until he found a spot that seemed like a good place to plant his new roots. Before the Cataclysm he had worked at a book press, but now he just tried to make money as a hired hand whenever his funds were low enough to require replenishing.
“Well I don’t think you’ll be spending very long in Pallet,” Delilah Pallet said with an empty smile—Red was certain he heard a quiver of sadness in her voice, and he knew she was thinking in that moment of his father. “Pallet has always been slow moving, even before the Cataclysm, but that was part of its charm. Now I am afraid that there is no reason to stay here.”
Mark raised his brow curiously. “Oh? You both stay and make the most of it. It hasn’t seemed to send you for the hills like Viridian did for me after the fall.”
“That is because it’s our home!” Red said defensively from his chair. It was the first contribution he had made to the conversation aside from a few head nods and vaguely polite smiles. “You wouldn’t get it. My mother is right. You should keep moving.”
His mother looked aghast. “Red Pallet,” she said, her eyes wide in shock. It appeared to Red like she wanted to say more, then thought better of it and turned to Mark. “I have to apologize for my son—he doesn’t mean to be rude, not really. He is just struggling with coming to terms about his father’s—“
“Mom!” Red cried. He sat up, his chair squeaking loudly as it scraped against the dusty floor. “Don’t talk about that. We don’t even know him. What is he doing here? How did he travel the route without an escort?”
“Red that’s enough,” said Delilah Pallet.
“No. If Team Rocket didn’t get him the Pokémon should have. I think he’s trouble mom. He needs to—”
“Red,” she said sharply, and she looked at him with a glare that dared him to say more. He held his tongue. He was brave, but not brave enough to challenge his mother when she got to this point.
He dropped his head in frustration, and was about to turn and sprint out of the kitchen and up to his room when Mark, who had been quiet during the length of their improv argument, said, “no, it’s quite alright. No child should feel the weight of losing a parent. It is none of my business really, but if I may step far past the line of appropriateness and ask how he… well how he was lost?”
Red was thrown off by this enough to fall silent. Why did Mark want to know about his father?
“My husband’s family founded the town, and as the eldest son he was the de facto leader of the town. It was more of a paper title than anything real; you know, welcome people when they moved here; settle disputes over fence heights; give a speech once in a while; that sort of thing, but everything changed after the Cataclysm. Everyone in the town was in real danger. The weather was terrible, and the Pokémon had gone—well…”
His mother always had a hard time talking about the Cataclysm. It was, of course, the event that took her husband’s life, but it was more than that; Delilah Pallet had been a Pokémon trainer in her day, and had counted many of the infamous creatures as friends: on the day of the Cataclysm, when the Pokémon turned against the people of the world, it hit Delilah harder than most.
She recovered quickly, as always. Nothing kept her down, not even the utter disappointment of life in their small Kanto town. “You know the events of the Cataclysm as well as anyone else, I am sure. Things got tough around here. My husband and a few other men from the town left for Viridian to try and get the Gym Leader there to come and help protect the town. News was slow and unreliable then. We hadn’t heard Viridian was worse off then us. If we had, I don’t know what he would have done. Head to Johto, probably, but they left for Viridian, and--they never made it, obviously. A wild Pokémon swarm found them... It was three years ago; last week.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” Mark said—and even though Red wanted to be mad at him, there was something genuine about the way he said it. Red relaxed a little, the anger inside of him flattening; he sat back down, feeling a little embarrassed for acting so childish… but still, he didn’t trust Mark, not completely, because his father had died traveling the route between Pallet and Viridian and Mark was just an old man and yet he had some how made the journey safely.
“Thank you,” said Delilah.
“Red was right,” Mark said, surprising Red. “I have over stayed my welcome. You have been far too kind and generous already. Life is hard everywhere now, and the necessity of survival has chastised the simple act of treating a tired old man kindly. I am thankful for what you have done, but I don’t want to take advantage of you. Don’t waste your resources on me.”
“Nonsense,” said his mother. “It will be dark soon, and the Pokémon tend to venture closer to the town. You’re safe here, for the night—or longer if you’d like.”
Red looked at the boarded up window. They had once looked out to a yard that had housed an apple tree with a tire swing and a small rose garden that his mother had cultivated through the years. Now all he could see we a crack where two boards met and allowed in the faintest sliver of the dull purple-reddish colors that shone in from the setting sun. Even he couldn’t kick an old man out to face wild Pokémon.
“I couldn’t,” said Mark.
“You will,” Delilah replied. She looked to Red. “Show him where he can stay, and wash up dear, then come and help clean up.”
Red nodded in agreement, and then showed Mark to their guest bedroom upstairs, and then to the bathroom that Red normally had to himself. Red was conflicted, torn between the gut feeling that Mark was hiding something, or carrying trouble with him and the moral compass that his mother and father had instilled within him which made it impossible for him to be okay with a man being mauled by a Raticate, or stung to death by a Beedrill.
It was this conflict that caused him to lay restlessly in his bed that night. And it was for this reason that he was still up, several hours later, during the quiet night when every sound traveled farther than normal that he heard Mark Mason sneak out of his home.
He should have let it go; Mark was gone, which, in the end, was what he had wanted all along. But the only thing that could over power the gut feeling of distrust that he felt for Mark was the burning curiosity that he felt raging from his heart and pulsing through his veins. It was a feeling universal amongst boys and girls his age, especially those born in a small town who never got a chance to see the world outside; it wasn’t even something he recognized on most days, the desperate need to be a part of something something more than the every day monotony of simply surviving. On most days he only thought of staying safe, and making sure he and his mom had the means to meet the next day; he worked hard, and he stayed away from anywhere that a Pokémon might wonder, because the creatures of magic and extraordinarily cruel powers would have killed him as indiscriminately as they had killed his father—and yet, on the rare night like tonight, he found himself laying in bed and dreaming of a life of adventure. A life outside of Pallet.
And so, when he heard Mark sneak out of the house Red rose, almost subconsciously, out of his bed, snuck quietly across the dusty floor boards, and followed him out into the dark night a few moments later.
He felt alive, and terrified.
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