1. fainting=death
2. One Pokemon per route
3. No boxed Pokemon

We got the hell out of there. There were no ceremonies, no eulogy, just me, Oak, and his two surviving attendants and their Pokemon. And of course my little Shroomish that I called Kali. Dumb as a box of rocks, but she (Oak showed me how to identify the sex of a Shroomish, it's not pretty) would rashly charge in without hesitation. She wasn't a Quagsire or a Venomoth, but she started to grow on me. Like fungus.

We were heading to Viridian, as if the answers to what happened in Pallet Town were located there, as though anything born of the sane, rational world I once knew could explain mutated Rattata-man-what-the-fucks. The beasts weren't the abnormal part—no, my mind could comprehend that madness for some reason—it was the otherwise nice day outside that just astounded me. As we walked, the air was filled with Pidgeys and their signature "pi pi pi pi" song. The Pidgeys didn't know anything was wrong, and if they did, they didn't care. They just "pipipipipipipi" and that's it. Their stupid song pushed past me as I walked with Oak, an opposing current to the silence of Pallet Town behind us.

"Goddamn Pidgeys…" I clenched my fist, wanting to pound reality into them. What right did they have to sing and be happy? Didn't they know? Didn't anyone know?

"Goddamn PIDGEYS!" I scooped up a rock, seeing one in the tree. "Don't you fucking know that the world is ending? Shut up!" I hurled the rock, and the Pidgey disappeared in a cloud of light. The Pokeball dropped to the ground, inside it one lucky Pidgey saved from a meteor smash.

"Kinky," Oak's voice was stern as he picked up the Pokeball. "The Pidgeys are being Pidgeys. They don't know you from Red." He handed me the Pokeball. "I think you need to remember your humanity in the light of this...event."

Pecks the Pidgey was more careful after that.

We entered Viridian that evening. Much to my relief, there were no dead bodies or anything strewed in the streets. In fact, there were no people in the street. Period. Junk was scattered about like there had been a…something. This definitely wasn't right.

"Professor--"

"I know," Oak interrupted, taking out one of his Pokemon. "I'm going to go into the Pokemon Center. Kinky, you stay here. Aspen, Spruce, come with me."

Oak and his aides left. I looked around the town, the uneasy feeling growing by the minute. I pressed the button on Pecks's Pokeball, and he appeared on my shoulder. "Pi?"

"Here boy, let me heal you up." I dug a Potion out of my backpack that I rescued before leaving Pallet Town, gingerly putting the spout up against his neck and pulling the trigger. Pecks squawked as the needle punctured his skin.

"It's okay boy, you'll get used to it." I ruffled his feathers. I had this...call it intuition or whatever, but I knew I would need him. It was a little dark, the twilight making everything blurry. If it was daylight, what happened next would've scarred me forever. As if what I had already been through hadn't done it.

"Heeeeyyyyy…kid!" This guy's voice sounded like his mouth was full of grapes, it was slobbered and kind of muffled. "Kid, c'mere!"

I squinted and saw a guy lying on the ground. I didn't remember him before, but a survivor! Yay! I rushed over. "You're alive! Old man, you can't be laying out here!"

"Kid…know how to caaatch a PoKEmON?" The guy sounded high, and he started coughing. A lot. I felt something thick and sticky hit my leg, and I flicked on my flashlight to look at it. It was white, and stringy, like something you would see a Weedle make.

"…oh my god." I shone my flashlight on the man, and screamed at what I saw. His mouth was human, framed by a thick beard, but there were mandibles lodged in it. Like a Weedle. His eyes bulged out of his skull, the pupils taking over most of his eyes. I started to back away slowly.

"Don't goo…you need to know hooow to catch a POkemoN!" He crawled towards me, not like a baby, but like an inchworm.

"Pecks! Peck it!" Pecks flew off my shoulder and on the guy's back, pecking it ferociously as I ran back to the Pokemon Center. "Professor! Come quick! You need to see this!"

Oak was just coming out as I was yelling for him, and he followed me back over, just in time to see Pecks drill his beak into the guy's buggy eyes, the guy trying to snap at the Pidgey with his buggy mouth.

"Oh Arceus…Kinky, recall your Pidgey!" His Charizard appeared as my Pidgey returned. "Mulciber, use Slash!"

The bug-guy's head was cleanly severed at the neck. Oak's Charizard sniffed it and recoiled, growling at it. "Yes, Mulciber, you would do well to stay away from it, it's bad." One of Oak's aides collected the guy's blood in a vial.

"Kinky, did you get anything from that guy on you? Anything at all?

"Umm…he spat on me."

"Oh Arceus…where?" Oak's voice was heavy and fearful.

"Just on my leg…it's like Weedle silk." Oak bent down to my leg, collecting a sample of the silk, and then he pulled out a bottle of something that burned like hell when he scrubbed my leg with it.

"Oak, this guy has a Pokeball on him!" One of the aides came over.

"Release the Pokemon in it, I want to see what it is. Mulciber, if it tries to attack, use Slash on it."

A Weedle came out, and it barely saw us before it lunged at us, stopped immediately by a quick Slash from the Charizard. Both pieces of it fell to the ground, and…I swear a foamy substance leaked from its mandibles. Oak's mouth thinned.

"Did you find any other marks on the guy besides the Pidgey pecks?"

"Yes, professor," The other aide replied. "It was on what was left of his leg. It…it looked like a bite mark though, not a sting."

"That's what I was afraid of…" Oak took a sample from the Weedle, and packed up his case.

"Kinky...when I was in the Pokecenter, I ran a diagnostic on the equipment. The equipment used to heal the Pokemon is fully functional and I found no problem with it, you can heal your Pokemon. However, do NOT send any of them to the box. Ever."

"Professor…what's going on? What the hell is all this?"

Oak sighed. "I think we have a pandemic on our hands, one that can jump from Pokemon to people. There are two things not adding up. One, how it manifests itself in humans, and two, why the Pokemon boxes are infected with it."

"Wait…what? Don't the boxes automatically purge diseases when Pokemon enter, so that they won't spread?"

"In most cases, yes," Oak said. "However, Bill monitors the boxes in case of anomalies. Bill didn't catch this one though, and I tried calling him from the center. There's no answer from his house or his new Poketch."

Oak paused. "Kinky…I need you to meet someone at Bill's house for me. I'll contact you over your Poketch as soon as I can. You remember where his house is, right?"

"I do."

"Go there. Be careful. If your Pokemon begin to act out of the ordinary…" He looked around, then pulled out a parcel. "I found this package, it was supposed to be delivered to me. I was allowed to possess it for scientific research."

Oak unwrapped it, and I gasped. It was a hand gun. I had seen them before on a family trip to Unova and had even been allowed to fire one by my uncle there, but to see one in Kanto, it was like I had been shot with it. It was a sign that life as I knew it in Kanto was over.

"Your Pokemon should be able to take down most things with ease. If they start acting strange or become ill, do not hesitate. If this disease is as horrifying for them as it is for humans, you are saving them from horrible death."

I felt sick from the very thought of it. "Oak…I don't think I can…"

Oak placed his hand on my shoulder, and put the gun in my pack. "You will find that you will do many things you did not think you could accomplish," he said, trying to sound soothing but coming out as a depressing old man. "I'm counting on you, Kinky. I have to go to the Pokemon League. They were unaffected by this when I called, and they had already sealed themselves off from the outside. They have the facilities I need there to run tests and determine what this virus is. Travel safe, and may Arceus shine on you."

Oak and his aides took off on their Pokemon. For this first time since I was ten, I wished that I had a nightlight.

Zeus: Thanks! That part was actually a no-brainer. The rule was added to fit the story, not the other way around.

T-5mash: Thanks! I like writing grimdark stuff, but I try to keep it semi-plausible so the reader doesn't have to suspend disbelief too often.

Blaze: Xatu was kind enough to take that request over POL one night, he's amazing. :D

Devamia: I hate that old man for wasting my time in every hack ever, but instead of ignoring him, I thought this would be much more fitting...muahaha. :D

Cypher: Hopefully it'll live up to your expectations! Glad you like it. :)

Ryua: Creepy appeals to me...probably far too much. :D

maroonWildcard: Thanks! I just sit down and try to tell the story as if I'm talking to you in person, that's all.

Karp: If I had artistic talent/time, I might've made this into a comic, but I don't think it would've quite captured the feeling of the story. I hope you continue to enjoy it!

Viridian Forest is an immense, sprawling, tangled wood that lies between Pewter City and Viridian City, acting as a natural barrier dividing the two cities. It's teaming with life, a myriad of bugs lies inside, crawling and infesting the place to the point where you can't walk a step without crushing some unfortunate creature. Yes, it's full of life. And all of that life hates humans and wants them to die.

I've entered Viridian Forest in the past. I've gotten creepy vibes from it, but I always told myself that it was just the atmosphere playing tricks on me. Still, I wouldn't want to set up a summer home there. This time though…I knew there was something different. It wasn't the atmosphere, it wasn't the creatures; the entire forest KNEW I had entered, and it did NOT approve of my entrance. I tried to brush off that feeling, but it wouldn't leave.

There was movement in the grass. Pecks took off from my shoulder, spotting something tasty in the grass I suppose. I watched him dive bomb something, and he came back up empty handed…or would it be taloned? Who knows, he didn't have anything, and wheeled around for a second pass.

Then Pecks promptly dropped to the ground.

"…Pecks?" No peep or rustling. My heart sank…could I have lost a Pokemon already? That couldn't be. I released Kali from her Pokeball.

"Kali, find Pecks, he went that way." I pointed, and Kali waddled into grass and I followed her, careful not to step on anything.

"Mish! Shroomish!" I could see a little mushroom cap bouncing up and down, and bent down. Kali found Pecks, alright. I picked up his still body…and hea a little "snrrt" sound. He was asleep, and snoring.

"Mish!" I looked back to Kali, and found what Pecks had dived at. It was Paras, twitching and covered in yellow dust from Kali. "Well, aren't you a strange looking thing," I chuckled a little as the Paras looked at me curiously, blinking slowly. "I guess you can come along, after all, you did put a number on Pecks, so you can't be half-bad."

I healed Pecks with medicine that I raided from the deserted store in Viridian. He popped up, chirping sleepily. "Pecks, meet Abby, our new Paras. She's not for eating; go find a Caterpie or something."

"Pid," Pecks looked grumpy and flew off in search of lunch. That's when things took a turn towards the insane.

The forest is alive, I think I've pretty much covered that. But it's also a living organism, like the human body. It grows, it breeds, it establishes a symbiotic relationship with the smaller organisms inside it…and when it detects disease, it targets and fights it as well as anything that looks like it, even to the point where it fights off anything that remotely looks like the disease, like an allergic reaction or something. I think Viridian Forest is allergic to humans, but I'm not sure.

The sun was beginning to set, and we only halfway through Viridian Forest. Long shadows were everywhere, framed in orange light like a carved Halloween pumpkin. It was beautifully disconcerting after the previous insanity the day before, but I still told myself that the creepy feeling was my own design.

I'm not used to being wrong this often.

I was leaning against a tree, watching Pecks and Abby share a Caterpie carcass while Kali absorbed her meal from the soil. It was a lazy and sleepy scene, and very comforting. In fact, everything felt right at that moment. It was going to be okay, I told myself that as I sank further and further into the tree.

…Wait, trees aren't supposed to be soft. I tried to sit up, and found that my shoulders were being held down by bark growing over them. I clawed myself free of the bark.

"Pokemon, we're leaving. Like now." I called back Kali to her ball, and was about to call back Abby when I heard a sickening sound a little deeper into the woods. "Abby, Pecks, let's go."

We went deeper, the rustling of the forest growing more agitated as we walked. It didn't take long to find the source of the noise. It was a young bug catcher, one that was in the beginning of the virus judging by the mushrooms sprouting from his body. The tree he was against…it was absorbing him. Bark covered most of his body, except for his head, but it was working on that. He looked at me, big doleful eyes like a damn Paras. I knew what was going to happen, though. I turned away as I heard the sound again.

Louder.

Pronounced.

Squishy.

It sounded like a tube of raw breakfast sausage being squeezed until the meat exploded out both ends. I ran from it. It echoed in my mind and sent my stomach into spasm. Squish.

I wonder if I set a record for fastest crossing ever. I wanted to say that the forest was trying to stop me, the grass pulling at my feet as I ran. Abby and Pecks kept up me as we got the hell out, and I didn't stop until I reached the gate.

Maybe I hallucinated the tree hugging, and the grass, and the carnivore forest. It's not like Abby or Pecks can tell me anything, no matter how much I ask them. But I still hear that sound every time I think about the forest.

Squish.

man-eating TREES

SQUISH

It reminds me of a part in Life of Pi with people- eating alge. That part scared me.

Now I'm afraid of trees. Thanks. D':