Throughout the entirety of my childhood, I suffered. I was constantly bullied, pushed around... Ignored. As far as I could remember, there was not a single instance of respect. Nobody respected me. I wasn't even a fellow human being. I was just there. I was a plaything. Nobody treated me as an equal. Nobody talked to me. Nobody loved me. Everyone was sick, twisted, crooked, crazy. Insane. I was the only sane one. I saw the world as what it was; nothing but darkness. Nothing else.

Not a single person in this depressing town had earned anything from me. Not even a second thought. It was payback time, for all of the isolation, all of the name-calling and ignorance. For the hatred that they'd stocked up inside of me. They'd all been using me as a bucket for their own insecurities. Every day felt like a fight for survival, whether or not it was an exaggeration. Now it was their turn to fight. Coincidentally, I'd expect more people to be out on halloween, trick-or-treating or something, but as usual Lavender Town left me disappointed. To think that I felt excitement at the thought that the next full moon (a rather important part of this night's events) would be taking place on the night that a bunch of people would be out dicking around. Nobody was out, except for a few people who had reasons to be out other than the date being the thirty-first of October.

I looked down at the powdered-chalk pentagram painting the moist grass beneath me, and I prepared myself. I found it quite difficult to relax, being that I was as excited as I was, but I still managed. I took some deep breaths and cleared my mind, before taking a seat in the center of the star. It was finally time to carry through with the actions I'd spent such a long time planning out. I was finally going to take vengeance upon this waste-pit of a town. I recalled the mantra I needed to spout to activate the spell.

"Aw-tey, mahl-kuth, vegeboorah, ley-oh-lahm, enno-book, russ-aneev, kaw-ratch..."

I let my mouth take over, as I needed to focus my mind on the task at hand. I repeated the mantra, as my willpower manifested into a sensation deep inside my torso. I released the energy down into the pentagram, and then dispersed it outward, visualizing the path that each beam of energy took. I needed to add something to empower the energy as it beamed across the town. I took the razor from my pocket, while keeping my eyes closed. Keeping much of my mind focused on the energy flow, I drew the blade to my wrist and quickly swiped it across. I heard the blood drip down onto the ground beneath me as my scalp tingled from the pain. The spell was completed, but I wanted to make sure the energy went where I'd wanted it to.

Lavender Town was not complicated, and I'd spent my entire life here, so visualizing it from a bird's-eye view was not very difficult in the least. I saw the beams fly across the town, and then into the foundation of the Pokemon Tower, the most essential component of my dastardly plan. The energy painted the building before fading out of my mind. I got up and put my bleeding wrist in my pocket. I needed to go to the store and hide out until things picked up a little.

When I'd arrived at the store, the clerk greeted me with his usual salutation.

"Hi! How may I help you?" I could tell that he was faking his enthusiasm. It was well past dark, and the only light outside was the full moon's illumination off of the ground. The store would be closing at midnight, a good fifteen minutes away.

"I'm fine," I said, faking enthusiasm much like he had a few moments before. "Just browsing."

As soon as I'd finished talking, I heard a crash come from the direction of the Tower followed by the light tinkling of glass on pavement. The shit had really hit the fan.

The clerk looked outside and I heard him say to himself, "Oh, God... How did-" he looked back to me. "I'll be right back. I know you. Don't steal anything, okay?"

I nodded at him, now faking concern. He took off in a hurry. I looked out the window of the shop, following his movement. There was a small mound of brown and red a few yards from the entrance of the Tower. It took me a few moments to realize that it was a Cubone.

The clerk rushed up to the corpse, while a few others gathered nearby to see what was happening. The clerk knelt down next to it and said something.

I felt the purest joy when the corpse began to wriggle and squirm. The clerk stayed there next to it, even though it was quite obvious that he was frightened by what was happening. The Cubone stood up, slowly, using its bone as a cane of sorts. Its stomach was mostly rotten away on the right side, and blood was dripping from the left socket of his mask.

The clerk stood up to start running. He backed away a few steps, but his movement was interrupted. The Cubone dashed forward and clubbed him in the temple. The sound of bone on bone echoed through the air as the club collided with the clerk's head with the force of an aluminum baseball bat. The next sounds that I heard were a body hitting the asphalt, and the spatter of the clerk's blood spraying against the road. I watched with delight as he fell over backwards, landing in time with the blood. The Cubone leaped forward onto his chest and swung the bone downward, crushing the man's skull like a melon. It made me very glad that the spell protected me from such monstrosities.

The only things that the spell guaranteed were that the Pokemon I had brought back to life would not attack me personally. Any undead Pokemon would stay unearthed until either I died for some reason or I formally canceled the spell the way that I'd cast it. That meant that I had to stay alive until I felt that I'd had my revenge, and then I could just cancel the spell back where I'd cast it.

I reached under the counter and pulled out the pistol I'd known was there. The only people allowed to own guns were police and store clerks, especially late-night workers. I cocked it, turned on the safety, and tucked it into my waistband. I knew that I was going to need it eventually. I was hearing more glass, which meant that the action was soon going to start picking up at quite a dangerous rate.

I took a bottle of water from a shelf and took a sip, while contemplating what course of action I could take past this point. I could always have left, and gone right into the Tower. Nobody would dare go into the building, and the Pokemon coming back to life wouldn't attack me...

I tossed the idea. If the military decided to take action here, they would most likely bomb the Tower, which would make it a dangerous place to be. I would be in the midst of it. Closing my eyes, I sunk down to the floor of the shop and sat against the wall and listened to the sounds that the chaos had created.

Every couple of minutes for the next hour or so, I would hear another crash or another scream. Every noise brought on new emotions. Joy. Happiness. Satisfaction. Maybe I was just a freak. I felt no guilt, no regret. No remorse. One noise, however, made me sort of nervous. There was gunfire mingling with the moans of zombified Pokemon. It drew closer and closer to the shop I was in.

The door was kicked open to reveal Nurse Joy, her skirt and top coated in dust and caked with blood. In her hand was a smoking pistol.

"Are you okay?" she asked between gasps of breath. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm fine," I groaned, feigning exhaustion. "I came here when I heard what was happening."

"Well, you're coming with me," her tone was rather serious for someone who had such a bubbly personality. "We've got the Pokemon Center barricaded. You'll be safe there."

My plan had been to stay in the store, and I was determined to follow my plan.

"I've got everything I need right here," I said, motioning toward all of the goods surrounding me. "I'll be just fine."

"We're running out of time," she nearly shouted, finally exasperated. "Come. With. Me. NOW."

I pulled the gun out from behind me and aimed at her. I figured that if I'd come with her I would've just been ignored when I needed something or abused as some sort of servant to the other survivors taking refuge there. Plus they probably wouldn't let me leave, which very well may have been something I would've wanted to do, based on my previous assumptions.

"You have five seconds," I calmly stated. "Save yourself."

She sighed and ran back to the Pokemon Center without a second thought. Everything went better than expected.

15 short minutes passed. I'd heard the sound of even more zombie Pokemon breaking through the glass windows of the Tower. I also heard stomping.

I got up from the floor and looked out the window toward the stomping. What I saw was amazing. A zombified Dragonite was slowly making its way to the Pokemon Center, which I could see rather clearly in the moonlight. The huge Pokemon limped its way over to the Center's front door to try its hand at knocking it down. The survivors had done a good job of barricading the building, though. It beat the door a few more times before turning around, supposedly to leave, maybe to hunt down some easier prey. I disregarded that thought when the Dragonite turned around yet again.

It opened its mouth wide, facing the Pokemon Center. Energy began to gather at the opening of his massive maw. Hyper beam.

I'd wished I had a camcorder. As the monster began to launch the beam of light at the building, the front door flew open and a figure jumped out and dashed toward my building. I quickly recognized the figure as Officer Jenny.

The beam demolished the building in a split-second, almost definitely taking everyone inside with it. Jenny kicked open the door and ran inside, taking cover with her gun pointed at the ceiling.

"I heard you have a gun," she said calmly, through her heavy breaths. "We need to leave."

I was a little confused by what she'd said. Why would I follow her anywhere? I was just fine where I was. I thought that I'd made it pretty clear to Nurse Joy, who was now almost definitely deceased.

The garbled voice on her radio was relaying a line of code I didn't understand. I finally heard one thing that I knew the meaning of.

"Hammer-Down at 0300."

Jenny's eyes locked with mine and widened. I nodded at her and motioned my head toward the door. The town was going to be blasted to hell at three in the morning, and it was already 2:30.

Jenny kicked the door open and peered outside before beckoning for me to follow her. I did. As we were stealthily sprinting toward the town's exit gates, dimly lit in the twilight, I remembered something that had taken place between Jenny and I about ten years back.
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I was dealing with a few bullies from my school. Two of them had me cornered, and although they weren't armed with anything I could tell that they wanted to fight. I was going to give it to them.

"What are you gonna do about THIS, faggot?" one of them taunted while shoving me backward.

I replied with my elbow in his face. He immediately fell over, groping at his nose. It was bleeding profusely, staining his shirt and dripping onto the ground underneath him. I pointed at the other boy. He ran. I picked up a small stone that weighed a good one or two pounds and hurled it in his direction. When it hit, I heard a crack. I would find out later that I'd broken two of his ribs.

Somebody must have called the cops because Officer Jenny pulled up on her motorcycle after not even a few moments and asked me what had happened.

I told the truth. "I was cornered by them," I crossed my arms. "I let instinct take over." Another thought crept over my mind that brought me into a subtle state of rage. "I've been bullied by them for years. Where were you all the other times?"

"I-"

"I've lost a good fifty bucks to them, you know that?" I pointed at them, my voice quickly raising. "I've had a black eye and a bloody nose. Where were you then?!"

Her face turned red with anger, or possibly embarrassment. I had to apologize quickly or I was headed in the wrong direction.

"I'm sorry," we both said in unison.

I continued. "It's not your fault. You're busy. I know. If you'd gotten called every time some kids got into a scuffle you'd always be preoccupied."

"I really am sorry about not helping you before," she said with shame in her voice. "I'm just one person."

I let the tears well up in my eyes. I was so used to being a fucking plaything that I hadn't expected a human conversation to come up at any point, and quite honestly, it made me a little emotional.

Jenny said something into her radio, told the other end what had happened, and then turned back to me.

"If you really did it in self-defense, I'm letting you go," she said with a hint of relief in her voice. "I'm not supposed to, but I feel like I owe you."

"Thanks." I didn't have much to say, I'd figured that she was just messing with me or something.

After a few moments she guided the bullies into the little car attached to her motorcycle and went on her way. I waited for fifteen minutes before realizing that she wasn't coming back for me. I'd never felt happier.
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I guess I'd forgotten the one moment in which I'd been shown some sympathy in my life. I immediately had more respect for Jenny than I had for anyone else on the planet after that realization.

I heard growling behind us. I turned around to see that a Growlithe was chasing us, with its eyes on her. I stopped for a second, took aim, and fired a round into its skull. With a yelp and a thud the problem was solved, or so I'd believed. I continued to run, with my eyes on the fresh corpse I'd created. Something small and green wandered over to it and stood still. I recognized it as a Bulbasaur.

I wondered why it wasn't following us, and my curiosity was about to be satisfied.

Sheer terror. That's all I felt. Terror. I'd never felt it before that moment, when the green and brown pellets began to tear their way through Jenny's body. She fell over, mid-stride, dead before she'd hit the ground. Bullet seed.

The only person I'd respected as a human being had been killed because of my actions. Words can't possibly describe how I'd felt. I knelt down next to her body, bloody and torn, and I took her radio from her belt. I had a new course of action that I was destined to follow. It would solve the problem that I'd caused.

I held down the button on the radio. "Um... Hello?" I'd never used one before. "Is anyone there?"

"Lima-12, what are you still doing in town?" The other end apparently had confused my high-pitched voice with her own. "There is a Hammer-Down imminent. Evacuate the area."

"I need you to cancel the Hammer-Down..." I said, tears gathering in my eyes.

"Can you repeat that, Lima-12?" the voice garbled. "Bad signal."

"They're dying..." I said, my voice fading. "They're all dying. Cancel the Hammer-Down."

"Hold," the voice said. I waited a good fifteen seconds. I heard applause behind the next transmission. "Roger that, Lima-12. Hammer-Down has been aborted. Out."

I dropped the radio, and fell to my knees. In one instant I'd gained all the of the respect I could for one person, and then in another I'd lost that person because of my own selfish actions. I had to fix what I'd caused. I took the gun from my waistband and pressed it to my temple, with tears flowing down my cheeks. Whether the tears were of fear of the unknown, or of the joy of escape from this harsh reality, or of the sharp depression of killing the one person who'd held some meaning to me... I wasn't sure.Chapter End Notes:------
I tried to focus on sounding a little anti-social and having multiple sharp mood swings happen in this story. It makes it feel fast-paced. Maybe a little too much, heh? I uploaded it today to also celebrate the release of the Undead Nightmare downloadable content for Red Dead Redemption. Please review, I always appreciate it and I respond to every single one