Seven Deadly Sins [Graded]

Seven Deadly Sins​

A summer's blaze continued to waft over the ski resort village of Rygor. The small cul-de-sac type town lay undisturbed underneath some mountains in Kanto. It was unsure where exactly it was located, except that it was far away enough to not get any business during the summer months, but close enough that people from neighboring towns would go skiing during winter. It was a popular ski resort for the valley folk below; they had sayings like they're going “up at Rygor” or talk about how “up at Rygor” strange things happen.

The small populous of this town kept their lives busy during these summer months by hunting, keeping hobbies, and preparing for the next ski season. Gossip would fly around town faster than a Rapidash using Agility, like in most small towns. However, the rumors were little about the people and more so about how the town was haunted at night. People would talk about how they would hear moaning and viscous screams throughout the night, but a more logical person would blame it on the Mankeys that were known to populate the woods surrounding Rygor.

This story is about a particular summer up at Rygor where the people and Pokemon were truly being haunted. Not by ghouls nor spirits, but by a plague of sorts. A plague of deadly sins. These sins would infect their specific hosts and deal damage almost inconspicuously. There was no cure; only the treatment of their opposite virtues. However, as most people do not know they are in trouble, they fall prey easily and eventually suffer the consequences. Alas, we are to witness a community under the impression that this week, up at Rygor, is to be just like any other; unfortunately, they will be surprised to find themselves in predicaments unlike any other they have known and without any warning.

Sloth​

We start in a large garden in the backyard of an Alsace-styled house. Petunias, tulips, and rosebushes bloom along the edges of the neatly trimmed yard. One large oak tree stands alone at the back of the garden; behind it aligned a long white fence that outlines the boarders of the yard. It split the tree and the rest of the yard between a finely tuned garden and the unkempt woods that stretched out into the rising mountain.

The summer breeze brought the sent of mountain spring water as it caressed the leaves of the oak tree. A tiny gray robin with red feathers on its head had perched itself on a branch of the oak tree, and chirped a chipper song as it eyed the garden for movement. The Fletchling hopped along the branch with its black, twig-like feet. Its eyes lit with attention and it swooped down, off of the branch to land on the ground and plucked a worm from the garden. It gulped it down quick, then grabbed some red mulch from the rosebushes and flapped itself back onto the branch.

The Fletchling added the red mulch to a circular melange of twigs, leaves, and mulch. The hodgepodge of small wood had a hole in the middle; with more than enough room inside of it for the robin Pokemon. Cotton balls, feathers, and a small rag insulated the inside of the nest, which was quite large in comparison to the Fletchling.

“Work work, here, sing-song there, and a bite to eat will fair; that's how I work the day away in preparation of the year.” Sang the Fletchling as it tidied-up the nest. “I must not have little holes in my nest if I want to make it through the winter.”

“Why must you sing so loudly!” A voice whined from inside the nest. The Fletchling perked up as it heard the voice and replied, “Who's that? Who's in there?!” The Fletchling waited for a reply, but only heard soft crunching sounds coming from inside its nest. Fletchling prodded around its nest with its beak until it felt something squishy underneath its dirty, blue rag. Fletchling pulled the rag over to find a small, slimy aquamarine blob huddled in a ball moving slightly as the crunching noise continued.

The Fletchling yelled out, “Is that you Don?!” The blob halted in its crunching and moving. Then slowly it raised its head. It was a Shellos, a slug Pokemon that had found its way into Fletchling's nest and started eating some seeds it found.

“Well, hi there Aba,” Don replied, giving a weak smile coated in seed particles, “how's yer morn'n go'n?”

“It's mid-afternoon, Don,” Aba replied, clearly irritated with the Shellos, “just because you just woke up momentarily ago doesn't mean its morning for the rest of us.” Don looked at Aba with unmoved emotion. He yawned slowly and said, “Well then... g'night.” Then he promptly laid his head down and attempted to sleep inside Aba's nest.

“I don't think so, you slug!” Aba snipped as she picked Don up with her beak and tossed him outside onto the branch. The gooey slug Pokemon plopped onto the branch as if it gave no attempt to fight back, cushion its fall, or save itself from falling. He laid there for a moment, then slowly slumped up as he said, “Well jeez ya big bully. I was jus' try'n to catch some zzz's. Maybe you need to get some sleep too; you've prob'bly been up since the wee hours of the morn'n, working hard and all. 'S prob'bly why you're so grumpy.” Aba shot Don a warning with her eyes; sharp and intimidating. Don swallowed a bit of a lump in his throat caused by Aba's look.

Aba turned back to her nest as she said, “You just need to work a little harder,” she paused to think for a moment, “or at all, really. Diligence is key.” Don blinked his eyes slowly as he shrugged. He pushed his lips together to make his mouth straight and wide as his cheeks bunched at the ends.

“Why do t'day, wha you can do t'morra?” Don proverbed. Aba slightly turned her head to answer with, “What is today, but yesterday's tomorrow?”

“W-wha?” Don said as he raised a cheek and widened his other eye. Then he slumped his shoulders down and said, “I still don't understand why you won't let me stay with ya for the winter.”

Aba now turned her whole head and replied, “Well, for one,” Aba held up a wing with one feather pointing out, “I don't want to share room with anyone. Two,” another feather joined the first, “I don't want to share my rations of food with anyone, especially you, you glutton. You'd probably eat most if not all of it on the first day and leave me to starve.” she held up another feather in the air, “Three, I don't think it's right I work so hard while you waste away the days just to expect me to help you. And four,” another gray feather shot out, adding to the others, “I just don't like you. I really don't. You're pathetic, you're my opposite type, you're annoying, and worst of all: you're lazy.

Now, begone. I have to replace the rations you ate already as well as try to find more insulation than what I have.” Aba spit an Ember at the downtrodden Shellos as she stretched her wings and took flight. Don lunged back to evade the Ember attack; even though he was slow moving and a water/ground type Pokemon, he really disdained pain.

He watched Aba as she soared low in the afternoon sky. She disappeared behind some houses in the neighborhood leaving Don to his thoughts. 'Well then...' he thought to himself. He looked down at the finely trimmed ground of the yard. 'I guess I could make a burrow in the ground, like other Shellos do... then start gathering supplies for the winter...' His coal, black eyes moved from the yard below to the backside of the house. 'I bet that lady, though, so kempt with her yard, will plow right over me in the spring and kill me instantly...' Don then turned his head lazily to look over the other side of the fence toward the woods. 'Then there's the ground over there...' he thought, 'it'd be safer from the lady of the house, but then I'd be exposed to other, more dangerous Pokemon that could hunt and eat me...'

“Hmmm...” Don said aloud. Then, almost out of nowhere, but perfectly timed, something started itching at him in the back of his mind. Like a little pinch, a prick; something felt like it was tugging at his brain and an idea seemed to be almost implanted back there. His head turned slightly toward Aba's nest as he sought to explore this somber plan. He knew it was wrong and felt a slight injustice in his foremind, but the back of his head seemed to explode when the sight of the warm nest with food abound was so close to him.

“Maybe...,” Don said to himself, “maybe this could work. I jus' need to be a bit more...,” he paused as an uncontrollable smile perused itself onto Don's slimy face, “creative.”

 

Re: Seven Deadly Sins [Ready for Grading]

In the late hours of the evening, just as the sun hit the backs of the mountains, Aba came soaring back to the Oak tree. Landing happily on the branch next to her twig-stuffed nest, she took a large breath and sighed relief. She was very glad that Don was no longer in sight. She held a dirty, purple rag in her foot. It wasn't anything like the violet drenched sky that Aba gazed out onto. She hopped along the branch and then into her nest; she began rearranging the things inside slightly to accommodate the new addition.

“I'm so happy not to see Don back here,” she said to herself between poking and plucking at things to make them seem more attractive to her eyes, “he's so obnoxious and lazy; I can't imagine him being able to survive a winter here, up at Rygor. I just hope I don't see him for the rest of this season. Then winter will come and he'll probably freeze as he'll be too lazy to make a proper shelter.” Aba stopped poking around the nest as the looked out onto the darkening sky. A few stars started to poke through the atmosphere; they glistened so faintly, waiting their turn to shine in the dark. Aba sighed, “Next summer will be so much better without the little bugger; always harassing me, always taking my food,” she started poking at her rags and cotton balls again as she continued, “then I could focus on more important things li-”

She stopped mid-word as she had flipped over part of the blue rag to see the slimy, blue skin of Don. His head shot up as he shouted, “Surprise!” and tilted his head back as he gurgled. Then, before Aba could speak or react, Don lunged forward spitting out a large, gooey Mud Bomb at Aba. It splattered and exploded on her face.

Aba screamed, “Aaahh! My eyes!” she tried to whip some sticky mud out of her eyes with her wings, but it was futile as the mud had been churned with Don's slime. Aba continued her efforts as she shouted, “I can't see! I can't see!!” Then she heard the gurgling again, then a low bellowed belch and a splat! Her left wing had been hit hard, like with an iron ball, and was now pinned to the wall of the nest.

“My arm! My eyes!” She continued to cry out as yet more sounds of gurgling and belching. Then with a final large splat, Don hit her with a Mud Bomb on her face and now was completely smothering her. A different kind of gurgle could now be heard, a struggling kind with quick intervals and panic implanted in the sounds coming from Aba. Her body started to convulse in the struggle for air as Don, again, attacked with another Mud Bomb. It covered Aba's body; and with a fifth and final Mud Bomb, Aba was fully coated with the gooey mud.

“Ahhh... peace and quiet.” Don sighed as the robin Pokemon, covered in mud, lay lifeless. He looked around the nest; it had been splattered by the mud as well when the Mud Bomb's landed on Aba. There was a nice coat of it layering the inside. Don smiled, extremely pleased with himself as he now had shelter and food for the winter with little work.

He turn to start eating some of the seeds underneath him from Aba's stockpile when a light started to glow. Don turned to face the light source to find, astonishingly, it was coming from Aba's body underneath the mud. It started as just a red outline of her body, then grew to illuminate her whole silhouette. Don squinted his eyes then started as the mud, now starting to dry, cracked with flames jetting out.

The heat started to get a little more intense as the flames grew to envelope the whole outer layering of mud over Aba's body. Her body, radiating light more intense than before, started floating in the nest. The flames now engulfing the interior; the cotton balls took ablaze along with the rags and other materials, the seeds started to roast and then charcoal, and the mud covering the inside started to dry and crack. Don was trapped. He looked at the only exit, which was next to Aba's luminescent, burning body, and knew there was no way he could escape.

He inched back against the opposite wall as his gelatinous-like body started to bubble and sizzle under the intense heat; the flames now able to reach out to him. He watched in horror as the cracked and flaming mud encasing Aba's body exploded off of her. The flames continued as Aba's small robin form grew and morphed into a little larger bird with a split tail and a point on the back of her head.

Then, at the highest intensity of the light and the fire, a loud screeching caw rang out from Aba's glowing body. It wasn't a terrifying caw, but beautiful and almost like a choir of angels accompanied Aba. At the same time, Don let out a horrid shrill of pain as his skin blackened and his eyes charred. There was a brilliant flash, and the flames ceased.

In the nest stood a glorious looking robin, with beautiful charcoal, black wings and golden tips, pinstriped tail feathers, and noble crimson head. Aba, now a Fletchinder, looked around her devastated nest. Dried mud crumbled off the walls, she looked at her smothering pile of rags and cotton balls, and then at her ashen stockpile of seeds.

“Well...,” she sighed, “looks like I'm going to have a busy day tomorrow.” She peered over the black piles of ash and soot to see the charred body of Don. “At least there's dinner.” She said and she plucked the motionless body of Don and swallowed him whole.


Ready For Grading
Pokemon: Shellos, Fletchling
Category: Simple, Simple
MCR: 10k
Characters: 13.755k

Easter Eggs!

Spoiler

There's some I don't want to say yet as this is a 7 part story! However, specific to this one:

Spoiler

Aba + Don = Abadon the demonification of Sloth
Diligence is Sloths opposite virtue!

 

Re: Seven Deadly Sins [Ready for Grading]

This looks done, so I'm gonna nab it up. Grade up by the end of the week, but maybe tomorrow. We'll see what happens.

 

Re: Seven Deadly Sins [Ready for Grading]

@Ace Trainer Liam;

Story Stuff
I'm actually trying a new thing with this grade, so hopefully this all works out well with all of what I need to say getting out there and whatnot.

You have for us, right smack at the very beginning of the story, our introduction. An introduction of the town of Rygor, and basically what's going to happen in the story as a whole. All of this is fine and dandy, no complaints.

It looks like you're dividing this story up into multiple parts, one for each of the seven deadly sins, and tying them all together. This is totally okay, and so far, it's worked well. The first of these seven stories, which is mainly what I'm going to focus on since there's not much to deal with in regards to the first three paragraphs at the moment, and understandably so since you're just kicking this thing off, dives right into the action following the introduction above. That's actually fine. I really feel like two introductions back to back would be too boring anyways, so not having a second one to introduce the world of the sloth is good. There is a bit of an introduction, but it's setting description, so it's not awfully boring.

All in all, this is pretty solid so far in terms of introductory material and plot. This is only one part of what's likely going to be seven, so we'll just have to see where this goes. So far, you're doing fine though!

Detail Stuff
Detail was pretty good for a story of the rank it is. There's only a couple things I really want to address here; there's a third thing too, with the wording of "a summer's blaze continued to waft over the ski resort village," but I think it would be entirely too nitpicky of me to address it, given the rank and all. Since I've mentioned it, I'll just say that the wording feels awkward to me, since I don't really picture ski resorts to be blazing hot and that's what I think of with the wording given, but it's not something I'm going to count against you in regards to overall score just because I feel like it's really nitpicky of me to do so. Also there's a bit where you have Fletchling say "my arm," but Fletchlings don't really have arms, they have wings.

So today I learned what an Alsace style house looks like. I've seen them before, I just didn't know the name of them. But I digress. What I'm really getting at here is that in order for me to learn what this Alsace style house looks like, I had to go to Google Images. You described the surroundings quite well, and they're quite accurate from what I saw of Alsace styled houses on Google Images. What threw me off here was the Alsace styled house itself. When I saw that, I found myself questioning what exactly an Alsace styled house looked like. I think maybe just using more common words that every day people would know would work out better, or even just describing what exactly an Alsace styled house looks like.

This just seemed a little bit out of the ordinary for a Fletchinder, or even a Fletchling. This happens with a worm too, but it makes a load more sense for a Fletchling (or even a Fletchinder) to be able to swallow a worm whole than a Fletchinder to swallow a Shellos whole. Shellos is a pretty big Pokemon, and it doesn't look like something a Fletchinder would be able to swallow whole. Yeah, the Shellos is motionless and all, but it's still a pretty large Pokemon. Based on pictures of the two, it looks physically impossible for Fletchinder to just swallow a Shellos whole. There's nothing wrong with a Fletchinder eating the Shellos, it's just the manner in which it was done.

Grammar Stuff
Your grammar is pretty spot on, so there's not really much of anything to comment on here. There's just two things I wanted to address since they happened repeatedly through the story, so I feel like I should address it for that reason.

The comma after the ellipsis (the three dots following "well") isn't needed. The ellipsis works just fine by itself. Also in the above quote, the comma after sighed should be a period as that would be the end of a sentence. "Looks" would also need to be capitalized in this case since it starts a new sentence.

Decision Stuff + Length
aka the awkwardly named stuff because idk how to name this section while also maintaining the fact that length and the decision of whether or not you get your pokemon all in one. idk. we'll figure it out over time.

Anyways, now that I'm done rambling, two Simples with an MCR of 10k at the lowest, you're at 13778, so you're at about the middle range for that. Everything was pretty well done, excluding a few small things with detail, the impossibility of a Fletchinder being able to swallow a Shellos whole, and the single grammar issue. It's two Simple ranked Pokemon, and I see no reason to fail them, so I'll go ahead and say Fletchling and Shellos captured. Enjoy your shiny new Pokemon~!