The Clothes of Comfort (R)

Mimikyu: Complex...30-40k mcr.
Character count: ~30.3k
No longer a WIP. Open to grading.

There are graphic images of violence in this story. Discretion is advised. Dark and ghost types live brutal lives...maybe not fairies so much but you get the idea.

The watch wrapped around Roderick’s disguise’s neck silently ticked as he walked through the ruins of the city’s industrial district. It was a peaceful place, even with the rusty steel and scrap metal laying around. Nature started to take over the abandoned factory houses: vines grew over the walls, grasses started to colonize the visible interiors, their exposed steel beams rusted to the color of blood amid its chipping paint. The ruins often reminded Roderick how curious how human society worked before they all died. This led him to think about the previous owner of the watch, but he guessed that the person who owned it died a while ago with the rest of the city.

It was just Roderick and and other industrial pokemon: Klink, Zubat, Voltorb, Grimer, Magnemite, Klefki, Gastly, perhaps a rare Rotom. They all kept each other company and made a community for themselves. Despite this, Roderick was fearful of a few. The Grimer would always try gang up on him and try steal his watch. The Klink, Klang, and Klinklang were territorial and would attack any sort of intruders of their home. He stayed away from the old chemical and car factories because they easily broke his disguise and nearly knocked him out from their Gear Grind. Luckily, he hadn’t encountered any Klink so far in his walk that day. He narrowly escaped an attack from a lone Grimer near one of the canals so his disguise was busted and he couldn’t wait to get home.

When atop a hill a few blocks away from his residence, Roderick stopped to look at the sun setting over the industrial wasteland. The orange sky matched the rust of the buildings. The sunset reminded him of how ignorant he was of what happened to the people who once worked here. He wasn’t around to witness the tragedy in the city, but his parents told him of how many people were there. His parents left him here and ran off to a different town without him. He never understood why they left him.

By the time Roderick got back to his home in an abandoned clothing factory, the twilight had set in. He went back to his work desk in the middle of the empty factory workhouse. Rows upon rows of tables lay abandoned littered with reminders of a recent past long gone.

~~

Tick tock, tick tock.

Roderick’s watched hit two silently as he continued repairing his disguise. The abandoned clothing factory had all the leftover thread and fabric imaginable to make his disguise and repair it accordingly. Despite being abandoned for who knows how long, the fabrics in there were mostly in good shape. Some of the bolts exposed to the leaking roof had mildew, but none of it was too damaging. The factory was only a had a faint smell of sulfur from the traces left behind from the wandering poison pokemon, but otherwise it was a comfortable home for Roderick.

Roderick was safe and rarely anything came in, save for the occasional Haunter, Gastly, Zubat, and Koffing visitor. The Klefki minded their own business; they usually wrapped themselves in the large bolts of felt.

“There,” Roderick uttered to himself as he tightened the final seam on his costume, “that should do it!”

Roderick then picked up his large watch and strapped it to his disguise’s neck. He was surprised it was still running. The watch had a plain, leather strap and had a silver casing, crystal glass, and golden text on a white background. It was a decent watch, and it served as an excellent complement to his disguise.

Roderick was very curious about its origins. He had nagging sense of curiosity about who owned it. On the reverse side of the watch’s casing there was an inscription reading, “N.S. 2047” in a large, cursive font. Roderick didn’t know what it mean. He asked some of the visiting Haunters by if that inscription made any sense but they also knew nothing.

Roderick slipped his disguise over his terrifying body and thought it felt just right. By then he was tired and knew that it was time to sleep. The Zubat and visiting Ghosts had gone out to hunt while the Klefki settled in for night in their velveteen comfort. Roderick’s little hovel was cherished. There, he fashioned a little bed for himself out of a cushion of a sofa he found wrapped in some of the factory’s finest silks. Roderick had a collection of various knick-knacks he found lying around the factory. He had a few spools of all kinds of different color threads, some the photos of families who no longer exist, and various little trinkets that reminded him a society that was were before.

But for now, everything was happy. He settled on his little cushion and went to sleep.

~~

The following day Roderick woke up to the sun creeping through the broken and tattered windows. The Gastly, Haunter, and Zubat already returned from their nightly adventures and were asleep. Roderick didn't want to wake them, lest incur their wrath.

Roderick didn’t mind the daylight. His disguise protected him from the sun’s harsh rays. But he he couldn’t go out very far because the watch dragging on his disguise was too heavy. Roderick took it upon himself to make a safe stand for his watch. He took the watch off from his disguise and hid it under his cushion, and then proceeded to go into the fabric storage areas. In the rows upon rows of fabrics in the factory’s storage facility, Roderick’s imagination only grew more vivid. He picked the cloth that was a deep violet—something dark to complement the gold characters in the face of the watch.

He scurried back to one of the work tables out in the main section of the factory. It took him the entire day to roll and cut the cloth to the proper length for it to be as thick as his watch, and be sturdy enough to stand up—as well as be as tall as himself.

When he finished tightening the last seam for his stand, night had fallen. The other ghosts: Haunter, Gastly, and a few Shuppets, had already left. Roderick returned to his hovel with his new stand as the Zubat fluttered out of the factory en masse to scavenge. He took the watch out from under his cushion and fastened it on the stand. It fit snuggly. Roderick was filled with the satisfaction that he finished another task successfully. As he settled in his silk, he sighed, still with a burning curiosity about its previous owner.

~~

Roderick awoke the next morning to discover that his watch had stopped right at 7:43. The clock’s internal battery died. Roderick’s heart dropped.

No thinking, he took the watch off the stand and ran it to his work desk. He slammed it several times on his desk, hoping to get it to work. Tears were streaming down his face. The commotion stirred the sleeping Zubat overhead, which cause them to swarm irrationally, scraing Roderick. He quickly hid under the desk holding the watch tightly to himself.

When the Zubat settled back down, he got out from under the desk, dried his tears and walked over to his hovel. Roderick looked at the stand he made for it, and in that moment he decided to leave his watch back on the stand while he would finally take action and find its owner in the city.

Roderick left the factory as fast as he could.

~~

The barren downtown was familiar. The trees on the sidewalk had broken through their little fences and dirty, abandoned cars randomly lined the streets. Some of the cars had broken windows, but the condition of most of the cars' paint were still decent. The roads were littered, cracked and the weeds made him feel like he was in a forest of panic. The people on the sidewalks were either mostly skeletons or skeletons with some decayed remnants tissue still attached. Most of the awful smells had gone by now, but nevertheless the street was haunting reminder of what happened a few years ago.

He went on his usual pattern: down 3rd street and past Elm where he would take a sip of the water gushing from the broken fire hydrant and then walk on over to what was the park and is now a forest of berry trees and bushes. He passed Ashbury Ave thinking about walking down it. Roderick never gone down that road before. It just wasn’t habit.

He noticed a faded sign on a building a few blocks down that looked like there was new human writing on it. Other townhouses and businesses had large red x’s painted on them or still had yellow tape dangling off. Roderick wondered if it was new. It was spray painted in neon lime green letters. It looked a bit faded which meant it was up for a while, but Roderick had no memory of the spray paint being there before. He decided to take the risk and approach the supposedly long-abandoned shop.

As he approached the storefront, the glass was broken in. There was a little hallway with long display cases with toppled mannequins among the broken glass. Roderick carefully walked up to the platform, but couldn’t help nicking his disguise. The store’s lights were off, and it smelled moldy. It was apparent that this store was exposed to the elements for some time, but it also smelled distinctly different than just mold and mildew. There was something else that was putrid emanating from the back.

He walked inside the abandoned store. The clothes closest to the broken windows were the most faded. Roderick felt a little upset at the disrepair of the fabrics around. He approached the back of the store and noticed there was a door with a large rolling chair in front of it. It was plastic with a felt-covered cushion. Some of the foam was exposed. He pushed the chair away with his ghostly claws and pulled the knob open. He was very curious about what was behind that door.

He thought, “Could it be a human?”

A wafting air of stench greeted Roderick when he opened the door. The walls were lined with canned food. Dirty, smelly clothes lined the floor; there were little plastic bags everywhere. Roderick held his breath; the stench was so bad it made his eyes water even from beneath his disguise.

In the pile of garbage and filth, Roderick saw something that looked like an emaciated, old man cowering in a ball. The man only had his filthy underwear on a dirty mattress. He was breathing loudly and heavily.


He growled, “Get out. Now”

Roderick chirped, “Mimi—”

“OUT! NOW!”

The person stumbled as he sat up on his mattress. He was sweaty, had greasy, long, unkempt hair, and a huge, gray beard. It was clear there were scraps of food and foul things in that beard. His eyes were pallid and sunken. It was apparent he did not go out much. Insanity marred his face.

The man quivered and coughed. He yelled, “Out...OUT!!! There’s no one else!!! No one left!!! I’m alone! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!”

The man got up from his mattress, which terrified Roderick. Before the man could angrily stumble over to him, Roderick already had left the room. Roderick shut the door behind him and stopped to catch his breath. He could hear that the man was started to cry and crawl back into a ball on his mattress. Roderick left the store as fast as he could run. Roderick could hear the wailing of the man even from outside the store front.

“Why!! WHY didn’t I die!?” He heard the muffled wailing from afar.

Roderick stood outside the store for a few moments waiting for the wailing to die down. Once it was over, he sighed. He looked down further on Ashbury Ave and pondered if he should continue. It seemed endless. Roderick thought that the loneliness that man felt must have been crushing. For Roderick it was perfectly normal.

Upon walking back to his to his safe space he wondered what kind life the man had before the virus. Was he a successful banker? Proud businessman? Husband and father? Whoever he was, he appeared to be the only man left in the town alive.

~~

By the time he returned back home, it was very late in the afternoon; the day’s journey took a number on his energy and decided to take a nap. As Roderick went to sleep in his little hovel he couldn’t help but stare at the stopped watch on the holder. He wondered if it belonged to that man.

After the nap, he woke up to some activity stirring in the main room of the sweatshop--something unusual--like scrounging around in all of the cloth. It was still late-afternoon, so it could not have possibly been the Zubat leaving to forage. He went to investigate, could it have been something benign like a lost Ratatta, or something worse?

Roderick saw a bundle of cloth moving on a desk; the thing under it was much too large to be a Ratatta. He approached the moving hump and thought the air felt chillier with a nascent sense of...rage? It must be another ghost, he thought. Roderick pulled the cloth off the desk and there was a dark gray doll with a zippered mouth with severe, pink eyes. It seemed to have claws made of stuffed fabric but also looked extremely sharp at the ends. The Banette had a huge tear on her tummy and some of her ghostly cotton stuffing was spilling out. She it was clear that she was desperately tried to sew itself back together, but was having trouble with sewing with her cloth claws.

The Banette was shocked to see Roderick; she must have thought this place was abandoned.

Roderick asked, concerned for the Banette’s health, “are you hurt?”

Banette snapped, “Who are you and what do you care; and yes; what does it fucking look like!?”

Roderick was confused, but nevertheless, he continued, this time sounding more concerned, “I don’t like seeing other ghosts in pain. I’m pretty solitary myself but I like to consider myself an expert of helping others when they need them.”

“I don’t need any help.”

“Fine, sew yourself back together. But I have the best thread in the whole factory in my hovel. The strings you have there won’t stitch you right”

Banette was taken aback by how much he knew about sewing and floated behind Roderick back to his hovel.

Both having clumsy claws, the two ghosts worked through the night to stitch Banette’s injury back together. When the work was done the stitching was not beautiful, but worked.

Roderick said to Banette as he tightened the last stitch, “you should sleep over tonight. Let the wound heal up inside.”

“Oh, but I must leave,” said Banette worried.

“Why,” Roderick was curious.

“I have been running...running from them.”

Roderick’s eyes widened from beneath his costume. Perhaps it was the part fairy in him that kept him concerned for his new friend. “From whom”

“I… can’t tell you. They’re relentless!”

Banette looked over to the crystal and silver watch looming besides the ghosts, “that beautiful watch is only going to attract them. They are the gremlins of the night. They will take all the jewels from this town one person by one. And then, the great part is that they ate them all.”

Her voice turned serious, "the Sableye in this town know no mercy and they are after me! They will take whatever’s valuable and take it for themselves!"

“I don’t think that’s right. I think that watch has an owner.”

The Banette was suspicious, “Oh, and how do you know?”

Roderick went over to his stand and took off the watch. The watch fell through his ghostly claws and clinked when it hit the floor. Roderick picked up the watch, now with his claws more tangible, and brought it over to Banette. Roderick shown the back side of the watch to Banette.

“See,” Roderick started, “someone scratched something on it! I can’t read it, but it looks like human speak.”

Banette, “It does, but that doesn’t change anything about the Sableye taking what’s not theirs. They’re hungry, so you better hide it.”

Roderick gasped, holding the watch tighter.

“I guess I can stay over for the night; they do seem to have missed my trail long enough to be safe. I’m Denise, by the way.”

“I’m Roderick.”

Denise turned away from Roderick and left his hovel, saying, “Nice meeting ya.” Roderick presumed she found somewhere to sleep for the night. Roderick placed the watch back on the stand, got on his cushion, sighed, and went to sleep. He hoped that the Sableye wouldn’t steal his watch.

By the next morning Roderick awoke a bit later than usual only to find the watch missing from its stand! A string of panic ripped across Roderick as he frantically looked around for Denise. She was nowhere to be found either! Roderick was scared, what if he could never find that watch again and never return it to its owner!? He had to find it!

Roderick remembered that Denise talked about the Sableye that stole all the gems. Could the Sableye have taken his watch!? Perhaps he should go to a jewelry store; but which one?

Panicking, he darted out of his home and headed straight for downtown. A few blocks away from where he encountered that man there was a large jewelry store. He went inside but the place was picked clean without a trace of either Denise or a Sableye. Store after store, all the jewelry stores in the town were completely looted without a trace of anything valuable. It was very frustrating for Roderick to come up empty like that. By then the sun was setting and he was tired. He had to go back to his home.

When he returned, something else was amiss. He walked over to his hovel, only to find it destroyed! All the personal memorabilia of the formerly employed were scattered about; his precious thread collection was missing, and his bed was torn by someone slicing it. There was foam stuffing everywhere. Tears started to well up in him. He was certainly hurt and confused to see his home like that.

A nearby Haunter came over and looked terrified. It told Roderick, “I’m glad you’re here! It was terrifying what happened here! There was a huge fight between a Sableye and a Banette! The Banette ran off with a watch but I haven’t seen them return!”

Roderick was shocked, “oh no! Do you know where they went!?”

“No, sorry. It was a big fight. They mentioned something about a warehouse but I’m not sure what that meant. Could be anything, really.”

Roderick thanked the Haunter and let it go off to do its business. A sense of dread washed over him at the thought of a Sableye eating his watch and torturing his friend! He had to find them!

He darted outside the factory looking for any trace of either ghost. Both were both very small in a very large city. The sun was setting, so being outside this late made Roderick nervous around such a rusty environment. Bust safety was not on his mind; the thought Denise and the watch missing compelled him to charge into the city’s abandoned industrial center.

It was terrifying. There were so many poison and steel pokemon outside and the moon was beginning to come out. This made him feel like he was walking towards a death trap. Nevertheless, he looked for any sign of light emanating from the long string of abandoned warehouses. Eventually, Roderick came across a warehouse that he had seen before. It was huge for his size but saw a gap in the wall large enough for two little ghosts to sneak in. He caught a glimpse of some sort of shimmering light. Roderick felt a rush of excitement as he quickly, but quietly, sneaked over beside the hole. He listed carefully for anyone inside and heard faint echoes of high-pitched cackling. That was the laughter of several Sableye when they found their prize.

Roderick peeked inside and was horrified. Roderick saw piles of Carbink upon piles of jewels amidst all of the rust and decay of the building. The Carbink were trapped due to their natural fear of metal. There were also small, dark purple Sableyes of all shapes and sizes running around the mess. Some were trying out different gems for eyes while others were munching on the corpses of the helpless rock fairies. Roderick couldn’t see Denise anywhere, and he grew concerned.

He let out a sigh and a squeak which he promptly shut himself up. He hoped the Sableye inside didn't hear that. Roderick ran away as fast as he could from the building, but before he could go any reasonable distance, he felt a sharp, fiery burn on his back as he was enveloped in a quick cloud of blue fire. The fire quickly dissipated, and Roderick was left burned. He stung all over; one of the Sableye must have burned him with a Will-O-Wisp.

He turned around to see three large Sableye looking at him curiously. One of them pointed their little ghostly fingers at him and made an obnoxious face at Roderick. Roderick became angered! Roderick ran directly to that Sableye and tackled it in a cloud of punches, scratches, and wooden tail bashing. The Sableye took quite some damage but then the other Sableye emerged from the warehouse to investigate. Other Sableye continued to make weird faces at him. He couldn't bear it and gave them their rough play! A few punches and tail bashes missed but still Roderick pursued. One Sableye fired a shadow ball at him and broke the head of his disguise! It fell sheepishly to his side. Roderick would have normally been upset, was too enveloped rage to care.

Several more Sableye crawled out of the hole in the warehouse. They fired off tiny shadow balls left and right. One Sableye came out with its mouth covered in light blue, crystalline particles around its mouth. It let out a wave of dark energy that hit Roderick right as it was running towards it to play rough. The instance the pulse gruesome images of a Sableye smashing a Crabink's head open to eat its gems paralyzed Roderick in fear. This lead to an opening for the others to fire off more shadow balls. Each ball hurt every time it landed! Roderick couldn't handle the constant barrage of attacks and he gave out. He fainted among the crowd of cackling Sableye.

~~

Roderick woke up hours later behind some rusty iron bars. He looked around and saw the whole clan of Sableye sleeping on their captive Carbink throughout the warehouse. The smell was awful. There was blood, Carbink remains, and jewelry scattered everywhere. Roderick was horrified at thought of the carnage that went on in here. He wondered where the Gabite that usually monitor these pokemon. He looked to the side of his metal cage and saw what looked like a doll--it was had to tell with the lighting. Upon closer look, Roderick saw that it was Denise! She had the watch sewed on her belly! Roderick got as close to the metal bars of his cage would allow; he was afraid to get too close as his disguise was still busted.

He chirped, "Hey, are you ok?"

Denise was unresponsive. Perhaps she was sleeping?

Roderick picked up his wooden tail to poke Denise awake. On the third poke Denise woke up in shock.

Roderick, whispering Denise, "Hey, it's me!!"

"Oh! How did you find me!?"

"I asked a Haunter what happened and he said you fought a Sableye! He mentioned something about a warehouse! I wanted to know if you were ok!"

"Oh no," said Denise filled with regret, "I shouldn't have brought this upon you. Accepting your help was mistake!"

"Why and why did these Sableye attack you?"

"It is a long story."

"Well we're not going anywhere!"

Denise sighed. "You see, the story starts before my involvement. The Sableye Clan mutinied on their Gabite overlords when the miners taught the wild Sableye moves. Then the people died and then they staged a rebellion against their Gabite rulers. Then, they’ve run amok stealing everything valuable and owner-less around town as well as hoarding Carbink from the mines. There was no one to stop them so they've multiplied and are feasting on all the gems the humans left behind.

"Now, here is where I come into the picture..."

Roderick gave Denise his full attention.

She continued, "I had a trainer that died about a year ago and he was very rich. He had a safe containing who knows what. When the Sableye finally killed their Gabite overlord, they went on a rampage through town. When they broke in to my old home they sniffed what was in the family safe. Wanting to protect my trainer's legacy, I didn't want them breaking in my home and stealing it so tore my stuffing up and hid the combination and key inside of me. They didn't like that and tried to tear it out! I guess, I'm sorry, my smell must have led them to you! The only way I knew to protect myself was to sew your watch to myself and hope that they’ve forgotten about the key inside me! Your watch has died…I’m sorry!

Roderick took a moment to process this. “You…”

“Roderick, please! I was scared! I’m sorry!”

Roderick had a tear well up. He couldn’t believe that Denise stole his watch to save herself, but he also thought how he would do that same thing in that situation. He swallowed, knowing that there were more important issues at hand. In a tearful voice, “I came to rescue you!"

"That's so kind of you, but how!? Your disguise is busted, and these iron bars will hurt you more than me!"

Roderick asked, "can you protect me with a cotton guard? I can mimic it so that I can squeeze through the bars easy! I know we both can sneak in the shadows so that we won’t disturb the Sableye. We have to go fast, else we might be their dinners!"

Denise was surprised at such an insightful thing coming from a cute little fairy such as Roderick.

Roderick quietly cheered, "you first!"

Denise agreed, closed her eyes and became fluffier and fatter, tightening her seams. Roderick closed his eyes like Denise and his disguise ballooned as it filled up with life again. The two ghosts carefully, though more awkwardly, squeezed through the rusty bars. A loose thread on Roderick's disguise caught on the rust and as Roderick maneuvered through the bars the faster it slipped. Roderick couldn't help but squirm noisily as he tried to free himself. His wooden tail clanged against the metal.

Denise snapped at Roderick, "Shh!! Do you not want to wake the whole colony up!?"

"Sorry, but I'm stuck! If I want to go quietly I'll have to slip into the shadows without my disguise!"

One or two of the Sableye stirred from the noise.

Denise demanded, "take it off!"

"NO!"

"Shh!!! You'll wake up the Sableye!"

The stuffed Denise waddled to the trapped Roderick to help untangle him. After about twenty seconds of fiddling, Roderick finally managed to unhook himself. As he took the first stop out, however, he didn't see a pointed diamond on the floor and stepped directly on it.

Roderick let out a yelp and clanged his tail hard on the cage. This woke one Sableye which just stared at Denise and Roderick, who stared it back at it, petrified. The Sableye screamed and ran around the warehouse, waking everything up in its path. Roderick and Denise quickly exchanged looks of fear and shadow sneaked towards their exit.

As they passed through the shadows of each Sableye, another Sableye woke. Shadow Balls and Dark Pulses were thrown left and right, some tried to Will-o-Wisp but all, but three attacks hit Roderick and Denise! There were a few Shadow Sneaking Sableye, but they couldn't match the speed of Roderick and Denise. By this time their Cotton Guards had worn off and they were their normal thickness.

Outside the warehouse were several large, rusty tanks. They smelled of sulfur. Denise and Roderick quickly hid behind them.

Denise whispered to Roderick, "my masters were petroleum magnates. They always smelled of this stuff when they came home from the refinery. I’ve seen a lot of pictures of them exploding around open flames."

Roderick looked at Denise and whispered, "you think..."

Roderick quickly detached the tail from his disguise and both Roderick and Denise shadow sneaked away to a nearby warehouse. Just then, a Sableye from the warehouse caught a sight of Roderick's wooden tail and decided to burn it. He sent a little blue ball of fire towards the can, and missed.

Roderick and Denise quickly ran off before a second Will-o-Wisp could be sent. The second Will-o-Wisp hit Roderick’s tail and it caught fire. Moments later a large explosion was heard from outside the warehouse, causing the entire front wall to collapse in on itself and followed by the roof caving in. Most of the Sableye died but the captive Carbinks were okay. The Carbinks, though disoriented, floated out as fast as a Carbink could. They didn't even look seared emerging from the flames.

By the time they passed Roderick's home, he nearly collapsed from tiredness. He invited Denise to sleep over and be with him when Roderick would give the man his watch back. She needed a home as well. He found a cushion for her and he found another one to use for his bed. He helped Denise make her hovel while she helped him repair his. When they were done, they seemed to have grown to be good friends.

~~

The following day, Roderick's disguise was still busted. He didn't mind; he had the time and a friend to help him with it later. Now was the final chapter in his journey: time to return the watch!

He carefully unwed the watch from Denise's body with some scissors he found on a desk. He just needed to cut one string really, and the watch slipped right off. They went back to that clothes store in town. It smelled just like it did the day he first found out about it, but worse.

He showed Denise the backroom door and knocked on it.

"WHAT GO AWAY!"

"Mimi--" he cried.

A sound emanated from behind the door "OH NO THAT LITTLE FUCKING FAIRY! WHY DON'T YOU FUCK OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE LIKE I ASKED!?"

Roderick was hurt by that, and after going through what he did in the past few days made him break down in tears. Denise grew angry. She hopped into the shadow of the door.

He heard, "Huh, who the fuck are you?"

"Ban-ETTE!"

Then the man screamed. "WAIT IS THAT MY WATCH OW! STOP THAT!!! THAT HURTS! YOU FU-," and then the screaming stopped.

Minutes passed.

Denise hopped from the shadows besides Roderick and said, "There, that awful man has his watch now. For good."

Roderick was happy now that he fulfilled his quest and they returned to the factory. She also had smirk on her face knowing that Roderick doesn't know won't hurt. They spent the rest of the day fixing his disguise and foraging in a life after people.

What Denise didn't tell Roderick is that she sewed the watch to his mouth shut.

 

Claiming.

 

Introduction

This introduction does the standard that most stories follow, which is introducing the settings and the character. This traditional way of going about it usually works fairly well, and there's efforts to put in world building. We have an immediate idea of where we are; a destroyed city after some vent that is now inhabited by Pokemon and abandoned, or rather, rid of humans. The main character, Roderick, tells us who he is pretty fast by his observations of his surroundings; collected and curious. The watch is a main point of interesting for him, and this stays true throughout the story. Meanwhile, we also learn more about the Pokemon in the city and his "home", in the best way to put it.


However, despite all of this, the area the story took in still felt...empty? Despite being told about what happened, and the Pokemon that lived in it, it still felt like it was empty and the only one taking up space was Roderick himself. A part that bothered me the most is that, in this description of the area, none of the Pokemon that are described possibly come into play, which I feel would have worked out in your favor since you could have had it foreshadow events in the story, which would have made the intro possibly feel a lot better and less open and close than I initially see it.


My biggest problem with this introduction though, is the fact that we hear this event that Roderick, although he may have not seen it, is mentioned all the time in the story. We're left with the simple name of it being "the tragedy". This constant reason for the lack of humans who currently live there has always confused me, because while the story tends to focus slightly around the idea of this tragedy and how its shaped the area and brings questions to a plot point later down the road, we don't know what it is except when you go later on in the story and see it’s a virus with about as many questions as just the tragedy. Roderick has been told about it multiple times from his parents, yet it’s never properly explained to us what this event is, or more importantly, how long ago it happened.


I came out of this intro with confusion mainly from this incident, because it sets up more questions later on in the story, and in my mind, possible contradiction of a character that comes in later on. This one line used as a simple description caused a lot more problems in the story later on, even though it was most likely just thrown in there as flavor text.

This line will be a huge game-changer in the plot and present problems that will be addressed later on in this grade. When you finish a story, I'd always say look over it to make sure it doesn't contradict any of the bulk of your story, and reaffirm that its the proper intro that SHOULD be used, or if it needs to be redone. I feel like description worked well in this introduction, and while there was some good thoughts in it, I left unsatisfied from it since there was a lack of connection from the story overall.




Plot

This plot, while being fairly unique at the beginning, felt like it eventually sunk into normal stereotypes and felt like it wanted to be something new and out of the blue for different sections of the story. I will be going over them, but I did have an interest in the story for most of it, so in that terms it was fairly easy to get through the story once started.


I'd consider the first part a little adventure story, in which Roderick lets us know about how it is where he lives and lets us know more overall about what his life has been like and the significance of the area and watch are, while quietly letting the reader know how he goes about his work, or rather, the narrator. This gives us what may have been lacking in the introduction, and honestly works more into the story as a secondary intro in case you wanted to know about Roderick. One of the lines that stuck to me and has bothered me is this:

This line felt out of character for what I had seen Roderick as so far. While most likely having a troublesome time making friends with people, he doesn't seem like someone that would be spiteful about this, and his character throughout the rest of the story seems to support this as well. Just a side comment, but something that could have defined the character early that I never saw happen again.


Its at this point too we find out what the "the tragedy" is, but it still feels unexplained. Its passed off as a virus, but this virus lacks any explanation and is referred to just that from then on. What caused it to kill off the humans? Why didn't it affect Pokemon? How LONG ago was this event? These questions sat with me throughout the story. But then, we had one main event happen in the story that shook it up. Roderick meeting a human who had most likely gone psychotic.


This hysterical man brought up a bunch of contradiction within the story that is too hard to pass up. Firstly, how come him (and previous people mentioned) have not passed away due to this virus? Or at the very least, how have they not passed away due to time? The line brought up previously about the rust brought the idea that this incident had happened long ago. Buildings usually won't rust for an upwards of possibly two hundred to three hundred years (this is according to some studies done for skyscrapers and buildings made with metal, concrete and the such seem to be entirely different). The idea of civilization getting destroyed thus far and practically rotting away seems to show that humans would have been gone years ago, but this one man, who remains central to the plot says otherwise. The lack of fluidity is concerning, and this is one of the main problems that it eventually brought to the plot.


Next, we move onto the meeting with Banette. I'm not going to go too in-depth with this, but I do have some issues to the way this was treated in terms of Banette's injury. It contradicts Pokemon logic that you had been following to near perfection till now. This one line in the biology of Banette summarizes it for me:


"Being driven to life by a powerful grudge, it keeps its life force safely in its body by the means of its zipped up mouth. If unzipped, it would lose its energy."


This injury to the stomach would lead me to believe that Banette would not be just tired from what she had been doing beforehand and from the injury. I would have thought that she would be near death, and Roderick would have more to add to the story as he would have to save her per say. I feel like that would have improved this part of the story, and added a better dynamic to follow up what happens later in the plot. This leads into Roderick's conversations wth her after.


I overall feel split on it. Roderick himself keeps up his normal personality, which is good, but the Banette seems to just do what she wants. She goes from strong anger, to sudden awe at Roderick, to acceptance all within a matter of sentences. This mix-up felt off and rushed. Roderick's response to what happens the next morning is properly done though, and I enjoyed his search for Banette and his watch. From this point though, I feel like we go into a terrain that's a mix of action and romance.


To not sit on this too long, we know that Roderick and Banette eventually work together to stop the Sableyes who were feasting on Carbinks after escaping from a prison cell by using moves available to the two of them. We also learned the backstory of Banette, who was using the watch to hide the ways to get into the safe in her body. As the two chat, they figure it out on their own and start finding an interest in each other. While I found the use of moves interesting, this whole scene felt like it was rushed and worked too conviently. I think if you had stayed on this scene for a little bit longer, and talked more about the conflict with the Sableyes, it would have worked better for the story. The conclusion and intro were good, but what we had left between those just felt too short.


And finally, we reach the conclusion of this story. While I like the idea that Roderick and the Banette who we now know as Denise became friends / possible lovers, what happens after is very off-putting. One main reason is that, despite finding the owner of the watch (which we could have guessed earlier but it didn't seem to be really obvious), I felt like Roderick would have still kept the watch. His encounter with the man previously and his interest for the watch seemed like he would have been persuaded otherwise, but he doesn't. Instead, the story just ends with the screamings of a mad man as Denise sewed the watch to his mouth.


If I'm going to be honest, I think this plot just suffers from two areas: pacing and character development and interactions. Some parts were treated slowly and explained well, while some areas were rushed and not given the time they needed to be built on. Most of the characters felt static to me, and the few times they did change it felt based more on convenience to plot rather than the characters improving on their own. Roderick's personality remains the same throughout the story and he doesn't changed, and he's constantly praised. Denise feels like she changes due to her relationship with Roderick, but the ending basically summarizes the similar thoughts that I had with her from when she was first introduced. The man, who only appeared twice, was disturbing and felt like he shouldn't have been mentioned as anything except maybe the watch owner, yet he becomes the resolution to the plot.


Due to this, the story just feels like it drags you on after you get through the real meat of it to finish. Areas of it have rushed action and lack of description you had previously. Contradictions between lines and reactions in the plot leave some scars, and the story feels like its losing the life it had at the start as you get closer to the end. While I read this through in one whole session, I don't know if I'd read it again since it just lacks anything particularly special about it to make me want to come back. Don't let this discourage you though, as I do want to see this story improve. If you work on the execution of it, I'm sure it could be amazing.


Grammar

If there's anything to take away before you read this, its to always go back through your story and proofread it if you can, or have someone else do it. Now, I’ve been told that many people have gone through your stories and most of the things I’m pointing out here will not be too in-depth.


One of the biggest grammatical issues with this story on its own is commas. There are multiple spots in this story where you are missing commas where they need to be. By the end of the story, I counted almost more than fifty commas that were missing from spots they needed to be. This was consistent throughout the entire story, and I advise that whenever you’re writing a story from here on out, to be aware of the sentences and if they could be missing something such as this. I’m not going to go every specific comma as that would take too long, but I do advise always proofreading and being aware of this factor when doing so.


Many other small things were scattered through the story that were random. Some words wouldn’t be capitalized, some words would be there that were just not needed and parts were lacking the proper words to make the sentence make more sense. Other times there would be completely unnecessary phrases or comments thrown in the story that had no meaning behind them and felt like padding. An example of such would be from this small bit:

Why did you add in the part about it being in Mimikyu speak? It seems so off the wall and random. We knew the Pokemon isn’t exactly speaking in English, so there is no need to give context in that form when they are purely speaking in our language for us, the readers, to understand. In stories, you do not see each sentence ended off with say, a dog talking in “dog speak”. Random little comments like these stand out and just seem thrown in there without much care to the sentence structure as a whole.


All these small factors make a huge difference in the long-run, and I can only encourage that you make sure to proof-read from here on out.


Summary

This grade took a very long time, and I took way longer on it than I should have. There are many things that I have covered in this grade that I hope you can implement in the future, but I know you’ve gotten a run-down on grammar multiple times from other graders. I did not go into description as I normally do as this grade tired me out as a writer and I, as your grader, have let you down by making it take so long.


However, I still finished it the best I can so that I can hopefully not only help you in getting the Pokemon as soon as I can, but with as much critique that I could bring myself to think of. For now, I do have to say Mimikyu does not pass, no matter how much I delayed this when I shouldn’t have. All I wish is for you to fix the grammar and I’ll look over it again, but I hope you take in mind my recommendations and thoughts on the plot and other factors for future stories. When you have finished proofreading the story and edit it, please let me know and I’ll do a quick re-evaluation. I hope to keep seeing more stories from you in the future, and I can only hope I never take this long for a grade in the future. I wish you hope that you may get your Mimikyu as soon as possible

 

Yeah! totally! I basically rewrote the story. It wound up a little shorter than original since it did have a lot of filler. Should should be ready to be regraded. @Lightning Dash