Apopheniac
Bulbapædist
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2024
- Messages
- 42
- Reaction score
- 25
- Pronouns
- He/Him
A young man seeks to strengthen his Pokémon with an unconventional meal.
This work is submitted for the 2025 Winter Roundtable event, incorporating the theme "City Secrets."
content warnings: cigarettes, allusions to violence and death
Beneath the shade of the mountains, the winter air held still and frigid in the late afternoon of Mistralton City. Urban life quieted at this time of year, the streets empty as the sun set before the evening hours. Even with the first snowfall of the season yet to come, a stark gloom seemed to permeate the concrete and brick of the city's fabric.
Through this chilling atmosphere, on a placid road towards the western outskirts of town, a Pokémon bounded down the pavement. Grotesque and malodorous, its swart and rugged hide rippling and rolling with each footfall, Trucy appeared an archetypal example of a Garbodor. Its visage, wide eyes and open maw set against the turgid remains of a dark green trash bag, pivoted wildly to meet its surroundings.
Accompanying behind was Trucy’s Trainer, a young man named Duncan. Unbothered by his Pokémon’s inexhaustible enthusiasm or vile stench, he wore a blue argyle sweater under a maroon hoodie, though the wispy mustache and constellation of pimples on his face betrayed his youth despite his fashion sense.
At the side of the road was a junkyard enclosed by a chain link fence. Upon reaching its gate, the pair slowed to pass through and enter. Amidst the brush and rows of wrecked cars, a young woman with teal hair in a gray jumpsuit leaned against a signpost, smoking a cigarette. Pinned to the jumpsuit was a nametag, scuffed and scratched, that identified her as Hannah.
Haltingly, Duncan spoke up. “Excuse me, could you help me?”
Hannah plucked the cigarette from her mouth and exhaled without turning to face Duncan. “With what?”
“I was looking to see if you had any auto wreckage that you could part with. I’m a Pokémon Trainer raising a Garbodor, and I was looking for something nasty to feed it.”
“Can’t you go to the dump?” she asked.
Duncan shook his head. “Landfills don’t like to deal with Garbodor. Besides…” He trailed off a bit before explaining. “We lost to Skyla the other day and I’d like to get back at her.”
Hannah raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond.
Duncan continued. “Cars are full of hazardous materials. Electrical, gas, metals. Those make Garbodor’s poison more toxic. It’d help give us an edge in the rematch.”
Hannah paused for a moment. The cloud of apathy receded as a slight smile crept across her face. “Skyla’s a real piece of work. I’d love to stick it to her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” The slight smile turned abruptly into a grimace as she took another puff of the cigarette. “One of my ex-boyfriends cheated on me with her.” She then turned to Trucy, who had been waiting patiently next to Duncan, and spat the smoldering butt into the Pokémon’s expectant mouth.
Hannah stood up straight, to which Duncan stepped back instinctively, and resumed speaking. “We got a bad wreck in just today from the insurance auction. Some rich guy slammed into a tree. Awful crash, dude died, car is totaled. Nothing worth taking and no one wants to touch it. Your Garbodor can have at it. It’s this way.”
Hannah turned to her right and strode briskly through a row of wreckage. Duncan hesitated briefly, looking at Trucy, before turning to his left and following behind. Trucy let out a belch of smoke, which briefly flickered with the cigarette butt’s remnant embers, and tagged along behind its Trainer.
“Your name?” she called back to him.
“It’s Duncan. You’re Hannah?” he responded.
“Yep. And Garbodor’s?”
“Trucy.”
“Got any other Pokémon?”
“Mark and Phil, er, Maractus and Frillish. But I left them back at the Trainers’ Hostel.”
The three tread on through the junkyard. Hannah attempted to keep the conversation afloat.
“So what kinds of trash does Trucy usually eat?”
“Trucy wants anything you don't,” Duncan remarked. “When I was younger, I had a messy bedroom, and one day I found Trucy in there. Don’t know how she got in, but she had eaten some soda cans and the dust on the shelves. But she’s pretty good about leaving things alone if she knows you want to hang on to them.”
Trucy gurgled in assent. A tube on the tip of its tumid right arm dripped a green fluid, and a narrow trail of scorch marks in the dirt denoted the Pokémon’s wake.
“I think she might have eaten my baby teeth,” Duncan added.
“You know what’s in dust?” Hannah asked.
“No? I’ve never thought about it.”
“It’s mostly dead skin cells. They flake off your body and pile up.”
“So Trucy’s been eating me?”
“Just the bits you weren’t too attached to,” Hannah chuckled.
Duncan didn’t respond to that remark. Soon, Hannah stopped at what looked to be a particularly brutal wreck of what was once a blue car of some kind, then turned to face Duncan and Trucy.
“Do what you want with this one. You’re a nice kid, so it’s on the house. François will help you bust it up.”
As Hannah gestured to the scrapped vehicle, she produced a Poké Ball from her jumpsuit pocket and tossed it lightly, releasing an insect Pokémon covered in gray armor with a red fringe above the helmet. Its arms were spears with red stripes.
“Hit it, François.”
The Escavalier lunged at the wreck with right arm extended and swung around, tearing the passenger side door off and heaping what was left of the engine's components on top, then withdrew. Debris poured out from underneath the crumpled hood of the former vehicle.
On top of the pile of broken parts was the car's battery, punctured by François’ pike and leaking acid. Trucy waddled towards it, lifted the battery with both arms, widened its jaws, then swallowed the battery whole. It went down noiselessly and left no trace. The battery was followed by a fistful of broken glass, which made a horrific grinding noise as it was ingested.
As it noshed on the mangled auto parts, Trucy’s body bloated and bulged, causing its hide to creak and groan under the strain, while the tubes at the ends of its arms frothed with a pale yellow foam. The pastel-colored pustules that adorned its body throbbed chaotically, almost threatening to burst.
“The driver’s seat looks like it’s unstable. Can you pull that out?” Hannah asked.
“Sure thing,” replied Duncan. He walked around Trucy and its meal, careful to give them a wide berth, and, with some effort, yanked the back of the crushed driver’s seat out of the collapsed cabin and lifted it. Something on the headrest caught his eye in the dim twilight. Though the leather upholstery was ripped and torn, some sections seemed to be uniquely rippled and bubbled. Duncan squinted and touched the surface, then realized: this was the result of an Acid Spray attack, like those that Trucy used.
As he ejected the headrest from the top of the seat, Duncan deliberated on what this meant. Didn’t this wreck come from an auction or something? Shouldn’t someone else have noticed this? How would an Acid Spray be used in the car, anyway? He knew that Trubbish and Garbodor could learn the move, but would someone really want to drive with one in the passenger seat? It didn’t make sense. Unless it was from another Pokémon…
“You gonna feed that to Trucy?” Hannah asked, interrupting Duncan’s train of thought.
“I think…” Duncan stumbled, choosing his words carefully. There was another Pokémon that used Acid Spray that was also small and nimble enough to have conceivably entered a moving vehicle. “I think an Accelgor may have attacked the person who drove this car.”
Hannah frowned. “What makes you say that?”
“This part looks like it was hit by an Acid Spray,” Duncan responded. “It's a move those Pokémon can use.”
“Let me see that. François, a little help, please.”
Dutifully, the Escavalier approached Duncan, skewered the headrest he had been holding, then pivoted toward Hannah. Hannah pulled the headrest from François’ lance until it fell off, then turned to Trucy and shoved the piece into its gaping mouth.
“What? Isn’t that–” Duncan stuttered.
“Don't strain your brain, kid,” Hannah smirked. “It's a free lunch. There's nothing for you to know.”
“But, it–”
“The mademoiselle enjoyed her delicious meal at Café Casse, non?” she mocked, her taunt dipping into a Kalosian accent.
Trucy bobbed its head and drooled. Flecks of saliva, tinted a sickly green, spluttered from its mouth and stained the ground beneath it.
Hannah sneered at Duncan. “You and Trucy have been so helpful in disposing of this mess. It would be a shame if François here had to get… more involved. You do want to stick around to challenge the Gym Leader, don't you?”
Duncan gulped and nodded silently. Trucy let out a rumbling yelp.
Now Hannah was grinning widely. “Let's see what kind of poison Trucy’s cooked up.” From the interior pocket of her jumpsuit, she plucked a magazine bearing a glossy photo of Skyla on its cover. With a flick of her wrist, Hannah flung it skyward, sending it sailing above Trucy.
Trucy grimaced and held its distended right arm straight upwards, braced with its left arm, and fired a brown, viscous Sludge Bomb at the airborne publication, engulfing it and dissolving it. The rancid blob burst as forcefully as it had been ejected into a shower of wretched globules. Standing amidst this noxious flurry, Trucy threw its head back and howled. On a curb somewhere in the streets of Mistralton, beneath the ascent of the crescent moon, a clutter of Trubbish howled back.
This work is submitted for the 2025 Winter Roundtable event, incorporating the theme "City Secrets."
content warnings: cigarettes, allusions to violence and death
Beneath the shade of the mountains, the winter air held still and frigid in the late afternoon of Mistralton City. Urban life quieted at this time of year, the streets empty as the sun set before the evening hours. Even with the first snowfall of the season yet to come, a stark gloom seemed to permeate the concrete and brick of the city's fabric.
Through this chilling atmosphere, on a placid road towards the western outskirts of town, a Pokémon bounded down the pavement. Grotesque and malodorous, its swart and rugged hide rippling and rolling with each footfall, Trucy appeared an archetypal example of a Garbodor. Its visage, wide eyes and open maw set against the turgid remains of a dark green trash bag, pivoted wildly to meet its surroundings.
Accompanying behind was Trucy’s Trainer, a young man named Duncan. Unbothered by his Pokémon’s inexhaustible enthusiasm or vile stench, he wore a blue argyle sweater under a maroon hoodie, though the wispy mustache and constellation of pimples on his face betrayed his youth despite his fashion sense.
At the side of the road was a junkyard enclosed by a chain link fence. Upon reaching its gate, the pair slowed to pass through and enter. Amidst the brush and rows of wrecked cars, a young woman with teal hair in a gray jumpsuit leaned against a signpost, smoking a cigarette. Pinned to the jumpsuit was a nametag, scuffed and scratched, that identified her as Hannah.
Haltingly, Duncan spoke up. “Excuse me, could you help me?”
Hannah plucked the cigarette from her mouth and exhaled without turning to face Duncan. “With what?”
“I was looking to see if you had any auto wreckage that you could part with. I’m a Pokémon Trainer raising a Garbodor, and I was looking for something nasty to feed it.”
“Can’t you go to the dump?” she asked.
Duncan shook his head. “Landfills don’t like to deal with Garbodor. Besides…” He trailed off a bit before explaining. “We lost to Skyla the other day and I’d like to get back at her.”
Hannah raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond.
Duncan continued. “Cars are full of hazardous materials. Electrical, gas, metals. Those make Garbodor’s poison more toxic. It’d help give us an edge in the rematch.”
Hannah paused for a moment. The cloud of apathy receded as a slight smile crept across her face. “Skyla’s a real piece of work. I’d love to stick it to her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” The slight smile turned abruptly into a grimace as she took another puff of the cigarette. “One of my ex-boyfriends cheated on me with her.” She then turned to Trucy, who had been waiting patiently next to Duncan, and spat the smoldering butt into the Pokémon’s expectant mouth.
Hannah stood up straight, to which Duncan stepped back instinctively, and resumed speaking. “We got a bad wreck in just today from the insurance auction. Some rich guy slammed into a tree. Awful crash, dude died, car is totaled. Nothing worth taking and no one wants to touch it. Your Garbodor can have at it. It’s this way.”
Hannah turned to her right and strode briskly through a row of wreckage. Duncan hesitated briefly, looking at Trucy, before turning to his left and following behind. Trucy let out a belch of smoke, which briefly flickered with the cigarette butt’s remnant embers, and tagged along behind its Trainer.
“Your name?” she called back to him.
“It’s Duncan. You’re Hannah?” he responded.
“Yep. And Garbodor’s?”
“Trucy.”
“Got any other Pokémon?”
“Mark and Phil, er, Maractus and Frillish. But I left them back at the Trainers’ Hostel.”
The three tread on through the junkyard. Hannah attempted to keep the conversation afloat.
“So what kinds of trash does Trucy usually eat?”
“Trucy wants anything you don't,” Duncan remarked. “When I was younger, I had a messy bedroom, and one day I found Trucy in there. Don’t know how she got in, but she had eaten some soda cans and the dust on the shelves. But she’s pretty good about leaving things alone if she knows you want to hang on to them.”
Trucy gurgled in assent. A tube on the tip of its tumid right arm dripped a green fluid, and a narrow trail of scorch marks in the dirt denoted the Pokémon’s wake.
“I think she might have eaten my baby teeth,” Duncan added.
“You know what’s in dust?” Hannah asked.
“No? I’ve never thought about it.”
“It’s mostly dead skin cells. They flake off your body and pile up.”
“So Trucy’s been eating me?”
“Just the bits you weren’t too attached to,” Hannah chuckled.
Duncan didn’t respond to that remark. Soon, Hannah stopped at what looked to be a particularly brutal wreck of what was once a blue car of some kind, then turned to face Duncan and Trucy.
“Do what you want with this one. You’re a nice kid, so it’s on the house. François will help you bust it up.”
As Hannah gestured to the scrapped vehicle, she produced a Poké Ball from her jumpsuit pocket and tossed it lightly, releasing an insect Pokémon covered in gray armor with a red fringe above the helmet. Its arms were spears with red stripes.
“Hit it, François.”
The Escavalier lunged at the wreck with right arm extended and swung around, tearing the passenger side door off and heaping what was left of the engine's components on top, then withdrew. Debris poured out from underneath the crumpled hood of the former vehicle.
On top of the pile of broken parts was the car's battery, punctured by François’ pike and leaking acid. Trucy waddled towards it, lifted the battery with both arms, widened its jaws, then swallowed the battery whole. It went down noiselessly and left no trace. The battery was followed by a fistful of broken glass, which made a horrific grinding noise as it was ingested.
As it noshed on the mangled auto parts, Trucy’s body bloated and bulged, causing its hide to creak and groan under the strain, while the tubes at the ends of its arms frothed with a pale yellow foam. The pastel-colored pustules that adorned its body throbbed chaotically, almost threatening to burst.
“The driver’s seat looks like it’s unstable. Can you pull that out?” Hannah asked.
“Sure thing,” replied Duncan. He walked around Trucy and its meal, careful to give them a wide berth, and, with some effort, yanked the back of the crushed driver’s seat out of the collapsed cabin and lifted it. Something on the headrest caught his eye in the dim twilight. Though the leather upholstery was ripped and torn, some sections seemed to be uniquely rippled and bubbled. Duncan squinted and touched the surface, then realized: this was the result of an Acid Spray attack, like those that Trucy used.
As he ejected the headrest from the top of the seat, Duncan deliberated on what this meant. Didn’t this wreck come from an auction or something? Shouldn’t someone else have noticed this? How would an Acid Spray be used in the car, anyway? He knew that Trubbish and Garbodor could learn the move, but would someone really want to drive with one in the passenger seat? It didn’t make sense. Unless it was from another Pokémon…
“You gonna feed that to Trucy?” Hannah asked, interrupting Duncan’s train of thought.
“I think…” Duncan stumbled, choosing his words carefully. There was another Pokémon that used Acid Spray that was also small and nimble enough to have conceivably entered a moving vehicle. “I think an Accelgor may have attacked the person who drove this car.”
Hannah frowned. “What makes you say that?”
“This part looks like it was hit by an Acid Spray,” Duncan responded. “It's a move those Pokémon can use.”
“Let me see that. François, a little help, please.”
Dutifully, the Escavalier approached Duncan, skewered the headrest he had been holding, then pivoted toward Hannah. Hannah pulled the headrest from François’ lance until it fell off, then turned to Trucy and shoved the piece into its gaping mouth.
“What? Isn’t that–” Duncan stuttered.
“Don't strain your brain, kid,” Hannah smirked. “It's a free lunch. There's nothing for you to know.”
“But, it–”
“The mademoiselle enjoyed her delicious meal at Café Casse, non?” she mocked, her taunt dipping into a Kalosian accent.
Trucy bobbed its head and drooled. Flecks of saliva, tinted a sickly green, spluttered from its mouth and stained the ground beneath it.
Hannah sneered at Duncan. “You and Trucy have been so helpful in disposing of this mess. It would be a shame if François here had to get… more involved. You do want to stick around to challenge the Gym Leader, don't you?”
Duncan gulped and nodded silently. Trucy let out a rumbling yelp.
Now Hannah was grinning widely. “Let's see what kind of poison Trucy’s cooked up.” From the interior pocket of her jumpsuit, she plucked a magazine bearing a glossy photo of Skyla on its cover. With a flick of her wrist, Hannah flung it skyward, sending it sailing above Trucy.
Trucy grimaced and held its distended right arm straight upwards, braced with its left arm, and fired a brown, viscous Sludge Bomb at the airborne publication, engulfing it and dissolving it. The rancid blob burst as forcefully as it had been ejected into a shower of wretched globules. Standing amidst this noxious flurry, Trucy threw its head back and howled. On a curb somewhere in the streets of Mistralton, beneath the ascent of the crescent moon, a clutter of Trubbish howled back.
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