⊱ Roux ◦ POTHS ⊰

༻ Initiation ༺

He woke up with a start to the sound of mechanical wheezing and clanking gears. Then he squeezed his eyes shut again — the light was shockingly bright, and it hurt his eyes. 

He blinked several times and his eyes adjusted. His mind was blank, wiped, clean. Sunlight was shining from behind a series of stone walls that surrounded him. The walls were crumbling and covered with ivy growths, and what remained of the roof was scattered across the floor, among the dust and the dirt. Scraps of metal and shards of shattered glass lined the walls and stuck out from cracks in the tiles. Beyond the ruins stretched a lush, thick forest... no, a jungle. Vines swung down from the trees and bugs chirped eerily from within their dense branches. 

He tried to pull himself upright before realizing that something heavy was pinning him down. A huge hunk of machinery, covered in knobs and criss-crossed with pipes of all sizes, was pressing on his flank and hind legs. Had he been alive, his lung cavity would have collapsed and his entire lower body would have imploded under the pressure. But he wasn’t alive, not really — so he was awake once again. 

With a couple of heaves, the robotic Pokémon managed to roll the debris that was holding him down off to the side and off of him. As he pushed, an engraved marking on his foreleg caught his eye. Engraved into the metal was a series of markings:

X - 5 1 1

He hissed in horror when he saw the damage — his lower flank was practically caved in, dented and mangled in odd directions. His legs were all but flattened against the gritty tiled floor, and he couldn’t move them. They didn’t hurt, but he could feel a dull aching throughout his entire body. 

His vision started to fade out, and before he could panic about what was happening to him, he blacked out and his head hit the floor with a dull clunk. 

When he came to, he could see the last of his dents being pushed outward by some sort of internal force. A few more seconds, and his body was unscathed — he still had a few scratches, but now he was able to get to his feet and stand up on all fours. 

It was much later in the afternoon now, and the sun was hidden behind the treeline. The sky was cloudless and was beginning to turn pink along the horizon. The walls, though they were collapsing, seemed to be tremendously tall, and he couldn’t help but feel small among the ruins of this massive building. He began to wander around the rubble in a daze, but a few objects stood out to him as he explored. 

The first thing he noticed was his tail. While it was attached to him, he regarded it as a foreign object: it was large and heavy and it gleamed unnervingly in the dying sunlight. He was too tired to lift it, so he let it drag behind him in the dirt. 

There was a large, flat, and strangely shaped table off to one side. He noted that it was padded with some sort of cushion, and it was a little larger than himself. Four handcuffs were chained to opposite ends of the table. 

A small microchip was laying a couple of feet away from the table — it was smashed into pieces. 

The only working piece of technology seemed to be a large monitor leaning against one of the walls. It was leaning to the side and the screen was cracked, but when he prodded it with his paw the screen flickered and turned on. 

A splatter of dark, dried blood was stained onto a sheet of steel, propped up against one of the walls. He walked up to it and he could see his reflection in the rusted metal. A trail of small, round paw prints was walking away from the ruins, stained into the tiles. He shuddered and placed one of his paws over the print — it wasn’t his own, the marks were far too small and circular. 

A shard of pink crystal was laying beside the mirror-like metal. 

Suddenly, he wanted nothing more but to get out of there, as fast as he could. He turned around and left, without as much of a glance over his shoulder.