CHAPTER ONE - The Crime
canisaries
you should've known the price of evil
Hey all! After a few months of work, the first chapter of "the Andre fic" is complete and betaread. If you don't know this story's deal, I'll tell you right now: it's a story that takes place in the same universe as Hunter, Haunted and stars Andre, a character who will become important in HH's sequel whenever I manage to figure it out enough to actually write it. He's a painter, and sometimes he's a serial killer. In this story, you'll find out the how and why.
This story is only a few chapters long, projected to be three or four, and it can be read completely separately from HH. I've been having a pretty good rhythm with writing it, so my hope is that I'll actually update it more often than just every three months. The bad news is that it will most likely mean even slower updates for HH or even a full-on hiatus. But, well, I'm sure people are used to my terrible update speed already.
Content warnings: Blood, wounds, torture, murder, abuse and its consequences, misogyny, sexual themes, strong language. Rated mature.
With that out of the way, I'm done yapping. Here's the story. In terms of feedback preferences, I'm interested in what you think of the protagonist, but any feedback is appreciated. Thank you and enjoy.
Empty canvas.
He tried to fill it, but nothing would stick. Nothing inspired him enough to be worth putting down.
A heavy sigh left Andre’s lungs. During the past week, he’d slaved away at three commissions - one of them a portrait of a particularly nitpicky delcatty - and now that he was done and free to paint something just for his own joy again… nothing came.
But it wasn’t as if this was a surprise. That blank rectangle had plagued his mind ever since the morning, but he’d convinced himself that if he took the time to set up his painting station, the muse would surely sing. Alas, she did not. All he heard was the ambience of the city pouring in through his open window now that he’d already given up on music.
Shoulders slumped, he admitted defeat. This session was a bust.
Artist’s block was nothing new to Andre. He’d confronted that foe countless times ever since he first picked up a crayon. It was an inevitable part of any artist’s life, and it was up to each individual to find the battle strategies that worked for them.
Fortunately, Andre knew a technique that had served him well many times in the past: going out and meeting someone new. It was also something he probably ought to do after so many days cooped up in his apartment huffing paint thinner. Though it really worked better towards the evening… well, he’d find some way to kill the time until then. It was just a few hours.
He corked his thinner and linseed oil, washed his glass palette clean of the primaries he’d put down and began putting away the rest of his equipment. Once he grabbed the brushes, though, a stray thought interrupted him.
You might need those for acrylics.
He froze up.
No, he thought. It's too soon. It's only been…
It had been four months.
He blinked. It really had already been four months. It felt like a mistake, but no - the last time was in January, and now it was May.
There had been sufficient cooldown. It was possible to do ‘acrylics’ again.
He sighed. Oh, I just want a fun night out --
Are you shirking your duty?
He frowned. That thought was right. Now that he was able to do it, he had to.
But it was alright. Most likely, tonight would turn out just the way he wanted - a fun night out. There'd be no scumbags, and he wouldn't have to do anything. Most likely, he'd only need to be prepared. And that was easy enough. He probably had the money already. He should check that now…
He left the brushes out and headed to his bedroom. He walked up to the painting of the two corvisquire perched on a branch - not his own, but a gift from Katie - and lifted it away to reveal his safe. He looked around, even though he knew he was alone, and opened it.
He counted the bills inside. Yes, five thousand Galarish pounds. Enough to get rid of the evidence and the target's car on top if need be. If it wasn’t, the providers of the service certainly couldn’t blame him. They couldn’t exactly send out emails informing their clients about new pricing. And they knew he was a trustworthy customer. He’d pay the rest later after he’d had time to withdraw more cash.
He closed the safe, locked it, and lifted the painting back into place. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to open it again today.
Though if he did…
He knew he’d get all the inspiration he needed.
The city air was warm and dry, saturated with exhaust fumes and dust. It was one of those occasions when Andre was glad to have glasses, not contacts. Those little particles of sand probably weren’t good for the lenses, but better those than his eyes. Glasses could be replaced, his corneas couldn’t.
The walk from the nearest parking spaces was fortunately short, and he soon found himself at his destination: Shoemaker Street Bar, named creatively so after the street it was on. It was one of his secondary joints, a place to go whenever he felt the need to switch things up and see more new faces. It was also, as the rainbow flag in the window suggested, a place to meet men, which he'd decided to pursue tonight.
He couldn't see or hear much of the inside, but he could already tell the place was bustling. A sea of aura churned behind those doors, as diverse in moods as that rainbow flag was in colours, though not as evenly distributed - joy and peace clearly dominated the atmosphere. Andre smiled in response. It was nice to know the people inside were enjoying themselves. Hopefully he would too.
He opened the door and stepped through. Right away, his aura sense was proven correct, as most if not all tables were surrounded by people engaged in lively conversation. The air smelled of alcohol, but was well enough ventilated to lack the stench of sweat. The speakers near the ceiling played some club music, as generic as one would expect, though it could barely be heard over all the talking and intermittent laughter.
Andre took a closer look at the customers. Most were men, human men, but some groups had mon in the mix, and at least one group was made up of mon entirely. There were the typical ones often seen in human establishments - gardevoir, machoke, indeedee - but the sight of a crawdaunt made Andre pause. He scolded himself right after. If they wanted to be here, they had a right to be comfortable. He shouldn’t stare.
He turned his attention to the counter instead. Unlike the tables, there were plenty of spots to choose from. The outer corner, too, was vacant. Perfect. He made his way to the seat, stopping briefly to let a small group past him, and sat down.
He closed his eyes, basking in the aura like a reptile in the sun. Sunlight was what joyous aura reminded him of the most: warm and yellow, but too much of it unfiltered would be blinding. Peace, however, could never overwhelm him. Its soft pink tone was, even at its loudest, a whisper.
But a palette of yellow and pink alone would be all too dull, too saccharine. For that much needed contrast, there were streaks of sorrow, anger, anxiety - the emotions humans wanted to avoid, yet knew they couldn’t, that they shouldn’t. A healthy mind felt them all. A good artist used them all.
He opened his eyes just in time to see the bartender approach.
“What’ll it be?” asked the burly man, the volume of his voice perfectly adjusted to overpower the noise but to be no louder. His thick black beard made up for all the hair missing on his head.
“Castelian,” Andre replied. It would have been nice to try something less cliche, but he knew he shouldn’t stand out. The weaker the impressions he left in the employees’ minds, the less likely he was to be brought up as a possible suspect.
“You got it," the bartender said, stepping back to prepare the drink. In the meantime, Andre turned around to survey his surroundings again, this time with his eyes open.
Having no friends beside him, he knew not even to attempt to merge into an existing group - he had to look for other loners instead. That did shrink the pool of possible companions quite drastically, but it was simply how things had to go on these kinds of outings. Which he'd have to go on until he found someone to fulfil his duty with…
He noticed the frown on his face and forced it away. Irritation was rarely attractive. He brought a gentle smile to his lips in its place.
Alright, lone people. There were a few like that scattered around, mostly by the walls or the counter, browsing their phones or looking around or shifting between both. Were they looking for new company like Andre, or had they simply lost sight of their friends? It would have been very easy just to ask, but mistakes like that were another thing Andre preferred to minimize. He suppressed a sigh. It felt paranoid, but each time he wanted to dismiss a thought as paranoid, another told him he was getting careless…
But he was a sensible man. He could tell the difference between paranoia and reasonable caution. And he needed to stay sensible. In the end, he'd do the world a much better service if he took proper care of himself…
"Castelian," a voice came from behind, startling Andre. Right, the bartender. Andre swiveled around to see the drink set on the counter before him - vivid blue, cocktail glass, sitrus slice hung from the rim. A classic sight. He thanked the bartender and paid for the drink. Card, not cash. It left a trail, but his image in the security cameras left a hell of a bigger one. Either way, these safety precautions were never about not being seen - they were about not arousing suspicion. And why would someone as well-groomed as him pay with cash?
He raised the glass against the backlight of the bar and admired the color of the drink a little longer before taking his first sip. It was less sour than he'd expected. Maybe they'd used less sitrus, or maybe they'd used a sweeter cultivar of the sitrus or the oran used. Either way, the alcohol was there. He hoped it would relax him a little, as he seemed more on edge than usual…
A mix of emotions flared at his right - surprise, anger, disgust. Against the harmonious hum of joy and peace, it was the twang of an out-of-tune guitar. Andre looked over and identified the likely source: one of two men sitting at a table bordering the dance floor. That man, slim and black-haired, did well to hide the degree of his outrage, only staring at his companion blankly with his mouth slightly ajar. The other man, white with bleached dreads, seemed oblivious to this, continuing to rant about something with exaggerated hand motions and a consistent aura of annoyance. He wore a red vest with the initials 'MT' stitched in. Something on his neck glistened - gold chains, comically thin and unimpressive.
Andre reacted with disgust of his own, but shook his head. It was no crime to be tacky.
He returned to surveying the loners, and soon settled on one he was quite sure was available - a young, lanky man with long, sandy brown hair and a beard. The kind you'd be shocked to hear didn't have a guitar-playing channel on MewTube. The man held his glass of beer close to his chest, shifting his weight from one leg to another, and cast hesitant looks on other people around the bar. He was too far away and surrounded by too many others for Andre to get any confident reading of his aura, but it was hardly necessary with such obviously shy behavior.
He may have been new to this bar, or new to the community entirely. In the latter case, Andre would gladly lend a helping hand. This man wouldn't be the first person Andre had shown the ropes to, and it was unlikely he'd be the last. It was important for newcomers to receive the right advice and learn what's okay and what isn't lest they fall victim to predators.
It would be a worthy cause, then, to approach that man. It would be a service to the community just as acrylics would be. It was a fair trade - more than fair. After all, acrylics at this point were only theoretical. It was likely he'd meet no one that fit the criteria by the end of the day even if he stayed until closing time. So, all that considered --
The heat of fury strengthened against his back, burning like rays of a midday sun revealed from the clouds. He looked back to Dreads and Darkhair. The two seemed to be arguing. Dreads’ gesturing was now directed at Darkhair, and Darkhair’s face no longer concealed his disgust. What could be causing such revulsion from that man? What had Dreads been talking about? And was it…
It might have been, yes. It might have been something only a scumbag would do. Which meant Andre had to check.
Sighing, he cast one last wistful glance at Guitarman before getting off his seat and heading towards the arguing men. He was lucky that they’d taken the table next to the dancefloor, as it let Andre slip into the corner and stand right beside the two without arousing suspicion. He took out his phone and leaned on the wall behind him, pretending to type something while sipping on the drink in his other hand. While his eyes were glued to the screen, his attention was otherwise fully on the scene unfolding on his left, listening closely to both sound and aura.
"Don't tell me how to train my team, okay? You're not even a trainer!" snapped Dreads.
"What, so you think non-trainers can never question how trainers are treating their mon? Even if it's abuse?" retorted Darkhair.
"I'm not fucking beating them, dude! How would I even beat a fucking steelix? My hand would break!"
"But you make him sleep out in the cold!"
"For one night! He's a giant fucking metal snake, anyway! He can handle it!"
So Dreads was a trainer. Of course, it fit with the ego and the tacky clothing. And Darkhair was accusing him of abusing his team. Definitely a scumbag thing to do.
If he was a trainer, though, especially with a getup like that, he had to be online. Andre opened a browser tab on his phone and began to search for combinations of 'trainer', 'MT', 'steelix', 'dreadlocks', 'white' and 'Wyndon', all while keeping an ear out for any more details from the continuing argument, though nothing helpful was spilled. Eventually, he believed he'd managed to identify him - Mike Thomson, Snapp handle @michaelicious. Andre tapped on the profile to see more.
It seemed like a standard account for a small-time trainer who fancied himself a real celebrity. Videos and snapshots of training sessions, tournament joining announcements, promotional pictures… all with Mike well in the foreground. His team seemed to consist of a tar brown ursaring, a toxtricity, a sandaconda and, indeed, a steelix - Grizz, Zara, Twister and Titan respectively. Grizz seemed to be his ace given how he was always positioned closest to Mike. He seemed to be paying the most attention to Mike, too. Andre had his doubts about this respect being reciprocated.
The follower count was quite high, but the amount of likes and comments seemed disproportionately small. Bought followers? Oh, how embarrassing. Still, the users that did comment - provided they were real - seemed highly adoring. Probably kids that didn't know better.
He returned to his search results and tapped on Mike's MewTube channel next, though not before making sure his phone was muted. What he saw kept up with his initial impressions --
A surge of anger from the men interrupted his thoughts. He glanced over before he could remind himself he wasn't supposed to look - but immediately after, his gaze was justified.
Mike slammed his hand down on the table and stood up. "What the fuck did you just say?"
Darkhair had clearly said something to set him off. Andre cursed himself for missing it - he'd gotten too preoccupied with his phone to actually keep listening to their conversation.
Surprise radiated from Darkhair along with a tinge of fear. Anger quickly returned, the indignant kind, but Mike was faster than him on acting upon it.
“You wanna take this outside? You wanna fight?” Mike shouted, gesturing wildly. Andre’s heartbeat quickened as he realized his moment to act may have been rapidly approaching. If Mike kept up that aggression, he would be asked to leave. And Andre had to exit the building before his target did.
Darkhair raised his palms and began his attempt to de-escalate the situation, but Andre could tell Mike was too offended to back down. As Mike continued to shout, Andre downed what little remained of his drink and left the glass on a small table by the dancefloor. He cast a glance towards the bartender and saw the bearded man frowning at the arguing pair. In moments’ time, the man left his counter and headed for the scene. Andre suppressed a smirk. Just as he’d hoped.
He slipped out of the door, squinting at the light of the sun still setting. He walked some way from the door, leaned onto a nearby railing and scanned his surroundings just one more time to be safe. He came to the same conclusion - no street cameras here. Good.
To avoid drawing attention, he pulled out his phone again and opened his sudoku app. It was much easier to look at it without actually losing attention. He kept his ears and aura sense perked for whenever Mike would exit - if he would, Andre's prediction could still have been wrong - and thought of the best way to approach him.
Within the minute, a blob of rage began to emerge from the aura sea like a fish out of murky waters. It broke the surface with a loud thud of the front door being shoved open.
Andre glanced back just as any other onlooker would and found a visibly upset Mike stomping out. His anger was piercing now that the rest of the bar wasn't there to drown it out. Andre had to hope it wasn't too strong. Either way, he'd find out shortly.
In the most inoffensive tone he could muster, Andre asked the man a question. "Hey, are you Mike Thomson?"
Mike jerked his head to Andre like a startled linoone, hunched slightly as if readying for a pounce. Andre flinched a little himself, but relaxed alongside Mike as the man's aggression lessened.
"Yeah?" Mike answered, still reserved, but an amber buzz in his aura revealed his growing excitement. Someone had recognized him, and it was cocaine to his ego.
"Oh, I thought I recognized you in there!" Andre said, walking up to him with a smile which began as fake but turned genuine as Mike's anger all but disappeared. "My little brother's a huge fan of yours."
Mike's brows raised, and his mouth drew into a smirk. "Really?"
"Yeah! You might have seen him in your comments, who knows. I don't remember his username, though…" Andre clasped his hands together. "Oh, he'd love to have your autograph. W-would you be okay with that?"
“Sure! You got a pen?”
“Let’s see…” Andre reached into his pockets, but he already knew he had no pen or paper on him. He hadn’t exactly expected to need to woo a microcelebrity when leaving his house. “I guess I don’t have one on me right now…” he said, defeated. “Would you be alright with a photo instead?”
“Sure!”
Andre concealed a sigh of relief as he took out his phone. This was the better of two alternate paths. The longer they interacted, the lower the threshold was for continuing the conversation afterwards. Though it’d still be a leap… a leap he had to make if he wanted justice served. Or, well, he couldn’t know for sure yet - but he had a feeling.
He moved beside Mike and lifted the phone up high for a photo. A wave of deep magenta suddenly arose - arousal. Perhaps Mike had caught the scent of his perfume, a soft vanilla, and realized just how captivating this stranger was with his feminine frame and wavy cinnamon brown hair. Either way, it was very promising.
Andre snapped the pic and a few more as everyone knew one good picture stood on the bodies of dozens - not that he'd actually keep them. He’d delete them as soon as their time together came to an end, possibly sooner.
Alright. The pleasantries were over, and the leap was now fast approaching. Andre's heartbeat quickened, but he was all too experienced to let it show.
"Thanks so much," Andre said, lowering the phone. Before Mike could say anything that may have ended the conversation, Andre raised a hand. "And, hey…"
He stared deep into Mike's eyes, locking him in place. "I saw what happened back there, and I just wanna say that guy had no right to act the way he did."
"Th-thanks." Mike quickly averted his eyes, but it was not out of embarrassment - the green sound did not come. Instead, there was lavender. Apprehension. He seemed to have realized something like this getting out could hurt his reputation.
"No, really," Andre said as genuinely as he could. "That guy was accusing you of mistreating your team. You love your team! Even I know that. That's just so fucking disrespectful."
Mike began to nod as Andre spoke. "Yeah… yeah, that was fucked up." His apprehension was letting up. Was it letting up enough? Was this the moment for the leap?
No, he should keep going. He should tell him…
What would he tell him? Nothing came to mind. Nothing except what he'd already said. He didn't know trainers well enough to know what else they wanted to hear. Should he repeat his point in different words? No, it may be too suspicious. Mike could realize he didn't really mean it, and his apprehension would only get worse then. But if…
No, no! Precious microseconds were wasting. He had to make a decision now.
He decided to take the leap.
Andre slipped his hands in his pockets, forcing the motion to be casual despite the adrenaline in his veins. He'd play this part right.
"I guess this night didn't go quite as you wished it would," he said, shrugging coyly.
"Yeah," Mike sighed, pocketing his own hands.
"It doesn't have to be that way."
Mike looked back at him. Magenta returned. Yes.
Andre smirked. "You were looking for company, weren't you?"
Mike eyed him up and down. The magenta strengthened. A smirk of his own formed on his face. "Maybe."
Great relief washed over Andre, but he knew he wasn't done yet. He tilted his head. "I've got a pretty nice apartment," he said. "All to myself. No roommates, no teammates. Just nice decor and a bed with room to spare."
Mike's apprehension was gone. Excitement had fully taken its place. His smirk became a grin. "Sounds good."
Andre nodded and took a step towards the parking spaces. "You got your own car with you?"
"Nah, taxi."
Perfect. Much safer. Much cheaper. "Let's take mine, then."
They headed for the car. Andre took a moment just to listen to the city’s ambiance, refreshing his brain after the flurry of thoughts it had just endured. It wasn’t a deep respite, but it would have to do. The second phase was soon to begin.
The one that would decide if Mike ever came home again.
“All fucking week, we’ve been training for this, and he just doesn’t do it. The gliscor hits him, and I don’t see a damn single snowflake forming on his teeth. He doesn’t even try to bite. He just takes the hit and then the gliscor’s already gone and he lost his chance. I yell at him, ‘what are you doing’, and he looks at me like he doesn’t even know what the fuck I’m talking about. I know he can’t possibly be so fucking stupid that he forgot the plan, so I realize it has to be the Ice Fang that’s the problem, that he can’t do it. But I fucking made it clear he had to train until he could do it every time he wanted, that I wouldn’t catch him just fucking standing there like he can’t get it up or some shit. So of course he fucking loses, and then we fucking lose, and it’s all because he couldn’t do the one thing he had to do. So yeah, I made him sleep outside. He needs to learn his fucking lesson.”
Mike sighed hard and took another glug of his beer. Andre glanced at the clock again. It had been forty minutes since they’d arrived at his apartment, but it felt like an entire day.
At first, Mike had been careful. He’d still had his reputation in mind and known to keep his less acceptable opinions to himself. With a bit more beer in his system, though, he let his guard down, and Andre’s persistent nudging finally tipped the boulder off the edge and sent it hurtling down the mountainside.
Mike really, really didn’t like women. He didn’t like how you couldn’t say they were weaker than men. He didn’t like how you couldn’t say a woman was fat or ugly. He didn’t like how they slithered their way into jobs that belonged to men and then did a worse job and got praised for it anyway. He didn’t like the ex-girlfriend he’d had before coming out. How she’d whine about the harmless jokes his friends made about her and didn’t want them coming around anymore. How, one night, he’d told her to shut up and she wouldn’t. How he’d shown her he was serious, and how her friends almost got her to take it to the police. How it didn’t even hurt. How any man would have just shrugged it off.
Mike, despite being a trainer, also didn’t seem to like pokémon very much. He liked them when they listened to your orders and used those fangs and claws and elemental powers to pummel their opponents, but they didn’t always do that. You could give them shelter and food and medicine and they still acted up and thrashed around and ignored your orders. The mon that spoke also seemed to forget they were mon and not humans. They wanted human things like phones and internet access. They wanted to follow you into bars after rain despite smelling like wet bear. They wanted to get time off when they were feeling down. And because the whole world was breathing down your neck, you had to give them all these or convince them to do without them with nice, well-meaning words.
He didn’t stop there, of course. He also wasn’t particularly a fan of foreigners or any of that ‘political correctness shit’. What really told the most, however, was the utter lack of shame or deception in his aura as he spoke. All that he said, he meant.
The good news was that this left no doubt in Andre’s mind about whether Mike really was deserving of the final phase. The bad news was that, despite the liters of beer he would down, Mike still hadn’t gotten up to use the bathroom and let Andre slip the drug in his drink already.
Maybe he was just too worked up to realize the signals of his body. If he calmed down, he might finally excuse himself.
"Yeah, that sucks," Andre said, grasping his glass of water. He'd love to drink wine, but he didn't want any more alcohol in his system. "This seems like a bit of a downer topic, though. How about we talk about something more pleasant for you, like…" He cast his eyes on the ceiling, pretending to think when he'd already found his idea, then met Mike's eyes again in feigned realization. "Your Snapp account! I noticed you have a huge follower base. How'd you get so many?"
Mike laughed. It sounded genuine, but Andre could sense his intent to deceive. They really were bots, then. "Well, you know, a lot of it is just the right marketing. Keeping up a brand with presence across all social medias. And then good posts, obviously. And making them regularly."
From there, he continued to talk. He talked about his MewTube channel, he talked about sponsors - some crappy energy drink Andre had never heard of - and he talked about Chatter. Andre hadn’t had time to check out Mike’s Chatter profile before, but now that he’d already made the judgment on Mike, he had no need. And he really had no will. He avoided that platform these days for the sake of his sanity.
Mike took another sip of his freshly filled glass of beer, lowered it and got up with a grunt. “Gotta take a leak. Hold on.”
Finally! Andre hid his elation and gestured to the right. “Bathroom’s around the corner. Shouldn’t be hard to find.”
Mike nodded and rounded the corner. Andre heard the door open and close. The lock clacked shut.
Quietly, Andre got up and snuck to the counter. He opened the third drawer on the right and reached his hand all the way back past the miscellaneous kitchen utilities. He drew out one of three ziplock bags pre-filled with a small amount of fine, white powder and closed the drawer after.
He returned to the table and very carefully emptied the bag's contents into the glass of beer, then stirred the liquid with his finger to make it all dissolve. He stopped and briefly stirred in the opposite direction to break up the little whirlpool that had formed. Finally, he took away his finger and rinsed it off in the sink before wrapping the empty plastic bag in a paper towel and throwing it in the bin.
By the time Mike returned, Andre had been sitting for a while, browsing his phone.
"Alright," the trainer said, returning to his seat. "Where were we?"
"Your social media profiles," said Andre, putting his phone away. He avoided naming Chatter on purpose.
Luckily, this worked. "Right, yeah! Another thing you need for a successful social media presence is to make your shit look good, obviously. You gotta know what's good and bad lighting, but of course that's not gonna do anything if you just look like shit. Now, that's not much of an issue for me, but I still like to make sure I take the best care of my hair and skin…"
It was much easier for Andre to pay attention now that he knew Mike's babbling wouldn't last indefinitely. This drug worked quickly, which was why it was legally used as an anaesthetic for stress-prone or potentially dangerous mon. Illegally, it was a narcotic and a roofie. Andre could never remember its proper name, but on the street, it was known as sparkles, named so due to it originating from the spores of morelull and shiinotic. Upon its discovery, anyway. Since then it had been synthesized.
Fifteen minutes was the fastest that Andre had seen it take effect when slipped into a drink like this. Of course, he had a feeling he wouldn’t be quite that lucky. Mike was muscular and taller than average. If his hair and personality weren’t repulsive, he might have been a good catch.
Either way, Andre kept up his facade of interest. He even offered his own insight a few times, not that Mike gave it much attention. The conversation continued without oddities for five, ten, fifteen minutes - until the first signs came.
Ums and uhs appeared between words, getting longer and more frequent as time passed. Each interjection came with a squiggle of confusion, sometimes joined by annoyance. Mike shifted from topic to topic, unable to fight his tangents, until he could no longer make a coherent point about anything. If he ever could.
In five more minutes, Mike finally noticed it himself. He sighed, deflating. "Man, I'm tired as fuck."
Andre tilted his head. "Oh?"
"Yeah…" Mike rubbed his forehead. "I don't think I can do this tonight. Sorry. Lemme…"
He got up from his chair and walked a few wobbly steps away. He reached for the phone in his pocket, but then paused - and quickly stumbled to the couch instead. He barely managed to stay upright as he sat.
Andre got off his own chair and walked over. "Are you alright?" he asked. "How much did you drink at the bar?"
Mike's breathing was heavy. The squiggles of his aura tightened, becoming more jagged, and violet shone through the swirl of unknown colors. Fear.
"I don't…" Mike slurred. "Not that… much…" His head drooped, but he jerked it back up. "Som'th'n's wrong. Call a-an… ambl…"
"Call an ambulance?" Andre pulled out his phone and pretended to unlock it.
"Y-yeah…" Mike tried to lie down on the couch slowly, but his arms couldn’t support him. He flopped down with a grunt. The zigzags of fear loosened up again, but it didn’t mean he was no longer scared. It meant the drug was finally pulling him under.
Andre paused. He put the phone away and crouched next to Mike. Feigned worry melted off his face, leaving behind no expression at all. Mike watched this through squinted eyes, last spikes of fear poking out of the squiggles.
“I’m not calling you an ambulance,” Andre said.
"Wh…why not?" Mike huffed.
Andre stared into his eyes. "Because you're not leaving this place alive."
Acrylics was not Andre’s medium of choice.
He didn't have anything against acrylic paint, no. He didn't think it was inherently lesser than oil paint. Sure, it was the 'easier' of the two, requiring no solvents other than water and drying very quickly, and that made it the preferred choice for beginners and casual hobbyists, but Andre was no elitist. Art was art, be it acrylics, oil paint, watercolor, gouache, colored pencils, crayons or digital.
Andre's preference for oil paint stemmed only from what it was, not what it wasn't. He loved the gloss of it, the texture of it, the rich colors, how it seeped into the canvas, how long it could be mixed - and when he painted, he felt the echoes of history, the motions of the old masters manifesting in his arms and wrists.
Sometimes, however, the special properties of acrylics were necessary. Since its solvent was simply water, not turpentine or any other substances with harmful fumes, it required no ventilation. In other words, Andre could keep the window closed - and that was a crucial prerequisite for what he would soon do.
Mike lay spread eagle on the painting room bed, unconscious and stripped down to his underwear. Four nylon ropes tied his wrists and ankles to the bedposts. A piece of duct tape sealed his mouth tightly shut, a rolled up sock placed behind the lips.
The bed's sheets were gone, replaced by a plastic cover with several white towels spread on top. The bed was also propped up to have its head higher than the foot, and two buckets stood at the corners of the lower end, ready to gather anything that might drip. On the floor underneath was a tarp and some newspapers, which also covered the nearby walls and ceiling.
Since parts of this setup were acceptable for a painter to do for their painting room, Andre had been able to prepare them earlier in the day. He'd also bought the towels and the rope. He'd get rid of all of them alongside the body. He wanted no traces of Mike's blood left in his house.
Mike was quiet and Andre was quiet, but the room was not. A little boombox in the corner of the room played lively jazz - not smooth, not chaotic, just lively - at a conversation's volume. Andre sat on a chair before the bed, legs crossed. An easel with an empty canvas stood on his left, and a little stand with acrylic painting supplies stood on his right. His hands browsed his phone, skimming through Mike's social media accounts once again. He wore nothing but his glasses, his underwear and a long dark blue raincoat.
Andre sighed as he watched yet another video of Mike talking in a training hall, his team in the background along with some other mon. Zara, the toxtricity, ceased picking her chest the moment Mike said his first words, then sharply rolled her eyes and resumed her strumming, the bassy twangs continuing throughout the rest of the video. Grizz, on the other hand, briefly looked back from the battle he was supervising, smiled, and turned back to the field.
Smiling wasn’t as straightforward an expression with mon as it was with humans. Only humans and a few species of mon actually smiled on instinct - the others had to learn to do it, provided they were able to in the first place. Mammalian pokemon typically were, having lips and all, but it still required conscious effort to smile each time they were happy until it could become a habit.
If cameras recorded aura and phones somehow played them back, there’d be no mystery of whether or not the bear was actually happy. Even without it, though, Andre was confident in his judgment - Grizz smiled out of adoration.
It shouldn't happen. But it did happen, all too often, and Andre knew how. He knew the tricks people like Mike would pull to make the abused feel like they weren't really abused or to make the onlookers look the other way. Andre wasn't perfectly sure which one Grizz actually was - Mike had lamented how he needed to be all fuzzy-wuzzy with Grizz to make sure he stayed as his ace, so Grizz couldn’t be getting the worst of the mistreatment - but whatever the case, one thing was certain. Grizz would take Mike's disappearance hard.
Andre had never targeted a trainer before. None of his previous targets had happened to be trainers, nor had they been caretakers of any mon, sapient or feral. By extension, he’d never caused a mon to lose a member of their family or their home.
He would have preferred to avoid it altogether, but this was a case in which the amount of good done outweighed the harm. Mike was a scumbag, an unrepentant one, and no amount of lectures would change that. The only thing he would ever feel sorry for was getting caught.
As for the mon left behind, Andre believed they’d survive and be better off for it. Neither sandaconda nor steelix were species that bonded deeply with humans, at least not when feral. They’d be taken into custody and likely adopted by other trainers, seeing as they were young and strong. Zara didn’t seem too concerned about Mike in general, and Grizz… well.
Grizz was clearly attached to Mike, but he was still his own citizen and mature enough to make his own decisions. His only legal tie to Mike was employment. There were also obvious limits to how meaningful their relationship could be when it seemed to be only professional to Mike. It wasn’t as if Mike was Grizz’s shoulder to cry on - because if that had been the case, Mike would surely have complained about that as well.
Andre clenched his teeth. He’d seen his fair share of two-faced behavior ever since he’d started all this, but it never stopped being disgusting. And it never should. He didn’t want to see the day it did.
Mike's aura began to sputter. It evolved from a colorless, textureless presence to a neutral TV static, then a mixture of a handful of feelings as his brain slowly organized his thoughts - irritation, confusion, anger, fear, all stemming from his unusual position and restraints.
It would take a little longer for Mike to become properly responsive. Andre took the time to clear his browsing history, which he knew wouldn't erase it from his service provider's logs or delete any history his apps might store, but was still a safety precaution better taken. He didn't particularly want to be reminded of this guy once he was gone, either.
Andre got up and straightened his raincoat. Mike's aura flashed with fear-tinged surprise at the sudden noise. Eyes still shut, he made his first vocalization, which may have tried to be a 'hey', but the sock and the tape muffled it into a moan. He tried again, louder, but it didn't help. With great effort, he pried open his eyes. His emotions intensified as he glanced around the room, though anger was keeping the lead. Andre expected as much from someone like him.
Andre checked his setup one last time - yes, everything was there, the canvas, brushes, paint, water, palette, everything. He walked over to a dresser further away, digging out a box of rubber gloves and pulling out a pair for himself. As he returned to the bed, Mike's eyes shed the last of their lethargy. Wide and bulging, they stared at the cloaked man standing at the foot of the bed.
Andre stared back and smiled. It seemed they were all ready to start.
"Mike Thomson," he said, emotion draining from his face. "Professional trainer."
Mike's eyes flicked back and forth between Andre and the rest of the room. Confusion briefly took over, but anger made a quick comeback and only kept strengthening. 'This guy drugged me and tied me down,' Mike must have been thinking. 'Me, Mike Thomson! How dare he?'
Andre clasped his hands behind his back, the rubber gloves still in his hold. "Also an abuser of women, and an abuser of pokémon."
Anger rattled like an ekans. 'He lied to me. He tricked me. And now he's going to lecture me?'
The lecture would be the least of his worries, but he didn't seem to understand that yet. He couldn't possibly believe he was in actual danger. Danger, from this guy? This pasty twink?
"You must have thought it'd never catch up to you," Andre continued. "That no one was brave enough to speak up. That it was too small and subtle to be considered a real crime anyway."
Specks of regret shot out from Mike's aura, but Andre knew it wasn't guilt. Mike regretted meeting Andre, coming to this apartment, spilling all his secrets, not realizing it had been a trap. The specks ignited as regret turned to anger. Anger at himself.
"And maybe it would have been true," Andre said, "had you not met me."
He brought his hands before him again. Mike's eyes fixed on the rubber gloves as Andre began to slip them on. Then the raincoat. Then the bed, the towels, the buckets.
And that's when it happened.
The visceral wave. The twisting of the heart, the shiver in the spine. Violet ribbons slithering on the skin, silky and cool.
Fear. And not just any fear.
Mike had just realized he was going to die.
Andre's eyes shut in pleasure, like a cat soaking in the warmth of the sun. Inspiration rushed to his wrists, the want to place down the feeling via color and shape, the need.
But there were still a few more words to say. This fear could be refined, amplified, and since it could, it should. He deserved to feel the worst of it. The worst until the real worst came, anyway.
Andre took a deep breath to keep himself focused. "You've done a lot of taking," he said, slowly making his way back to the dresser he'd gotten his rubber gloves from. "You can't possibly give back what you've taken," he continued, "but you can still give me something."
He stopped in front of the dresser and slid open the drawer underneath the previous one. He reached in and grasped the kitchen utility knife that he'd sharpened and placed there earlier in the day. As he pulled it out into view, he said his next words.
"Your pain and suffering."
Hearing those words and seeing the knife, Mike's terror surged. He pulled at his restraints and attempted to scream, but it was useless. The bed creaked, but the wood held, and the frame stayed in place thanks to the two more dressers placed on its sides, all while the jazz drowned out his muffled screams.
Andre smiled. Not because he was a sadist - he wasn't - but because he knew it would make this even worse of an experience for Mike. That's what Mike deserved, after all. He deserved to die alone, helpless, afraid and in pain.
Andre walked up to the bed, feeling the newspaper underneath his feet, feeling the now. The delicious fear of the abuser turned victim, his wordless pleas for undeserved mercy. No one would come for him. No one would save him. He was as helpless as he'd made his victims feel. This was justice.
Anger flashed once more as Andre placed his knee on the end of the bed and leaned above Mike, but it was the screech of a cornered animal. It did nothing to dissuade Andre from raising his blade, taking it down to the side of Mike's abdomen, placing it gently against the skin. The gripping hand quivered, betraying the wildly beating heart inside Andre's chest. The feigned smile across his face had long since become real. This was his mission, this was his service to the world, and he would do it once again.
His gaze climbed up Mike's body to the trainer's mortified eyes. In seconds' time, that fear radiating from him would turn blinding white.
"Let's begin," Andre whispered.
He slashed the blade across the skin, and Mike screamed.
The man screamed as the beasts tore his body open. He was the first of them to die this way. The others were stabbed, hanged, poisoned, decapitated, fried in an electric chair, but none had been torn apart by beasts. For this man, though, for Six, it was the obvious choice.
Canine, feline, bird, reptile. They barely scratched the surface of the diversity of the animal kingdom, but all that mattered was the impression. The idea. The idea of all manner of creatures joining together for vengeance against their oppressor. Broken chains hung from their shackles. No more. The natural order was restored.
The man screamed. He screamed like all the others. Lightning bled from their eyes and mouths, and from their wounds bled magma, boiling hot. Purple storm and red inferno raged, inside and out of the void-black body, but neither could touch the beasts. Not the beasts, not the blade, not the rope, anything. The men were powerless. All were powerless when it came. When death came.
What's this?
Something moved, swirled, fluttered about in the stream of emotions. What was it? A flake of white ash. Just one? Or many, at different times? Many. The observer did not understand it, but he had seen it, and that was all that mattered. It would be part of the scene. It would be recorded, it would be brought to sight, the material world. The observer reached for white --
Something broke. Something was wrong in Mike’s aura. Andre stopped and looked at the man on the bed. He was stiff, unmoving, and his eyes had no focus, but he couldn’t be unconscious - his aura wasn’t neutral. It was fearful, like it had been moments ago, but it was distorted. Each defining quality was somehow off, out of tune, harsh on the ear. It was simply wrong. It made Andre shiver.
And then it let go. It faded away in less than a second, leaving nothing in its wake.
Nothing? Nothing at all?
Andre put down his paintbrush and rushed beside the man. He placed his fingers on Mike’s neck. No pulse. Andre leaned down, bringing his head next to Mike’s. No aura. But there were faint auras further away, the other tenants of the building. Andre’s aura sense was working correctly. Mike simply had no aura. Mike was dead.
Andre got up and stopped to catch his breath. He walked over to the radio that still played jazz as if nothing had happened and turned down the volume to allow himself to think.
Okay. It had to have been some kind of sudden failure in Mike’s system, probably triggered by the extreme amounts of stress and possibly also the loss of blood. Andre glanced at the body. Four cuts across the abdomen and arms. Halfway of what he usually did, but Mike was also very giving. Andre hadn’t needed to go back very often.
Still, it was strange. Mike didn’t go unconscious at all. It didn’t take him any time to die. Normally, the target would pass out from blood loss and their aura would lose its color. Only then could the aura begin to break down and fade away as more and more braincells died.
Andre brought his hand to his chin, but sighed not too long after. Now that Mike was dead, there was no way for him to get back in the flow, not when he’d been yanked out of it so violently.
Well, it was fun while it lasted. He liked to think he’d made some pretty good art, too. And the most important thing was that another terrible person had been erased from the world. Andre had fulfilled his duty. The next four months were free.
He walked back to the easel and picked up his brush. He eyed the painting. It was still quite rough. Rough was how paintings of raw emotion ought to be, but this was simply unfinished. He'd do what he needed to complete the painting before he began to clean up. Oh, and…
He touched the canvas with the tip of the brush, creating a little speck of white. He repeated the action a few more times around the canvas.
There. Little flakes of ash.
The next morning, Andre woke up at noon. He briefly wondered why his alarm hadn’t gone off until he remembered he’d killed someone the night before.
He knew that such a day always required ample rest afterwards. It wasn't easy to get to sleep after getting rid of the body and the evidence. He had to call and talk to people he'd never want to interact with under any other circumstance, and he had to let them inside his home. So far, there'd never been any complications - Andre gave them the cash, they took the bag and they left - but he never felt safe. Those men were criminals, after all, and hardened ones at that. Their auras showed no fear. Not even disgust at the thought of whatever was inside that bag. It was inhuman.
He tried his best not to think about what the money he gave them was going to. If he had his way, he wouldn't give them a cent. But he just couldn't get rid of the evidence on his own. He didn't have the skill or knowhow to pull it off reliably without getting caught. And if he got caught, he'd be put away. He couldn't fulfill his duty from prison.
It was alright. Wyndon had its police to take care of organized crime. It had nobody to take care of the scumbags whose crimes went unspoken. Nobody but Andre.
He got up from his bed and stretched. He really should take today to get all the relaxation he couldn't get yesterday. He'd let himself eat cereal for breakfast and later order some garbage takeout. He'd spend the day lying on the couch, watching animated movies and taking in the artistry. Yes, that sounded like a plan.
He continued through his morning routine as usual. Once he reached the kitchen, he poured a bowl full of Comfey Charms, unafraid of their empty calories, and brought it to the table flanking the living room couch. He turned on the TV, but didn't switch to streaming quite yet, instead letting the news play in the background while he checked his Snapp feed on his phone. Katie had finished some anatomy practice. He recognized some of the poses and props - it looked like she'd used that life drawing site he'd recommended. He dropped a like and a comment of 'lookin good' with a thumbs up. It did, indeed, look good. While the drawings were still a bit stiff in gesture, she'd come a long way since she'd decided to draw more than just cartoons.
He sensed something. Some aura.
Andre put down his phone and listened. Now he couldn't sense it anymore. Or he could. He wasn't sure. It was so small. Or so far away. It moved. Okay, if it moved, it had to exist.
Except now it left. It wasn't there anymore. Maybe it was never there. Maybe he'd actually heard a little noise instead and confused it for something he'd sensed through aura.
No, there it was again. It was definitely there, somewhere in the direction of his painting room, outside the apartment. But that was open air…
Bird, he decided, or bug pokémon. Nothing to worry about.
He was about to return to his phone when it came inside. Through the wall.
Oh.
Andre froze up. He’d never had to deal with a stray ghost pokémon wandering in by himself. What was he supposed to do again? Just wait for it to leave, and if that didn’t work, get an amulet to shoo it away?
Wait…
The aura had gotten closer, allowing Andre to sense it better. There was something familiar about it. Was it…
Oh no.
The flake of white ash floated even closer. Slowly but surely, it was heading for Andre.
He got up and stepped to the side, closer to the TV. The aura changed its course accordingly. Andre walked backwards, and the aura continued to follow.
What did it want? Did it want to drain life from him? That didn’t make sense. There were dozens of other humans just outside who couldn’t sense aura and wouldn’t have any idea the ghost was present. He’d also already witnessed the ghost move faster than it did now. Nothing prevented it from simply swooping in and taking that energy by force. It wasn’t as if Andre could swat it away like he could a mosquito, no, the ghost was in an intangible state.
It had to have something to do with Andre in specific. It had to be related to last night. What had happened last night? He’d killed Mike --
No, of course. He hadn’t killed Mike. He'd caused his death, no doubt, and he'd intended to, but ultimately Mike's cause of death had been an unexpected accident, something unknown that had taken his life in an instant rather than gradually through loss of blood. That something had to have been this ghost. This ghost had absorbed the last of a dying man’s life, something even a weak ghost could do. That’s why Mike’s aura had been so strange.
And now the ghost was back. Andre had a good guess why. It had associated him with that death, like a farfetch’d at a pond coming to humans for bread, and it wanted more.
Andre’s back bumped against the wall. He’d run out of backward steps to take. He could move to the right next… but he clenched his fist instead.
He couldn’t be bossed around by this ghost. Despite his quickly beating heart, he stood his ground. A ghost this little couldn’t hurt him. A lot. And if it tried, he’d simply leave and come back with an amulet.
The ghost floated ever closer, so close that Andre wasn’t sure if it was going to stop outside of his body - but it did, just centimeters away.
Andre clenched his jaw. “Show yourself,” he growled.
The air began to darken. Andre flinched. He hadn’t expected it to understand.
Like ink blots on paper, the darkness spread, coloring in a shape barely larger than Andre’s palm. Invisible threads wove together to form bluish gray fabric - spectral cloth - and wrapped around the air to form the shape of a tiny shuppet.
Two slits opened up in the front of the cloth, revealing the large yellow-blue eyes behind. A third slit underneath formed a mouth. It smiled - and it opened.
“Hello!”
This story is only a few chapters long, projected to be three or four, and it can be read completely separately from HH. I've been having a pretty good rhythm with writing it, so my hope is that I'll actually update it more often than just every three months. The bad news is that it will most likely mean even slower updates for HH or even a full-on hiatus. But, well, I'm sure people are used to my terrible update speed already.
Content warnings: Blood, wounds, torture, murder, abuse and its consequences, misogyny, sexual themes, strong language. Rated mature.
With that out of the way, I'm done yapping. Here's the story. In terms of feedback preferences, I'm interested in what you think of the protagonist, but any feedback is appreciated. Thank you and enjoy.
---
KILLS-OTHER-HUMANS
Synopsis:
Andre Duval, an aura-sensitive painter living in Wyndon, is a stand-up guy, a great lover and a dear friend. He's also a murderer. Every four months, he goes out to find another scumbag to erase from the world, and this time, it's an abusive trainer. Andre didn't think it would be any different from the others - but he's wrong on two accounts.
Genre:
Drama
Started:
22 Sep 2022
Status:
Finished 28 April 2023
Length:
33k words
---
CHAPTER ONE
The Crime
---
KILLS-OTHER-HUMANS
Synopsis:
Andre Duval, an aura-sensitive painter living in Wyndon, is a stand-up guy, a great lover and a dear friend. He's also a murderer. Every four months, he goes out to find another scumbag to erase from the world, and this time, it's an abusive trainer. Andre didn't think it would be any different from the others - but he's wrong on two accounts.
Genre:
Drama
Started:
22 Sep 2022
Status:
Finished 28 April 2023
Length:
33k words
---
CHAPTER ONE
The Crime
---
Empty canvas.
He tried to fill it, but nothing would stick. Nothing inspired him enough to be worth putting down.
A heavy sigh left Andre’s lungs. During the past week, he’d slaved away at three commissions - one of them a portrait of a particularly nitpicky delcatty - and now that he was done and free to paint something just for his own joy again… nothing came.
But it wasn’t as if this was a surprise. That blank rectangle had plagued his mind ever since the morning, but he’d convinced himself that if he took the time to set up his painting station, the muse would surely sing. Alas, she did not. All he heard was the ambience of the city pouring in through his open window now that he’d already given up on music.
Shoulders slumped, he admitted defeat. This session was a bust.
Artist’s block was nothing new to Andre. He’d confronted that foe countless times ever since he first picked up a crayon. It was an inevitable part of any artist’s life, and it was up to each individual to find the battle strategies that worked for them.
Fortunately, Andre knew a technique that had served him well many times in the past: going out and meeting someone new. It was also something he probably ought to do after so many days cooped up in his apartment huffing paint thinner. Though it really worked better towards the evening… well, he’d find some way to kill the time until then. It was just a few hours.
He corked his thinner and linseed oil, washed his glass palette clean of the primaries he’d put down and began putting away the rest of his equipment. Once he grabbed the brushes, though, a stray thought interrupted him.
You might need those for acrylics.
He froze up.
No, he thought. It's too soon. It's only been…
It had been four months.
He blinked. It really had already been four months. It felt like a mistake, but no - the last time was in January, and now it was May.
There had been sufficient cooldown. It was possible to do ‘acrylics’ again.
He sighed. Oh, I just want a fun night out --
Are you shirking your duty?
He frowned. That thought was right. Now that he was able to do it, he had to.
But it was alright. Most likely, tonight would turn out just the way he wanted - a fun night out. There'd be no scumbags, and he wouldn't have to do anything. Most likely, he'd only need to be prepared. And that was easy enough. He probably had the money already. He should check that now…
He left the brushes out and headed to his bedroom. He walked up to the painting of the two corvisquire perched on a branch - not his own, but a gift from Katie - and lifted it away to reveal his safe. He looked around, even though he knew he was alone, and opened it.
He counted the bills inside. Yes, five thousand Galarish pounds. Enough to get rid of the evidence and the target's car on top if need be. If it wasn’t, the providers of the service certainly couldn’t blame him. They couldn’t exactly send out emails informing their clients about new pricing. And they knew he was a trustworthy customer. He’d pay the rest later after he’d had time to withdraw more cash.
He closed the safe, locked it, and lifted the painting back into place. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to open it again today.
Though if he did…
He knew he’d get all the inspiration he needed.
---
The city air was warm and dry, saturated with exhaust fumes and dust. It was one of those occasions when Andre was glad to have glasses, not contacts. Those little particles of sand probably weren’t good for the lenses, but better those than his eyes. Glasses could be replaced, his corneas couldn’t.
The walk from the nearest parking spaces was fortunately short, and he soon found himself at his destination: Shoemaker Street Bar, named creatively so after the street it was on. It was one of his secondary joints, a place to go whenever he felt the need to switch things up and see more new faces. It was also, as the rainbow flag in the window suggested, a place to meet men, which he'd decided to pursue tonight.
He couldn't see or hear much of the inside, but he could already tell the place was bustling. A sea of aura churned behind those doors, as diverse in moods as that rainbow flag was in colours, though not as evenly distributed - joy and peace clearly dominated the atmosphere. Andre smiled in response. It was nice to know the people inside were enjoying themselves. Hopefully he would too.
He opened the door and stepped through. Right away, his aura sense was proven correct, as most if not all tables were surrounded by people engaged in lively conversation. The air smelled of alcohol, but was well enough ventilated to lack the stench of sweat. The speakers near the ceiling played some club music, as generic as one would expect, though it could barely be heard over all the talking and intermittent laughter.
Andre took a closer look at the customers. Most were men, human men, but some groups had mon in the mix, and at least one group was made up of mon entirely. There were the typical ones often seen in human establishments - gardevoir, machoke, indeedee - but the sight of a crawdaunt made Andre pause. He scolded himself right after. If they wanted to be here, they had a right to be comfortable. He shouldn’t stare.
He turned his attention to the counter instead. Unlike the tables, there were plenty of spots to choose from. The outer corner, too, was vacant. Perfect. He made his way to the seat, stopping briefly to let a small group past him, and sat down.
He closed his eyes, basking in the aura like a reptile in the sun. Sunlight was what joyous aura reminded him of the most: warm and yellow, but too much of it unfiltered would be blinding. Peace, however, could never overwhelm him. Its soft pink tone was, even at its loudest, a whisper.
But a palette of yellow and pink alone would be all too dull, too saccharine. For that much needed contrast, there were streaks of sorrow, anger, anxiety - the emotions humans wanted to avoid, yet knew they couldn’t, that they shouldn’t. A healthy mind felt them all. A good artist used them all.
He opened his eyes just in time to see the bartender approach.
“What’ll it be?” asked the burly man, the volume of his voice perfectly adjusted to overpower the noise but to be no louder. His thick black beard made up for all the hair missing on his head.
“Castelian,” Andre replied. It would have been nice to try something less cliche, but he knew he shouldn’t stand out. The weaker the impressions he left in the employees’ minds, the less likely he was to be brought up as a possible suspect.
“You got it," the bartender said, stepping back to prepare the drink. In the meantime, Andre turned around to survey his surroundings again, this time with his eyes open.
Having no friends beside him, he knew not even to attempt to merge into an existing group - he had to look for other loners instead. That did shrink the pool of possible companions quite drastically, but it was simply how things had to go on these kinds of outings. Which he'd have to go on until he found someone to fulfil his duty with…
He noticed the frown on his face and forced it away. Irritation was rarely attractive. He brought a gentle smile to his lips in its place.
Alright, lone people. There were a few like that scattered around, mostly by the walls or the counter, browsing their phones or looking around or shifting between both. Were they looking for new company like Andre, or had they simply lost sight of their friends? It would have been very easy just to ask, but mistakes like that were another thing Andre preferred to minimize. He suppressed a sigh. It felt paranoid, but each time he wanted to dismiss a thought as paranoid, another told him he was getting careless…
But he was a sensible man. He could tell the difference between paranoia and reasonable caution. And he needed to stay sensible. In the end, he'd do the world a much better service if he took proper care of himself…
"Castelian," a voice came from behind, startling Andre. Right, the bartender. Andre swiveled around to see the drink set on the counter before him - vivid blue, cocktail glass, sitrus slice hung from the rim. A classic sight. He thanked the bartender and paid for the drink. Card, not cash. It left a trail, but his image in the security cameras left a hell of a bigger one. Either way, these safety precautions were never about not being seen - they were about not arousing suspicion. And why would someone as well-groomed as him pay with cash?
He raised the glass against the backlight of the bar and admired the color of the drink a little longer before taking his first sip. It was less sour than he'd expected. Maybe they'd used less sitrus, or maybe they'd used a sweeter cultivar of the sitrus or the oran used. Either way, the alcohol was there. He hoped it would relax him a little, as he seemed more on edge than usual…
A mix of emotions flared at his right - surprise, anger, disgust. Against the harmonious hum of joy and peace, it was the twang of an out-of-tune guitar. Andre looked over and identified the likely source: one of two men sitting at a table bordering the dance floor. That man, slim and black-haired, did well to hide the degree of his outrage, only staring at his companion blankly with his mouth slightly ajar. The other man, white with bleached dreads, seemed oblivious to this, continuing to rant about something with exaggerated hand motions and a consistent aura of annoyance. He wore a red vest with the initials 'MT' stitched in. Something on his neck glistened - gold chains, comically thin and unimpressive.
Andre reacted with disgust of his own, but shook his head. It was no crime to be tacky.
He returned to surveying the loners, and soon settled on one he was quite sure was available - a young, lanky man with long, sandy brown hair and a beard. The kind you'd be shocked to hear didn't have a guitar-playing channel on MewTube. The man held his glass of beer close to his chest, shifting his weight from one leg to another, and cast hesitant looks on other people around the bar. He was too far away and surrounded by too many others for Andre to get any confident reading of his aura, but it was hardly necessary with such obviously shy behavior.
He may have been new to this bar, or new to the community entirely. In the latter case, Andre would gladly lend a helping hand. This man wouldn't be the first person Andre had shown the ropes to, and it was unlikely he'd be the last. It was important for newcomers to receive the right advice and learn what's okay and what isn't lest they fall victim to predators.
It would be a worthy cause, then, to approach that man. It would be a service to the community just as acrylics would be. It was a fair trade - more than fair. After all, acrylics at this point were only theoretical. It was likely he'd meet no one that fit the criteria by the end of the day even if he stayed until closing time. So, all that considered --
The heat of fury strengthened against his back, burning like rays of a midday sun revealed from the clouds. He looked back to Dreads and Darkhair. The two seemed to be arguing. Dreads’ gesturing was now directed at Darkhair, and Darkhair’s face no longer concealed his disgust. What could be causing such revulsion from that man? What had Dreads been talking about? And was it…
It might have been, yes. It might have been something only a scumbag would do. Which meant Andre had to check.
Sighing, he cast one last wistful glance at Guitarman before getting off his seat and heading towards the arguing men. He was lucky that they’d taken the table next to the dancefloor, as it let Andre slip into the corner and stand right beside the two without arousing suspicion. He took out his phone and leaned on the wall behind him, pretending to type something while sipping on the drink in his other hand. While his eyes were glued to the screen, his attention was otherwise fully on the scene unfolding on his left, listening closely to both sound and aura.
"Don't tell me how to train my team, okay? You're not even a trainer!" snapped Dreads.
"What, so you think non-trainers can never question how trainers are treating their mon? Even if it's abuse?" retorted Darkhair.
"I'm not fucking beating them, dude! How would I even beat a fucking steelix? My hand would break!"
"But you make him sleep out in the cold!"
"For one night! He's a giant fucking metal snake, anyway! He can handle it!"
So Dreads was a trainer. Of course, it fit with the ego and the tacky clothing. And Darkhair was accusing him of abusing his team. Definitely a scumbag thing to do.
If he was a trainer, though, especially with a getup like that, he had to be online. Andre opened a browser tab on his phone and began to search for combinations of 'trainer', 'MT', 'steelix', 'dreadlocks', 'white' and 'Wyndon', all while keeping an ear out for any more details from the continuing argument, though nothing helpful was spilled. Eventually, he believed he'd managed to identify him - Mike Thomson, Snapp handle @michaelicious. Andre tapped on the profile to see more.
It seemed like a standard account for a small-time trainer who fancied himself a real celebrity. Videos and snapshots of training sessions, tournament joining announcements, promotional pictures… all with Mike well in the foreground. His team seemed to consist of a tar brown ursaring, a toxtricity, a sandaconda and, indeed, a steelix - Grizz, Zara, Twister and Titan respectively. Grizz seemed to be his ace given how he was always positioned closest to Mike. He seemed to be paying the most attention to Mike, too. Andre had his doubts about this respect being reciprocated.
The follower count was quite high, but the amount of likes and comments seemed disproportionately small. Bought followers? Oh, how embarrassing. Still, the users that did comment - provided they were real - seemed highly adoring. Probably kids that didn't know better.
He returned to his search results and tapped on Mike's MewTube channel next, though not before making sure his phone was muted. What he saw kept up with his initial impressions --
A surge of anger from the men interrupted his thoughts. He glanced over before he could remind himself he wasn't supposed to look - but immediately after, his gaze was justified.
Mike slammed his hand down on the table and stood up. "What the fuck did you just say?"
Darkhair had clearly said something to set him off. Andre cursed himself for missing it - he'd gotten too preoccupied with his phone to actually keep listening to their conversation.
Surprise radiated from Darkhair along with a tinge of fear. Anger quickly returned, the indignant kind, but Mike was faster than him on acting upon it.
“You wanna take this outside? You wanna fight?” Mike shouted, gesturing wildly. Andre’s heartbeat quickened as he realized his moment to act may have been rapidly approaching. If Mike kept up that aggression, he would be asked to leave. And Andre had to exit the building before his target did.
Darkhair raised his palms and began his attempt to de-escalate the situation, but Andre could tell Mike was too offended to back down. As Mike continued to shout, Andre downed what little remained of his drink and left the glass on a small table by the dancefloor. He cast a glance towards the bartender and saw the bearded man frowning at the arguing pair. In moments’ time, the man left his counter and headed for the scene. Andre suppressed a smirk. Just as he’d hoped.
He slipped out of the door, squinting at the light of the sun still setting. He walked some way from the door, leaned onto a nearby railing and scanned his surroundings just one more time to be safe. He came to the same conclusion - no street cameras here. Good.
To avoid drawing attention, he pulled out his phone again and opened his sudoku app. It was much easier to look at it without actually losing attention. He kept his ears and aura sense perked for whenever Mike would exit - if he would, Andre's prediction could still have been wrong - and thought of the best way to approach him.
Within the minute, a blob of rage began to emerge from the aura sea like a fish out of murky waters. It broke the surface with a loud thud of the front door being shoved open.
Andre glanced back just as any other onlooker would and found a visibly upset Mike stomping out. His anger was piercing now that the rest of the bar wasn't there to drown it out. Andre had to hope it wasn't too strong. Either way, he'd find out shortly.
In the most inoffensive tone he could muster, Andre asked the man a question. "Hey, are you Mike Thomson?"
Mike jerked his head to Andre like a startled linoone, hunched slightly as if readying for a pounce. Andre flinched a little himself, but relaxed alongside Mike as the man's aggression lessened.
"Yeah?" Mike answered, still reserved, but an amber buzz in his aura revealed his growing excitement. Someone had recognized him, and it was cocaine to his ego.
"Oh, I thought I recognized you in there!" Andre said, walking up to him with a smile which began as fake but turned genuine as Mike's anger all but disappeared. "My little brother's a huge fan of yours."
Mike's brows raised, and his mouth drew into a smirk. "Really?"
"Yeah! You might have seen him in your comments, who knows. I don't remember his username, though…" Andre clasped his hands together. "Oh, he'd love to have your autograph. W-would you be okay with that?"
“Sure! You got a pen?”
“Let’s see…” Andre reached into his pockets, but he already knew he had no pen or paper on him. He hadn’t exactly expected to need to woo a microcelebrity when leaving his house. “I guess I don’t have one on me right now…” he said, defeated. “Would you be alright with a photo instead?”
“Sure!”
Andre concealed a sigh of relief as he took out his phone. This was the better of two alternate paths. The longer they interacted, the lower the threshold was for continuing the conversation afterwards. Though it’d still be a leap… a leap he had to make if he wanted justice served. Or, well, he couldn’t know for sure yet - but he had a feeling.
He moved beside Mike and lifted the phone up high for a photo. A wave of deep magenta suddenly arose - arousal. Perhaps Mike had caught the scent of his perfume, a soft vanilla, and realized just how captivating this stranger was with his feminine frame and wavy cinnamon brown hair. Either way, it was very promising.
Andre snapped the pic and a few more as everyone knew one good picture stood on the bodies of dozens - not that he'd actually keep them. He’d delete them as soon as their time together came to an end, possibly sooner.
Alright. The pleasantries were over, and the leap was now fast approaching. Andre's heartbeat quickened, but he was all too experienced to let it show.
"Thanks so much," Andre said, lowering the phone. Before Mike could say anything that may have ended the conversation, Andre raised a hand. "And, hey…"
He stared deep into Mike's eyes, locking him in place. "I saw what happened back there, and I just wanna say that guy had no right to act the way he did."
"Th-thanks." Mike quickly averted his eyes, but it was not out of embarrassment - the green sound did not come. Instead, there was lavender. Apprehension. He seemed to have realized something like this getting out could hurt his reputation.
"No, really," Andre said as genuinely as he could. "That guy was accusing you of mistreating your team. You love your team! Even I know that. That's just so fucking disrespectful."
Mike began to nod as Andre spoke. "Yeah… yeah, that was fucked up." His apprehension was letting up. Was it letting up enough? Was this the moment for the leap?
No, he should keep going. He should tell him…
What would he tell him? Nothing came to mind. Nothing except what he'd already said. He didn't know trainers well enough to know what else they wanted to hear. Should he repeat his point in different words? No, it may be too suspicious. Mike could realize he didn't really mean it, and his apprehension would only get worse then. But if…
No, no! Precious microseconds were wasting. He had to make a decision now.
He decided to take the leap.
Andre slipped his hands in his pockets, forcing the motion to be casual despite the adrenaline in his veins. He'd play this part right.
"I guess this night didn't go quite as you wished it would," he said, shrugging coyly.
"Yeah," Mike sighed, pocketing his own hands.
"It doesn't have to be that way."
Mike looked back at him. Magenta returned. Yes.
Andre smirked. "You were looking for company, weren't you?"
Mike eyed him up and down. The magenta strengthened. A smirk of his own formed on his face. "Maybe."
Great relief washed over Andre, but he knew he wasn't done yet. He tilted his head. "I've got a pretty nice apartment," he said. "All to myself. No roommates, no teammates. Just nice decor and a bed with room to spare."
Mike's apprehension was gone. Excitement had fully taken its place. His smirk became a grin. "Sounds good."
Andre nodded and took a step towards the parking spaces. "You got your own car with you?"
"Nah, taxi."
Perfect. Much safer. Much cheaper. "Let's take mine, then."
They headed for the car. Andre took a moment just to listen to the city’s ambiance, refreshing his brain after the flurry of thoughts it had just endured. It wasn’t a deep respite, but it would have to do. The second phase was soon to begin.
The one that would decide if Mike ever came home again.
---
“All fucking week, we’ve been training for this, and he just doesn’t do it. The gliscor hits him, and I don’t see a damn single snowflake forming on his teeth. He doesn’t even try to bite. He just takes the hit and then the gliscor’s already gone and he lost his chance. I yell at him, ‘what are you doing’, and he looks at me like he doesn’t even know what the fuck I’m talking about. I know he can’t possibly be so fucking stupid that he forgot the plan, so I realize it has to be the Ice Fang that’s the problem, that he can’t do it. But I fucking made it clear he had to train until he could do it every time he wanted, that I wouldn’t catch him just fucking standing there like he can’t get it up or some shit. So of course he fucking loses, and then we fucking lose, and it’s all because he couldn’t do the one thing he had to do. So yeah, I made him sleep outside. He needs to learn his fucking lesson.”
Mike sighed hard and took another glug of his beer. Andre glanced at the clock again. It had been forty minutes since they’d arrived at his apartment, but it felt like an entire day.
At first, Mike had been careful. He’d still had his reputation in mind and known to keep his less acceptable opinions to himself. With a bit more beer in his system, though, he let his guard down, and Andre’s persistent nudging finally tipped the boulder off the edge and sent it hurtling down the mountainside.
Mike really, really didn’t like women. He didn’t like how you couldn’t say they were weaker than men. He didn’t like how you couldn’t say a woman was fat or ugly. He didn’t like how they slithered their way into jobs that belonged to men and then did a worse job and got praised for it anyway. He didn’t like the ex-girlfriend he’d had before coming out. How she’d whine about the harmless jokes his friends made about her and didn’t want them coming around anymore. How, one night, he’d told her to shut up and she wouldn’t. How he’d shown her he was serious, and how her friends almost got her to take it to the police. How it didn’t even hurt. How any man would have just shrugged it off.
Mike, despite being a trainer, also didn’t seem to like pokémon very much. He liked them when they listened to your orders and used those fangs and claws and elemental powers to pummel their opponents, but they didn’t always do that. You could give them shelter and food and medicine and they still acted up and thrashed around and ignored your orders. The mon that spoke also seemed to forget they were mon and not humans. They wanted human things like phones and internet access. They wanted to follow you into bars after rain despite smelling like wet bear. They wanted to get time off when they were feeling down. And because the whole world was breathing down your neck, you had to give them all these or convince them to do without them with nice, well-meaning words.
He didn’t stop there, of course. He also wasn’t particularly a fan of foreigners or any of that ‘political correctness shit’. What really told the most, however, was the utter lack of shame or deception in his aura as he spoke. All that he said, he meant.
The good news was that this left no doubt in Andre’s mind about whether Mike really was deserving of the final phase. The bad news was that, despite the liters of beer he would down, Mike still hadn’t gotten up to use the bathroom and let Andre slip the drug in his drink already.
Maybe he was just too worked up to realize the signals of his body. If he calmed down, he might finally excuse himself.
"Yeah, that sucks," Andre said, grasping his glass of water. He'd love to drink wine, but he didn't want any more alcohol in his system. "This seems like a bit of a downer topic, though. How about we talk about something more pleasant for you, like…" He cast his eyes on the ceiling, pretending to think when he'd already found his idea, then met Mike's eyes again in feigned realization. "Your Snapp account! I noticed you have a huge follower base. How'd you get so many?"
Mike laughed. It sounded genuine, but Andre could sense his intent to deceive. They really were bots, then. "Well, you know, a lot of it is just the right marketing. Keeping up a brand with presence across all social medias. And then good posts, obviously. And making them regularly."
From there, he continued to talk. He talked about his MewTube channel, he talked about sponsors - some crappy energy drink Andre had never heard of - and he talked about Chatter. Andre hadn’t had time to check out Mike’s Chatter profile before, but now that he’d already made the judgment on Mike, he had no need. And he really had no will. He avoided that platform these days for the sake of his sanity.
Mike took another sip of his freshly filled glass of beer, lowered it and got up with a grunt. “Gotta take a leak. Hold on.”
Finally! Andre hid his elation and gestured to the right. “Bathroom’s around the corner. Shouldn’t be hard to find.”
Mike nodded and rounded the corner. Andre heard the door open and close. The lock clacked shut.
Quietly, Andre got up and snuck to the counter. He opened the third drawer on the right and reached his hand all the way back past the miscellaneous kitchen utilities. He drew out one of three ziplock bags pre-filled with a small amount of fine, white powder and closed the drawer after.
He returned to the table and very carefully emptied the bag's contents into the glass of beer, then stirred the liquid with his finger to make it all dissolve. He stopped and briefly stirred in the opposite direction to break up the little whirlpool that had formed. Finally, he took away his finger and rinsed it off in the sink before wrapping the empty plastic bag in a paper towel and throwing it in the bin.
By the time Mike returned, Andre had been sitting for a while, browsing his phone.
"Alright," the trainer said, returning to his seat. "Where were we?"
"Your social media profiles," said Andre, putting his phone away. He avoided naming Chatter on purpose.
Luckily, this worked. "Right, yeah! Another thing you need for a successful social media presence is to make your shit look good, obviously. You gotta know what's good and bad lighting, but of course that's not gonna do anything if you just look like shit. Now, that's not much of an issue for me, but I still like to make sure I take the best care of my hair and skin…"
It was much easier for Andre to pay attention now that he knew Mike's babbling wouldn't last indefinitely. This drug worked quickly, which was why it was legally used as an anaesthetic for stress-prone or potentially dangerous mon. Illegally, it was a narcotic and a roofie. Andre could never remember its proper name, but on the street, it was known as sparkles, named so due to it originating from the spores of morelull and shiinotic. Upon its discovery, anyway. Since then it had been synthesized.
Fifteen minutes was the fastest that Andre had seen it take effect when slipped into a drink like this. Of course, he had a feeling he wouldn’t be quite that lucky. Mike was muscular and taller than average. If his hair and personality weren’t repulsive, he might have been a good catch.
Either way, Andre kept up his facade of interest. He even offered his own insight a few times, not that Mike gave it much attention. The conversation continued without oddities for five, ten, fifteen minutes - until the first signs came.
Ums and uhs appeared between words, getting longer and more frequent as time passed. Each interjection came with a squiggle of confusion, sometimes joined by annoyance. Mike shifted from topic to topic, unable to fight his tangents, until he could no longer make a coherent point about anything. If he ever could.
In five more minutes, Mike finally noticed it himself. He sighed, deflating. "Man, I'm tired as fuck."
Andre tilted his head. "Oh?"
"Yeah…" Mike rubbed his forehead. "I don't think I can do this tonight. Sorry. Lemme…"
He got up from his chair and walked a few wobbly steps away. He reached for the phone in his pocket, but then paused - and quickly stumbled to the couch instead. He barely managed to stay upright as he sat.
Andre got off his own chair and walked over. "Are you alright?" he asked. "How much did you drink at the bar?"
Mike's breathing was heavy. The squiggles of his aura tightened, becoming more jagged, and violet shone through the swirl of unknown colors. Fear.
"I don't…" Mike slurred. "Not that… much…" His head drooped, but he jerked it back up. "Som'th'n's wrong. Call a-an… ambl…"
"Call an ambulance?" Andre pulled out his phone and pretended to unlock it.
"Y-yeah…" Mike tried to lie down on the couch slowly, but his arms couldn’t support him. He flopped down with a grunt. The zigzags of fear loosened up again, but it didn’t mean he was no longer scared. It meant the drug was finally pulling him under.
Andre paused. He put the phone away and crouched next to Mike. Feigned worry melted off his face, leaving behind no expression at all. Mike watched this through squinted eyes, last spikes of fear poking out of the squiggles.
“I’m not calling you an ambulance,” Andre said.
"Wh…why not?" Mike huffed.
Andre stared into his eyes. "Because you're not leaving this place alive."
---
Acrylics was not Andre’s medium of choice.
He didn't have anything against acrylic paint, no. He didn't think it was inherently lesser than oil paint. Sure, it was the 'easier' of the two, requiring no solvents other than water and drying very quickly, and that made it the preferred choice for beginners and casual hobbyists, but Andre was no elitist. Art was art, be it acrylics, oil paint, watercolor, gouache, colored pencils, crayons or digital.
Andre's preference for oil paint stemmed only from what it was, not what it wasn't. He loved the gloss of it, the texture of it, the rich colors, how it seeped into the canvas, how long it could be mixed - and when he painted, he felt the echoes of history, the motions of the old masters manifesting in his arms and wrists.
Sometimes, however, the special properties of acrylics were necessary. Since its solvent was simply water, not turpentine or any other substances with harmful fumes, it required no ventilation. In other words, Andre could keep the window closed - and that was a crucial prerequisite for what he would soon do.
Mike lay spread eagle on the painting room bed, unconscious and stripped down to his underwear. Four nylon ropes tied his wrists and ankles to the bedposts. A piece of duct tape sealed his mouth tightly shut, a rolled up sock placed behind the lips.
The bed's sheets were gone, replaced by a plastic cover with several white towels spread on top. The bed was also propped up to have its head higher than the foot, and two buckets stood at the corners of the lower end, ready to gather anything that might drip. On the floor underneath was a tarp and some newspapers, which also covered the nearby walls and ceiling.
Since parts of this setup were acceptable for a painter to do for their painting room, Andre had been able to prepare them earlier in the day. He'd also bought the towels and the rope. He'd get rid of all of them alongside the body. He wanted no traces of Mike's blood left in his house.
Mike was quiet and Andre was quiet, but the room was not. A little boombox in the corner of the room played lively jazz - not smooth, not chaotic, just lively - at a conversation's volume. Andre sat on a chair before the bed, legs crossed. An easel with an empty canvas stood on his left, and a little stand with acrylic painting supplies stood on his right. His hands browsed his phone, skimming through Mike's social media accounts once again. He wore nothing but his glasses, his underwear and a long dark blue raincoat.
Andre sighed as he watched yet another video of Mike talking in a training hall, his team in the background along with some other mon. Zara, the toxtricity, ceased picking her chest the moment Mike said his first words, then sharply rolled her eyes and resumed her strumming, the bassy twangs continuing throughout the rest of the video. Grizz, on the other hand, briefly looked back from the battle he was supervising, smiled, and turned back to the field.
Smiling wasn’t as straightforward an expression with mon as it was with humans. Only humans and a few species of mon actually smiled on instinct - the others had to learn to do it, provided they were able to in the first place. Mammalian pokemon typically were, having lips and all, but it still required conscious effort to smile each time they were happy until it could become a habit.
If cameras recorded aura and phones somehow played them back, there’d be no mystery of whether or not the bear was actually happy. Even without it, though, Andre was confident in his judgment - Grizz smiled out of adoration.
It shouldn't happen. But it did happen, all too often, and Andre knew how. He knew the tricks people like Mike would pull to make the abused feel like they weren't really abused or to make the onlookers look the other way. Andre wasn't perfectly sure which one Grizz actually was - Mike had lamented how he needed to be all fuzzy-wuzzy with Grizz to make sure he stayed as his ace, so Grizz couldn’t be getting the worst of the mistreatment - but whatever the case, one thing was certain. Grizz would take Mike's disappearance hard.
Andre had never targeted a trainer before. None of his previous targets had happened to be trainers, nor had they been caretakers of any mon, sapient or feral. By extension, he’d never caused a mon to lose a member of their family or their home.
He would have preferred to avoid it altogether, but this was a case in which the amount of good done outweighed the harm. Mike was a scumbag, an unrepentant one, and no amount of lectures would change that. The only thing he would ever feel sorry for was getting caught.
As for the mon left behind, Andre believed they’d survive and be better off for it. Neither sandaconda nor steelix were species that bonded deeply with humans, at least not when feral. They’d be taken into custody and likely adopted by other trainers, seeing as they were young and strong. Zara didn’t seem too concerned about Mike in general, and Grizz… well.
Grizz was clearly attached to Mike, but he was still his own citizen and mature enough to make his own decisions. His only legal tie to Mike was employment. There were also obvious limits to how meaningful their relationship could be when it seemed to be only professional to Mike. It wasn’t as if Mike was Grizz’s shoulder to cry on - because if that had been the case, Mike would surely have complained about that as well.
Andre clenched his teeth. He’d seen his fair share of two-faced behavior ever since he’d started all this, but it never stopped being disgusting. And it never should. He didn’t want to see the day it did.
Mike's aura began to sputter. It evolved from a colorless, textureless presence to a neutral TV static, then a mixture of a handful of feelings as his brain slowly organized his thoughts - irritation, confusion, anger, fear, all stemming from his unusual position and restraints.
It would take a little longer for Mike to become properly responsive. Andre took the time to clear his browsing history, which he knew wouldn't erase it from his service provider's logs or delete any history his apps might store, but was still a safety precaution better taken. He didn't particularly want to be reminded of this guy once he was gone, either.
Andre got up and straightened his raincoat. Mike's aura flashed with fear-tinged surprise at the sudden noise. Eyes still shut, he made his first vocalization, which may have tried to be a 'hey', but the sock and the tape muffled it into a moan. He tried again, louder, but it didn't help. With great effort, he pried open his eyes. His emotions intensified as he glanced around the room, though anger was keeping the lead. Andre expected as much from someone like him.
Andre checked his setup one last time - yes, everything was there, the canvas, brushes, paint, water, palette, everything. He walked over to a dresser further away, digging out a box of rubber gloves and pulling out a pair for himself. As he returned to the bed, Mike's eyes shed the last of their lethargy. Wide and bulging, they stared at the cloaked man standing at the foot of the bed.
Andre stared back and smiled. It seemed they were all ready to start.
"Mike Thomson," he said, emotion draining from his face. "Professional trainer."
Mike's eyes flicked back and forth between Andre and the rest of the room. Confusion briefly took over, but anger made a quick comeback and only kept strengthening. 'This guy drugged me and tied me down,' Mike must have been thinking. 'Me, Mike Thomson! How dare he?'
Andre clasped his hands behind his back, the rubber gloves still in his hold. "Also an abuser of women, and an abuser of pokémon."
Anger rattled like an ekans. 'He lied to me. He tricked me. And now he's going to lecture me?'
The lecture would be the least of his worries, but he didn't seem to understand that yet. He couldn't possibly believe he was in actual danger. Danger, from this guy? This pasty twink?
"You must have thought it'd never catch up to you," Andre continued. "That no one was brave enough to speak up. That it was too small and subtle to be considered a real crime anyway."
Specks of regret shot out from Mike's aura, but Andre knew it wasn't guilt. Mike regretted meeting Andre, coming to this apartment, spilling all his secrets, not realizing it had been a trap. The specks ignited as regret turned to anger. Anger at himself.
"And maybe it would have been true," Andre said, "had you not met me."
He brought his hands before him again. Mike's eyes fixed on the rubber gloves as Andre began to slip them on. Then the raincoat. Then the bed, the towels, the buckets.
And that's when it happened.
The visceral wave. The twisting of the heart, the shiver in the spine. Violet ribbons slithering on the skin, silky and cool.
Fear. And not just any fear.
Mike had just realized he was going to die.
Andre's eyes shut in pleasure, like a cat soaking in the warmth of the sun. Inspiration rushed to his wrists, the want to place down the feeling via color and shape, the need.
But there were still a few more words to say. This fear could be refined, amplified, and since it could, it should. He deserved to feel the worst of it. The worst until the real worst came, anyway.
Andre took a deep breath to keep himself focused. "You've done a lot of taking," he said, slowly making his way back to the dresser he'd gotten his rubber gloves from. "You can't possibly give back what you've taken," he continued, "but you can still give me something."
He stopped in front of the dresser and slid open the drawer underneath the previous one. He reached in and grasped the kitchen utility knife that he'd sharpened and placed there earlier in the day. As he pulled it out into view, he said his next words.
"Your pain and suffering."
Hearing those words and seeing the knife, Mike's terror surged. He pulled at his restraints and attempted to scream, but it was useless. The bed creaked, but the wood held, and the frame stayed in place thanks to the two more dressers placed on its sides, all while the jazz drowned out his muffled screams.
Andre smiled. Not because he was a sadist - he wasn't - but because he knew it would make this even worse of an experience for Mike. That's what Mike deserved, after all. He deserved to die alone, helpless, afraid and in pain.
Andre walked up to the bed, feeling the newspaper underneath his feet, feeling the now. The delicious fear of the abuser turned victim, his wordless pleas for undeserved mercy. No one would come for him. No one would save him. He was as helpless as he'd made his victims feel. This was justice.
Anger flashed once more as Andre placed his knee on the end of the bed and leaned above Mike, but it was the screech of a cornered animal. It did nothing to dissuade Andre from raising his blade, taking it down to the side of Mike's abdomen, placing it gently against the skin. The gripping hand quivered, betraying the wildly beating heart inside Andre's chest. The feigned smile across his face had long since become real. This was his mission, this was his service to the world, and he would do it once again.
His gaze climbed up Mike's body to the trainer's mortified eyes. In seconds' time, that fear radiating from him would turn blinding white.
"Let's begin," Andre whispered.
He slashed the blade across the skin, and Mike screamed.
---
The man screamed as the beasts tore his body open. He was the first of them to die this way. The others were stabbed, hanged, poisoned, decapitated, fried in an electric chair, but none had been torn apart by beasts. For this man, though, for Six, it was the obvious choice.
Canine, feline, bird, reptile. They barely scratched the surface of the diversity of the animal kingdom, but all that mattered was the impression. The idea. The idea of all manner of creatures joining together for vengeance against their oppressor. Broken chains hung from their shackles. No more. The natural order was restored.
The man screamed. He screamed like all the others. Lightning bled from their eyes and mouths, and from their wounds bled magma, boiling hot. Purple storm and red inferno raged, inside and out of the void-black body, but neither could touch the beasts. Not the beasts, not the blade, not the rope, anything. The men were powerless. All were powerless when it came. When death came.
What's this?
Something moved, swirled, fluttered about in the stream of emotions. What was it? A flake of white ash. Just one? Or many, at different times? Many. The observer did not understand it, but he had seen it, and that was all that mattered. It would be part of the scene. It would be recorded, it would be brought to sight, the material world. The observer reached for white --
Something broke. Something was wrong in Mike’s aura. Andre stopped and looked at the man on the bed. He was stiff, unmoving, and his eyes had no focus, but he couldn’t be unconscious - his aura wasn’t neutral. It was fearful, like it had been moments ago, but it was distorted. Each defining quality was somehow off, out of tune, harsh on the ear. It was simply wrong. It made Andre shiver.
And then it let go. It faded away in less than a second, leaving nothing in its wake.
Nothing? Nothing at all?
Andre put down his paintbrush and rushed beside the man. He placed his fingers on Mike’s neck. No pulse. Andre leaned down, bringing his head next to Mike’s. No aura. But there were faint auras further away, the other tenants of the building. Andre’s aura sense was working correctly. Mike simply had no aura. Mike was dead.
Andre got up and stopped to catch his breath. He walked over to the radio that still played jazz as if nothing had happened and turned down the volume to allow himself to think.
Okay. It had to have been some kind of sudden failure in Mike’s system, probably triggered by the extreme amounts of stress and possibly also the loss of blood. Andre glanced at the body. Four cuts across the abdomen and arms. Halfway of what he usually did, but Mike was also very giving. Andre hadn’t needed to go back very often.
Still, it was strange. Mike didn’t go unconscious at all. It didn’t take him any time to die. Normally, the target would pass out from blood loss and their aura would lose its color. Only then could the aura begin to break down and fade away as more and more braincells died.
Andre brought his hand to his chin, but sighed not too long after. Now that Mike was dead, there was no way for him to get back in the flow, not when he’d been yanked out of it so violently.
Well, it was fun while it lasted. He liked to think he’d made some pretty good art, too. And the most important thing was that another terrible person had been erased from the world. Andre had fulfilled his duty. The next four months were free.
He walked back to the easel and picked up his brush. He eyed the painting. It was still quite rough. Rough was how paintings of raw emotion ought to be, but this was simply unfinished. He'd do what he needed to complete the painting before he began to clean up. Oh, and…
He touched the canvas with the tip of the brush, creating a little speck of white. He repeated the action a few more times around the canvas.
There. Little flakes of ash.
---
The next morning, Andre woke up at noon. He briefly wondered why his alarm hadn’t gone off until he remembered he’d killed someone the night before.
He knew that such a day always required ample rest afterwards. It wasn't easy to get to sleep after getting rid of the body and the evidence. He had to call and talk to people he'd never want to interact with under any other circumstance, and he had to let them inside his home. So far, there'd never been any complications - Andre gave them the cash, they took the bag and they left - but he never felt safe. Those men were criminals, after all, and hardened ones at that. Their auras showed no fear. Not even disgust at the thought of whatever was inside that bag. It was inhuman.
He tried his best not to think about what the money he gave them was going to. If he had his way, he wouldn't give them a cent. But he just couldn't get rid of the evidence on his own. He didn't have the skill or knowhow to pull it off reliably without getting caught. And if he got caught, he'd be put away. He couldn't fulfill his duty from prison.
It was alright. Wyndon had its police to take care of organized crime. It had nobody to take care of the scumbags whose crimes went unspoken. Nobody but Andre.
He got up from his bed and stretched. He really should take today to get all the relaxation he couldn't get yesterday. He'd let himself eat cereal for breakfast and later order some garbage takeout. He'd spend the day lying on the couch, watching animated movies and taking in the artistry. Yes, that sounded like a plan.
He continued through his morning routine as usual. Once he reached the kitchen, he poured a bowl full of Comfey Charms, unafraid of their empty calories, and brought it to the table flanking the living room couch. He turned on the TV, but didn't switch to streaming quite yet, instead letting the news play in the background while he checked his Snapp feed on his phone. Katie had finished some anatomy practice. He recognized some of the poses and props - it looked like she'd used that life drawing site he'd recommended. He dropped a like and a comment of 'lookin good' with a thumbs up. It did, indeed, look good. While the drawings were still a bit stiff in gesture, she'd come a long way since she'd decided to draw more than just cartoons.
He sensed something. Some aura.
Andre put down his phone and listened. Now he couldn't sense it anymore. Or he could. He wasn't sure. It was so small. Or so far away. It moved. Okay, if it moved, it had to exist.
Except now it left. It wasn't there anymore. Maybe it was never there. Maybe he'd actually heard a little noise instead and confused it for something he'd sensed through aura.
No, there it was again. It was definitely there, somewhere in the direction of his painting room, outside the apartment. But that was open air…
Bird, he decided, or bug pokémon. Nothing to worry about.
He was about to return to his phone when it came inside. Through the wall.
Oh.
Andre froze up. He’d never had to deal with a stray ghost pokémon wandering in by himself. What was he supposed to do again? Just wait for it to leave, and if that didn’t work, get an amulet to shoo it away?
Wait…
The aura had gotten closer, allowing Andre to sense it better. There was something familiar about it. Was it…
Oh no.
The flake of white ash floated even closer. Slowly but surely, it was heading for Andre.
He got up and stepped to the side, closer to the TV. The aura changed its course accordingly. Andre walked backwards, and the aura continued to follow.
What did it want? Did it want to drain life from him? That didn’t make sense. There were dozens of other humans just outside who couldn’t sense aura and wouldn’t have any idea the ghost was present. He’d also already witnessed the ghost move faster than it did now. Nothing prevented it from simply swooping in and taking that energy by force. It wasn’t as if Andre could swat it away like he could a mosquito, no, the ghost was in an intangible state.
It had to have something to do with Andre in specific. It had to be related to last night. What had happened last night? He’d killed Mike --
No, of course. He hadn’t killed Mike. He'd caused his death, no doubt, and he'd intended to, but ultimately Mike's cause of death had been an unexpected accident, something unknown that had taken his life in an instant rather than gradually through loss of blood. That something had to have been this ghost. This ghost had absorbed the last of a dying man’s life, something even a weak ghost could do. That’s why Mike’s aura had been so strange.
And now the ghost was back. Andre had a good guess why. It had associated him with that death, like a farfetch’d at a pond coming to humans for bread, and it wanted more.
Andre’s back bumped against the wall. He’d run out of backward steps to take. He could move to the right next… but he clenched his fist instead.
He couldn’t be bossed around by this ghost. Despite his quickly beating heart, he stood his ground. A ghost this little couldn’t hurt him. A lot. And if it tried, he’d simply leave and come back with an amulet.
The ghost floated ever closer, so close that Andre wasn’t sure if it was going to stop outside of his body - but it did, just centimeters away.
Andre clenched his jaw. “Show yourself,” he growled.
The air began to darken. Andre flinched. He hadn’t expected it to understand.
Like ink blots on paper, the darkness spread, coloring in a shape barely larger than Andre’s palm. Invisible threads wove together to form bluish gray fabric - spectral cloth - and wrapped around the air to form the shape of a tiny shuppet.
Two slits opened up in the front of the cloth, revealing the large yellow-blue eyes behind. A third slit underneath formed a mouth. It smiled - and it opened.
“Hello!”
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