Pokémon A Sunless Dawn

[Zoroarka9]

It was an average day in Cyllage City for the budain family, 12 year old Léon was playing in the backyard as 16 year old Marie helped her parents in the kitchen. They were having fried Krabby that night, as Marie broke up the Krabby her father came in with a stern expression on his face. The mother noticed and left with the father.
"Nothing good I assume, the rent is due again" she muttered to herself. She tried to distract herself, the food was more important, poor léon hadn't eaten yet and it's already 6:30. Several loud crunches emanated from the Krabby underneath the cleaver, after the Krabby was broken up she tossed it in a layer of cornstarch before frying it off and setting aside, whipping up a quick chili sauce to coat the Krabby and serve with some fried kantonian style noodles. She felt a tap on her shoulder and she looked back. Her mother was softly sobbing and her father looked grim, léon wasn't paying attention, as he normally does.
"I- I'm not gonna futz around Mon petit ange, you know as well as we do that we're barely making ends meet". I nodded, he sighed. "Your mother and I, after some discussion, have decided to send you off to the khatar region, there's this pharmaceutical company that needs people for their medicine, to give it a test run, all expenses paid and they'll even give us something for your time. Léon's coming with you".
Marie nodded and bit her lip anxiously, she had heard vaguely of the khatar region before, only of its arid deserts.
"I understand father"

* Three weeks later*
Marie's mother crouched to léon's level and began pinching his cheeks, her puffy eyes couldn't hide the fact she had been crying recently
"You take care of your sister alright léon? We'll miss you!"
Léon nodded vigorously "I'll take care of her mama! Don't worry about a thing!"
Their mother stood up, smiling down at her two precious babies, and waved them off. The two walked up to the gate and scanned their tickets, and boarded the gateway to their new lives.

 

[Negrek]

Welcome to the forums! Figured I’d check out your first chapter, here. It looks like you’re setting up an interesting scenario here. Two kids getting sent off to an arid region to do medical testing for cash? Nothing could possibly go wrong with that. Especially not when you consider the fic’s ominous title!

I liked the detail you included with how the krabby was being prepared; gives the story a nice sense of place more than a generic meal would. I hope we’ll get to see more of that sort of detail in later chapters. And later chapters in general! It feels like what you’ve posted so far is more of a teaser than anything; you didn’t really have much time to do more than briefly introduce the characters and general situation. I hope future chapters have a bit more space to breathe.

At times the prose mechanics made it hard for me to follow what was happening. One easy thing to do would be to add spaces between all of your paragraphs rather than just before the time skip. Text online is much easier to read with that extra spacing. Taking another read through your work and correcting typos and grammar problems might also help. For example, I was confused when the text was briefly in first person because I didn’t know who “I” related to. Fixing up those sorts of grammar problems will make it much easier for readers to get into your story.

Welcome again, and good luck with your writing! If you enjoy darker stories in desert locales, you might enjoy Of Sand and Shadows by HelloYellow17 here on these forums.